Forecast – The Memory Guy Blog

COVID-19’s Impact on the Semiconductor Market

Today is March 16, 2020, and the US stock market is still trying to understand what is happening with the global Coronavirus Pandemic, having lost nearly 20% of its value over the past week. Cooling-off periods (also called “Circuit Breakers”) automatically stopped overheated trading three times today, and numerous other times last week.

Market indexes fell sharply, as is evident in the following chart from Google Finance which shows Continue reading “COVID-19’s Impact on the Semiconductor Market”

Video: What’s Driving Tomorrow’s Semiconductors?

In early February the Samsung Strategy & Innovation Center asked for The Memory Guy to present an outlook for semiconductors as a part of the company’s Samsung Forum series.

Samsung kindly posted a video of this presentation on-line for anyone to watch.

Naturally, the presentation is memory-focused since it consists of the Memory Guy presenting to the world’s leading memory chip supplier. Still, it also covers total semiconductor revenues and demand drivers for future non-memory technologies, as well as memory chips.

During the presentation I explained that the next few years will bring semiconductors into new applications while chips will maintain their strength in existing markets. I showed how semiconductor demand doesn’t change much over time, but that the real swing factor in chip revenues is Continue reading “Video: What’s Driving Tomorrow’s Semiconductors?”

Forecast Videos Prove A History of Accuracy

Every year the folks at VLSI Research provide The Memory Guy with an opportunity to share the latest Objective Analysis forecast with the world. They record a 20-minute video highlighting the forecast in a conversation between me and VLSI’s chairman, Dan Hutcheson.

There are now twelve videos on the site, one for each year from 2008 to 2019. That’s quite a collection!

Over the course of each video I not only present the forecast, but also give an overview of the thinking behind it. Typically I explain the impact of high or low capital spending in prior years, but in some forecasts I explain how other issues (in particular NAND flash’s excruciating conversion from planar to 3D) can create a shortage independent of capital spending patterns.

We also go over what went right or wrong with the prior year’s forecast. Things that go wrong are generally macroeconomic issues like the Continue reading “Forecast Videos Prove A History of Accuracy”

DRAM Consolidation in 2012?

2012 is likely to be a year in which the DRAM market consolidates a little bit more.

Consider this:

At its peak in the late 1980s the DRAM market sported 23 suppliers.
Today there are 6 suppliers of any note: Samsung, Hynix, Micron, Elpida, Nanya, and Powerchip
The already-depressed market is only going to worsen in 2012. Capital spending in 2010 is seeing to that. Although many believe that prices cannot get any lower, that is exactly what they will do in 2012. Continue reading “DRAM Consolidation in 2012?”