Harari: Reflections before retirement

In July, Eli Harari, founder, chairman and CEO of SanDisk Corp., announced he would retire from his current positions as of the end of the year. He will continue to provide advisory services to the company for a period of two years.

During this year's Flash Memory Summit, Harari gave a keynote and addressed several topics. In an interview with EE Times after the keynote, he provided more insight about lithography, NAND and the post-NAND era.

Here's what Harari said on various subjects:

On solid-state disk drives for the masses: ''It's still in the early adoption phase. Cost and performance is the issue. Performance is very good. (But it will take) one or two generations before SSD is attractive for the mass markets.''

On growth markets for NAND and NAND-based storage devices: There are several drivers: 1) E-books. In the near term, Amazon will sell ''more E-books than hard covers and soft covers''; 2) Emerging markets. The Indian government plans to ship $35 tablet PCs to 110 million students. (The systems will reportedly use NAND flash); 3) Mobile. ''Mobile is the mother of all growth markets.''

On Apple's iPad: ''If I would have said the tablet PC would be a growth driver last year, you would have laughed me off the stage. Even I would have thought I was crazy. Apple has changed the landscape in tablet PCs. Apple sold 3.3 million iPads in the first three months.''

On NAND scaling: At one time, there was a belief that NAND would run out of gas at ''0.16?m 50nm was supposed to be the end. There were experts that said this was the end. (But I see the industry making) a push for NAND below 20nm.''

Scaling in general: "The scaling pace will slow down, but costs will come down.''

Post NAND-era: The post-NAND era ''won't happen overnight.'' If or when NAND runs out of steam, the top candidate for the post-NAND era is a ''3-D read/write'' technology.

Lithography challenges: Extreme ultraviolet lithography is ''very challenging. I think we can overcome the challenges for EUV. Look, the industry overcame the challenges for immersion.''

- Mark LaPedus
EE Times