Flash memory
FeRAM remains a relatively small part of the overall semiconductor market. In 2005, worldwide semiconductor sales were US$235 billion (according to the Gartner Group), with the flash memory market accounting for US $18.6 billion (according to IC Insights). The 2005 annual sales of Ramtron, perhaps the largest FeRAM vendor, were reported to be US $32.7 million. The much larger sales of flash memory compared to the alternative NVRAMs support a much larger research and development effort. Flash memory is produced using semiconductor linewidths of 30 nm at Samsung (2007) while FeRAMs are produced in linewidths of 350 nm at Fujitsu and 130 nm at Texas Instruments (2007). Flash memory cells can store multiple bits per cell (currently 3 in the highest density NAND flash devices), and the number of bits per flash cell is projected to increase to 4 or even to 8 as a result of innovations in flash cell design. As a consequence, the areal bit densities of flash memory are much higher than those of FeRAM, and thus the cost per bit of flash memory is orders of magnitude lower than that of FeRAM.