Monthly Memory & Flash Market Watch

Samsung starts mass producing bigger and cheaper SSDs

• The firm's speedier and denser 9th-gen 280-layer QLC V-NAND could make drives 50% cheaper. This 280-layer QLC is purportedly by far the best density and performance compared to its competitors' best QLC solutions with 19.5Gb mm2 storage density and operating speed of 3.2 Gbps which is estimated 33% faster than its competitors.

Kioxia showcased its array of SSD products, technologies and form factors that drive cloud innovation in VMware Explore

• The product array is composed of CD8P series data center NVMe SSDs running Milvus Vector Database for AI on Dell PowerEdge R760 VMware vSAN ReadyNodes, CM7 series enterprise E3.S NVMe SSDs accelerating data-driven innovation with Dell PowerFlex leveraging VMware NVMe/TCP technology.

Thailand approves Western Digital's $693 million investment project

• Thailand government aims to expand hard disk production in the country as cloud technology and data center demand grows.

SK hynix preps for Nvidia Blackwell Ultra and AMD Instinct MI325X with 12-Hi HBM3E

• The mass production of 12-Hi HBM3E memory stacks is ahead of Hynix rivals. Featuring a 36GB capacity and setting the stage for next-gen AI and HPC processors, including AMD's Instinct MI325X (due in the Q4’24) and Nvidia's Blackwell (expected to arrive in 2025 2H), the data rate of 12-Hi HBM3E to be 9.6 GT/s, providing a peak bandwidth of 1.22 TB/s per module.

Micron delivered 93% YoY revenue growth in fiscal Q4 2024

• Revenue of $25.11 billion versus $15.54 billion for the prior year.

• Robust AI demand drove a strong ramp of the firm’s data center DRAM and HBM products. Its NAND quarterly revenue exceeded $1 billion for the first time, which was also led by data center SSD sales.

SUPPLY TREND

2024-2025 Worldwide SSD Shipment

WW SSD demand is expected to reach a peak at the end of 2024, and 2025 general shipping status is likely to stay above 2024’s quarterly level

2024-2025 Worldwide DRAM Output

DRAM production for all applications started resuming in 2024/B, 2025 general output status is likely to stay above 2024’s quarterly level.

2024-2025 NAND Price Trend & Sufficiency Ratio

Flash Sufficiency: maintained at low level since 2024/B

Price Trend: NAND flash is likely to experience a gradual decline until Q2/M’25, and trending flat before a slight hike in demand during peak seasons in 2025/E

2024-2025 DDR4 Price Trend & Sufficiency Ratio

DRAM Sufficiency: demand is likely to recover during 2025 1H, which might bring contract price a bit lower than current level
Price Trend: The divergence between 8Gb contract price and spot price appeared from Q2/B’24, the general HBM demand might be the reason keeping contract price at a high level while spot price continues downward

SUPPLY SIGNAL

	Type	Supply	Price
DRAM Module	DDR3	●	▂
	DDR4	●	▂
	DDR5	●	▂
Flash Storage	SLC	●	▂
	MLC	●	▂
	3D TLC (BiCS3) *Limited Supply. We encourage you to migrate to BiCS5	●	▂
	3D TLC (BiCS4) * Tight supply. We encourage you to migrate to BICS5.	●	▂
	3D TLC (BiCS5)	●	▂