Memory Markets - The Memory Guy Blog

Is NAND Headed for Lower Bit Growth?

Someone recently asked The Memory Guy to comment on a projection that NAND flash bit consumption was headed into a period of reduced growth. This appears to have stemmed from a comment made by another memory analyst.

This drove me to compile this report’s graphic, which compares historical bit growth for DRAM (bottom, black line) against that of NAND flash (upper red line). Although NAND started out with astronomical annual bit growth of nearly 250%, it declined in 2011 to around 70%. This brings it closer to DRAM’s rate that ranges around 50%.

This is not cause for alarm – when the NAND market was very small bit growth was expected to be high. Large demand upturns could be relatively easily accommodated. Today’s multibillion-dollar capacity additions require more careful planning. This is the Law of Large Numbers.

We are at a point where NAND bit growth will probably settle into a range similar to that of DRAM. Consumption will be limited by economics, since production increases involve huge capital expenditures.

So, in a way, we are more headed out of a period of declining bit growth than going into one.

Objective Analysis has produced a report: Understanding the NAND Market, that is available for immediate download from our website.

Samsung DRAMs in Massive Leibniz SuperMUC

Today Samsung announced that its chips are used exclusively to make up the 324-terabytes of DRAM in Germany’s new Leibniz Supercomputing Centre SuperMUC supercomputer.

Samsung’s release tells us that the SuperMUC, the most powerful supercomputer system in Europe, is an IBM System x iDataPlex dx360 M4 server built using over 18,000 Intel Xeon CPUs and over 80,000 4GB DRAM modules from Samsung. (Simple math makes this out to be 82,944 modules.)

That looks like a lot of silicon! Let’s see how much that might be.

A 4GB parity DRAM module would use nine 4Gb DRAM chips, which Samsung appears to Continue reading “Samsung DRAMs in Massive Leibniz SuperMUC”

Toshiba to Cut NAND Production by 30%

In a surprise announcement Toshiba has said that it will immediately cut NAND flash production by approximately 30%. The company explains that this is being done “to reduce inventory in the market and improve the overall balance between supply and demand.” Toshiba’s release implies that this move is expected to improve prices, which have dropped as low as $0.31/GB recently.

By common measures of market share, which typically leave out SanDisk (for reasons too complex to discuss here) Toshiba holds a share of roughly 30% of the NAND flash market. By cutting its output by 30% Toshiba would be reducing overall NAND supply by 10%. If we were to include SanDisk, then that percentage would decrease to about 7.5%. Either one of these is significantly more than Continue reading “Toshiba to Cut NAND Production by 30%”

NAND Flash at 35 Cents per Gigabyte

Last January at the Storage Visions Conference in Las Vegas (held every year just prior to CES) I asked the audience what they would do when NAND flash reached a price of 35¢ per gigabyte. My projection (the dotted red line on the chart at left) was that prices would reach that level by the end of the year.

My audience was shocked to hear such a low price!

Price declines open up new markets. It was time to think creatively, I said, because that’s where pricing would be by the end of 2012.

Well, I was wrong – according to Continue reading “NAND Flash at 35 Cents per Gigabyte”

Why DRAM Bit Growth will Suffer

It seems that DRAM makers are still unaware of the impact NAND flash will have on DRAM revenues. Even though many are paying a lot of attention to the impact of the Tablet PC on Notebook PC shipments, few understand that even a healthy notebook market will start to place a decreasing focus on the system DRAM in the near future.

The reason why is simple, and it’s explained in great detail in a report: How PC NAND will Undermine DRAM. In a nutshell, once a basic minimum DRAM requirement has been met, NAND flash yields a greater performance return per dollar than does DRAM. This is illustrated in the graphic to the left.

Forget about the fact that NAND flash is nonvolatile, and that it offers Continue reading “Why DRAM Bit Growth will Suffer”

Why DRAMs are Like Steel

Over lunch today I had a conversation with an alum of McKinsey Consulting who remarked that the DRAM business behaved in a way that was similar to the McKinsey Steel Model. For those unfamiliar with this model I found a slideshow HERE that refers to it a good deal. (So far I have not found a tutorial on the model itself, but if anyone knows were to find it The Memory Guy would highly appreciate hearing about it.)

One interesting thing is that this particular McKinsey alum was not the first to point this out to me. About 15 years ago a family friend/McKinsey alum told me exactly the same thing. It seems that the economics of the DRAM business have changed little over the past 15 years, and the McKinsey steel model applies to DRAMs just as well now as it did then.

In a nutshell, the model posits that the market price for Continue reading “Why DRAMs are Like Steel”

Figuring Out Who Shipped What

Today I saw an announcement from another market research firm about a new report with flash memory market shares for 2011. I found it remarkable that the way these chips are counted varies enough that the company decided to openly discuss this issue right in the press release for the report!

Memory market statistics are compiled by numerous firms: The World Semiconductor Trade Statistics (WSTS) sold in the US and Europe by the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), Gartner Dataquest, IHS iSuppli, Web Feet, Semico, Forward Insights, and even DRAMexchange. Lots of entities use conflicting definitions of what is and what is not a chip. This causes each company’s numbers to differ from the others’.

In the case of WSTS, a chip that is packaged with another chip into a board becomes Continue reading “Figuring Out Who Shipped What”

How Cheap is Flash?

The Memory Guy was a little surprised to see the advertisement in this post’s graphic. It was from an April 8 newspaper ad for Fry’s Electronics.

It’s a little early to see NAND selling for this little: The original price of $21.99 for a 32GB USB flash drive comes to $0.69/GB, and the price after the rebate of $16.99 means that the price per gigabyte of the flash is only $0.53!

At the time the lowest spot market pricing for MLC flash on the InSpectrum spot price website was $0.53, and $0.47 for TLC. According to DRAMeXchange MLC is selling for as little as $0.48.

That’s not a lot of margin for Patriot or Fry’s when you add in the cost of t Continue reading “How Cheap is Flash?”

NAND Flash Turns 25!

On April 3 Toshiba celebrated the 25th anniversary of NAND flash. The technology, developed by Toshiba researcher Fujio Masuoka, was not expected to succeed, as explained in Eli Harrari’s keynote for ISSCC in February.

Toshiba said in a release that the company’s “commemoration of the 25th anniversary of the invention of NAND flash will continue throughout 2012,” and will include “notable industry events and consumer participation.”

There is certainly reason to celebrate. This technology has grown faster than any semiconductor market in history, Continue reading “NAND Flash Turns 25!”

IEEE Spectrum: Did Bad Memory Chips Down Russia’s Mars Probe?

The IEEE Spectrum published an interesting article postulating that Russia’s recently-failed Mars probe may have suffered from bad memory chips. According to the Spectrum article the Russian government’s Official Accident Investigation Results faulted SRAMs:

The report blames the loss of the probe on memory chips that became fatally damaged by cosmic rays.

Both the main computer and the backup computer seem to have failed at the same time, Continue reading “IEEE Spectrum: Did Bad Memory Chips Down Russia’s Mars Probe?”