Recently, the industry has repeatedly analyzed that the tight supply of SpecTek has affected the NAND market, and a senior industry senior told Shan Dejun: "The market speculation micron big S supply is tight, in fact, it is only an adjustment of resources, and the overall situation has not changed."
Big S is SpecTek particles, some friends may not understand what exactly is SpecTek (or big S particles), then today, Shandejun will introduce you to what SpecTek is.
First of all, we need to know what are original and degraded particles.
According to the chip production process, the original factory will test the flash Die packaged and marked with its own logo, which is the original granules, the simple understanding is the carefully selected high-quality particles. What has not passed the test is the degraded particles, because there are inevitable unqualified particles in the chip production process, and from these unqualified particles can also be screened to detect particles that can be used normally, so the general storage factory will flow these particles to the downstream packaging plant for processing and recycling.
These degraded particles can be roughly divided into white and black sheets. The white sheet is part of the test failed after the original packaging, and then after some tests, if it does not affect the use, it will be marked and sold to the market like a positive film; the so-called black sheet is a defective product that wafer does not meet the spec standard.
Here we are talking about the big S (SpecTek) particles refer to the white sheet, SpecTek is a subsidiary of Micron, Micron has been packaged, but the first chip that did not pass the test will be handed over to SpecTek for secondary testing, and after passing the test, it will be marked with the SpecTek logo.
According to the different test results, the big S particles also have advantages and disadvantages, in the SpecTek official website, we can also judge according to the material code.
As shown in the figure above, FN represents the manufacturer name, that is, SpecTek; the latter bit of FN, equivalent to a statement of the manufacturer, indicates that it is SpecialTek and does not apply to others; the latter bit is the type of flash memory, M is SLC, L is MLC, B is TLC, Q is QLC; the next two bits are the process node, which is the meaning of which process the flash memory test is carried out; and then the next set of numbers, representing the capacity/capacity + density level of the flash memory; the latter bit is H/J/K/L/M/P/N, Represents the flash memory configuration; the latter bit is the flash voltage; the next bit is the package configuration (a few Die, a few pins, a few channels); the next bit is the package function, such as A=All, B=CE1, C=CE2, D=SLC (analog); the latter bit is the external connection and interaction; then the latter set of numbers is the package number; then a set of numbers represents the acceleration level, the higher the better; and finally the flash level and production definition.
For ordinary players, the most important thing about the chip's material number is the flash memory capacity, flash memory type, flash memory level, especially the last number representing the flash memory level. From the above figure, it can be learned that AS is the best and can be used to make SSD products, while ES is the worst, just some engineering samples, which basically cannot be used normally.
It is worth mentioning that not only Micron has a company like SpecTek that specializes in processing degraded particles, but other storage original factories, such as Samsung, Hynix, Armor, etc. have such downstream manufacturers, but they are not as public as Micron, and they are not known to the public.
For some installed players, when they know that they have purchased a memory stick or SSD with a large S particle, they tend to be discolored, thinking that this degraded particle will greatly reduce performance or life. However, according to a saying on the Internet, the vast majority of the consumer market now uses white sheet granules, and those with better quality original granules are either supplied to corporate users or sold at higher prices. The regular white sheet granules will be much lower in terms of quality while ensuring quality, and some of the more famous, such as Pirate Ship, Kingston and other OEMs will also use white flake granules.
Of course, this is under the premise of the formal, the huge storage market is mixed, it is inevitable that some small factories will be shoddy, and even some directly use the black flake particles, although the price is extremely low, but the quality is often not guaranteed. Therefore, unless you have a high degree of identification ability, when buying storage products, you still try to choose the production of large brands.