Micron Technology, Inc. (Nasdaq: MU), today reaffirmed its three-decade commitment to the industrial market with the introduction of its Industrial Quotient (IQ) Partner Program.
Backed by Micron and other founding members such as Advantech, ATP Electronics, Greenliant, Innodisk, Kontron, Mercury Systems and Viking Technology, Micron’s IQ Partner Program promotes design solutions that deliver high-quality, robust and long-lasting products across a breadth of industrial applications such as factory automation, transportation and defense systems.
The industrial internet of things (IIoT) continues to transform the world of manufacturing at a rapid pace. This change extends automation and connectivity beyond traditional factory walls and drives demand for more data acquisition, communication, real-time analytics and data-driven decisions across a wide range of industrial verticals. The IQ Partner Program addresses the need for greater coordination and collaboration across the supply chain, which is required for designing today’s industrial solutions.
Five Tenets of Micron’s IQ Matters Program:
With more than three decades of leadership in developing memory solutions for the industrial market, Micron launched the IQ Matters Program in 2017, which forms the basis for the new IQ Partner Program. Micron’s program is built around five key tenets of design support that facilitate the creation of industrial products and deliver sustainable lower total cost of ownership (TCO) to Micron’s customers and the industry as a whole:
- Ruggedized product enhancements to enable consistent performance across extreme environments, such as extended temperatures, thermal cycling, shock and humidity.
- Design and testing processes to add a high level of endurance and reliability to align with needs of long-lifecycle embedded applications.
- Extensive and rigorous quality testing to deliver consistent performance across products and processes necessary in embedded and mission-critical applications.
- Extended lifecycle support for eligible products via Micron’s Product Longevity Program, which goes a step beyond standard lifecycle support to suit long-life applications.
- In-depth understanding of use cases to deliver products and features optimized for specific application needs.
“The broad and growing deployment of IIoT applications makes choosing the right industrial memory and storage solutions more critical for embedded applications,” said Kris Baxter, vice president of marketing for the Embedded Business Unit at Micron. “The IQ Partner Program gives our industrial customers confidence that they are choosing the best products and minimizing the total cost of ownership for their IIoT designs. These selections not only help meet the functional requirements of tomorrow’s industrial solutions, but they also ensure long-term reliability and quality with simplified product lifecycle management.”
Micron memory and storage solutions remain the industry’s top choice across a variety of IIoT applications including industrial PCs (IPC), factory automation, surveillance, machine-to-machine (M2M), retail, digital signage, smart grid, fleet management and health care, as well as aerospace and defense. Members of Micron’s IQ Partner Program are committed to the development and delivery of robust industrial solutions that are optimized for the increasing demands and expectations for these critical applications.
Quotes From Micron’s Industrial Quotient Partners
Advantech: “Advantech is glad to be a part of Micron’s IQ Partner Program,” said Linda Tsai, president of Industrial IoT at Advantech. “Micron shares the same Industrial Quotient values with Advantech; therefore, having a partner like Micron that offers industry longevity, quality and reliable solutions enables us to better support factory automation, medical and transportation applications where these values are of paramount interest for our end customers.”
ATP Electronics: “As long-time partners and fellow innovators, Micron and ATP Electronics are on a common mission to reshape the market’s concept of what it means to be industrial and ensure our customers get the best value out of their total cost of ownership,” said Marco Mezger, vice president of global marketing at ATP Electronics. “Micron’s (IQ) Partner Program echoes and complements our own ‘industrial only’ commitment and identity by considering factors far beyond a product’s temperature support.”
Greenliant: “Micron’s industrial temperature 3D MLC NAND with advanced single-pass programming and power loss protection helps us address applications with enhanced data integrity requirements, such as train brake management systems,” said Ralph Thomson, director of field applications engineering at Greenliant. “Operating in extreme conditions with shock, vibration and power interruptions, train brake management equipment relies on Greenliant’s NANDrive BGA SSDs to store the operating system and critical maintenance data. Combined with Greenliant’s SSD controller know-how, Micron’s 3D NAND flash technology has been advantageous in meeting reliability, safety and security needs for data storage in transportation systems.”
Innodisk: “Innodisk is excited to partner with Micron because we share the same commitment to bringing industry-leading integrated solutions to the most demanding environments,” said C.C. Wu, vice president of Innodisk. “This collaboration helps move the industry into the future of artificial intelligence of things (AIoT).”
Kontron: “We are pleased to cooperate with Micron, one of the leading chip manufacturers of innovative NVMe flash technologies. Micron allows Kontron to offer higher-capacity flash memory in a smaller footprint with faster access times, “said Peter Mueller, vice president of Product Center Boards & Modules at Kontron. “Micron’s focus on the embedded and industrial markets supports reliable and rugged products, which is important for Kontron and its customers.”
Mercury Systems: “Combining Micron’s high-performance memory technology with Mercury Systems’ advanced miniaturization and packaging expertise, we enable the smallest aerospace and defense embedded systems with the most dense and high-reliability DRAM and SSD devices,” said Iain Mackie, vice president and general manager of Microelectronics Secure Solutions at Mercury Systems. “Our collaboration with Micron reinforces our commitment to making commercial technology profoundly more accessible to aerospace and defense.”
Viking Technology: “Viking Technology has a strong legacy in developing industrial and embedded DRAM memory and flash storage products,” said Hamid Shokrgozar, president of Viking Technology. “In recent years, we have expanded those solutions to include specialized multichip package products such as our ParallelCell MCP solution. This solution is designed, developed and optimized for the stringent requirements of the military and aerospace market, and as such, we need a partner that can deliver NAND flash and DRAM memory enabled for these requirements. The Industrial Quotient partnership with Micron solidifies a long-term roadmap for those markets and further supports us as we move into the space market where endurance and temperature requirements are tested to their fullest potential.”
