Micron, a semiconductor manufacturer, announced that it will sell its production base for 3D XPoint, a high-speed memory technology jointly developed by Intel and Samsung, to Texas Instruments (TI), a semiconductor company, for $900 million.
3D Xpoint is a memory technology announced by Intel in 2015. It has attracted attention as a technology that can realize ultra-high performance with 30% power consumption than NAND flash memory, with a standby time of 1/10, a write life 4 times, and a read speed 3 times.
After that, Micron, which was developing 3D Xpoint technology with Intel, announced Micron X100, a high-speed, low-latency SSD that adopted 3D Xpoint in October 2019, but only a small number of these products were shipped. In addition, Micron suffered an annual loss of $400 million due to low demand for 3D X Point, and announced that it would withdraw from 3D X Point development in March 2021, and it has been revealed that it is considering the sale of its plant.
Then, on June 30, 2021 (local time), it announced that it would sell its 3D Xpoint-related plant in Utah to TI for $900 million. At the same time, Micron is also considering the sale of memory-related assets worth $600 million. Micron could gain up to $1.5 billion in economic benefits from this series of divestitures. The sale of memory-related assets is currently under review, but according to reports, considering the special memory-related assets that Micron is considering for sale, it is not surprising that the sale partner is Intel. It is speculation that Micron is selling its memory-related assets to Intel.
TI regards the factory it bought from Micron as a semiconductor factory with the ability to produce 300mm wafers, and has no plans to produce 3D Xpoint related products. The company plans to continue hiring employees even after securing the plant.
Meanwhile, Micron announced that TI is a leader in the semiconductor industry and is delighted to reach the contract by truly evaluating its plant and team capabilities, while focusing on developing the next-generation connectivity standard Compute Express Link (CXL). The process of selling the Micron plant is expected to be completed by the end of 2021. Related information can be found here.