China start-up eyes growth in memory market

China start-up GigaDevice Semiconductor Inc. says that it is positive about its development in the local memory market. The company’s strategy: tapping local advantages combined with constant technology innovation.

GigaDevice’s first product was an SRAM device. Despite market pressure, Zhu Yi-Ming, president of GigaDevice said that they were able to find a good point to enter the SRAM segment and they have good development in the market.

To increase their survival in the segment, GigaDevice is always looking for market opportunities for product development. They make use of their local advantage for this, said Zhu. For example, they are open to venture into subsegments abandoned by big memory manufacturers such as low profit and low-end production lines in favor of fast technology development. These product lines, which are used by manufacturers with low-end systems, provide GigaDevice with opportunities to break into the market.

"There are many opportunities like this, and it gives us a very good cut-in point," Zhu explained. "At the start of our development, we keep on finding those low-profit memory products while giants are anxious to move to high-profit memory market. What they abandon is what we gain; that’s our survival chance. Cases like this abound and finding low-margin memory products will be in our strategy."

To become a memory expert, GigaDevice said it will capitalize on innovation for its technology offerings. For example, the company’s SRAM Terayon family uses its dySRAM patent technology to deliver SRAM in smaller packages and with lower power consumption. GigaDevice also incorporated for the first time the Error Correction Code circuit into its SRAM offerings to upgrade SRAM error tolerance and correction capabilities.

Moreover, GigaDevice develops MCP flash product for cellphone applications using their dySRAM, gFlash and duoCell patent technology. The product is available in different flavors such as 16Mbyte Flash+2Mbyte SRAM, 32Mbyte Flash+4Mbyte SRAM and 128Mbyte flash+32Mb PSRAM.

GigaDevice is also expanding its embedded flash memory portfolio. Recently, it announced an embedded serial Flash suitable for CD-driver, hard disk, WLAN, DSL and router applications. GigaDevice also provides customers with IP to integrate into their ICs to meet customer’s demands on lowering cost and chip size [in manufacturing].

Zhu concluded, "Our innovation is localized and it meets the market demands. We are very cautious to move forward. We will keep away from hot-spot technologies in the market to avoid conflict with giants. Our focus is innovation and quality."