In its monthly press release today, the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) announced that the semiconductor market had already hit the amazing $1 trillion mark for 2026 even before the end of the third quarter. SIA announced that August semiconductor sales, as compiled by WSTS, hit $159.7 billion, an increase of 144.3% over August 2025’s $65.4 billion.
For some years the industry has been Continue reading “Semis Hit $1 Trillion in Under 3 Quarters!”
The Memory Guy was recently contacted by a researcher at imec, the Belgian research consortium, about the rebirth of an old idea. Back in the late 1970s and early 1980s semiconductor makers had considered using charge-coupled devices (CCDs) for computer main memories. Probably few readers will even recognize either the name or the abbreviation. The CCD memory was a good idea that was completely overshadowed by another good idea — DRAM — that ended up taking the Continue reading “Are CCD Memories Coming Back?”
For the past few months memory prices have been skyrocketing. This has been fueled by an interesting combination of extraordinary AI spending and HBM’s low gigabyte production per DRAM wafer. Given these facts, which I will explain in detail in this post, just how high will memory prices go? And, after that, how long will prices stay this high? The Memory Guy has been getting asked that Continue reading “How High Can Memory Prices Go?”
At some point you’ve probably felt the way that SK hynix’ executives must feel today: that there’s something so wonderfully exciting that you absolutely must share it with everyone right away.
It appears to have been in this spirit that the company issued the press release for its fourth quarter earnings a full seventeen Continue reading “SK hynix’ Earnings Too Good to Keep Quiet”
At the ISSCC conference last month Kioxia and Sandisk provided more details on the BiCS8 NAND flash chip that the companies will be shipping soon.
BiCS8 is the next generation of the two companies’ jointly-developed 3D NAND technology. Although today’s volume product is very different from Toshiba’s originally-disclosed BiCS process, so far the process changes have largely been Continue reading “The Sandisk/Kioxia BiCS8 NAND”
If you didn’t realize that Kioxia finally held its Initial Public Offering (IPO) on 16 December, 2024, you are in the majority. The IPO was held a couple of days before initially planned on the Tokyo Stock Exchange where Kioxia is traded as number 285a.
The event was barely covered by the press outside of Japan, and Kioxia only Continue reading “Kioxia’s Barely-Noticed IPO”
(The following is an update of a post that originally ran on 13 December 2013. It was republished in 2024 as a part of a series on The Memory Guy blog to honor the 3D NAND inventors who have received the 2024 FMS Lifetime Achievement Award.)
This series, originally run in 2013, has looked at 3D NAND technology in a good deal of technical depth. At that time, the last question to be answered centered around the players and the timing that the technology would Continue reading “3D NAND: Who Will Make It and When?”
(The following is an update of a post that originally ran on 6 December 2013. It was republished in 2024 as a part of a series on The Memory Guy blog to honor the 3D NAND inventors who have received the 2024 FMS Lifetime Achievement Award.)
A very unusual side effect of the move to 3D NAND was Continue reading “3D NAND’s Impact on the Equipment Market”
One of the biggest markets fueling today’s memory growth is hyperscale computing. Not just hyperscale computing the way that it’s always been, but hyperscale computing fueled by AI spending.
The Memory Guy decided that this might be a good time to investigate whether a market anomaly might be driving this growth — something that could change at some point to cause Continue reading “Hyperscaler CapEx Significantly Off-Trend”
(The following is an update of a post that originally ran on 29 November 2013. It was republished in 2024 as a part of a series to honor the 3D NAND inventors who have received the 2024 FMS Lifetime Achievement Award.)
Some of my readers have asked: “How is 3D NAND Continue reading “How Do You Erase and Program 3D NAND?”
