Monthly Memory & Flash Market Watch

Kioxia discontinues 2D NAND products — 1980s planar NAND memory reaches end of life

• The discontinuation covers all major cell types (SLC, MLC, TLC) and multiple process nodes (32nm, 24nm, 15nm), as well as early 64‑layer BiCS3 3D NAND, indicating a comprehensive shutdown of legacy production lines rather than selective SKU cuts.The decision reflects Kioxia’s intent to prioritize capacity for higher‑margin NAND used in AI, data‑center, and enterprise storage applications, where demand growth and pricing power are significantly stronger than in legacy markets.

SK hynix and Sandisk begin global standardization of next-gen memory"HBF"

• Both companies highlighted that AI workloads are shifting from training to inference, where continuous operation, high concurrency, and energy efficiency place new demands on memory architectures.The companies expect complex, multi‑tier memory architectures to see meaningful demand growth around 2030, with early standardization laying the groundwork for future commercialization. High Bandwidth Flash (HBF) is designed as a new memory layer between HBM and SSD, addressing the gap between ultra‑high bandwidth and large capacity while improving scalability and power efficiency for AI inference workloads.