Monthly Memory & Flash Market Watch

U.S. government considers annual permits for Samsung and SK hynix to supply equipment to their Chinese fabs

• The decision will add significant regulatory complexity, but will at least maintain continuity for fab operations without enabling upgrades or expansions that could boost China's access to advanced chip technology. This approach helps avoid disruption to the highly-volatile global supply of DRAM and NAND memory.

Sandisk unveils ultraQLC technology platform with up to 256TB enterprise SSD capacity

• With a combination of BiCS8 QLC CBA NAND, the platform is designed for AI-driven, data-intensive workloads like data ingest, preparation, and fast AI data lakes with high-performance speeds and power efficiency, while improving TCO for high-capacity applications in hyperscale cloud.

Kioxia successful prototyping of 5TB large-capacity and 64GB/s high-bandwidth flash memory module

• The company has developed a new module configuration utilizing daisy-chained connections with beads of flash memories to address the trade-off between capacity and bandwidth that has been a challenge with DRAM-based conventional memory modules

• The high-speed transceiver technology enabling bandwidths of 128Gb/s and techniques to enhance flash memory performance are also under development

• Kioxia is promoting the early commercialization and practical implementation of the findings, exploiting new market trends such as GenAI

U.S. government considers annual permits for Samsung and SK hynix to supply equipment to their Chinese fabs

Micron launches space-qualified portfolio to power mission-critical data for aerospace innovation

• With a die capacity of 256Gb, this product is the first in a portfolio that will include space-qualified NAND, NOR and DRAM solutions

• The company recently announced plans to strengthen its U.S.-based manufacturing, including expanding its portfolio of NOR, SLC NAND, and DDR3, as well as ensuring the longevity supply of DDR4 and LPDDR4 for critical applications such as aerospace. The initiative is aimed at providing end-to-end supply chain control—essential for the aerospace and government sectors in terms of quality, longevity, security, traceability, and supply continuity.

SUPPLY TREND

2024-2025 Worldwide SSD Shipment

WW SSD demand recovers from relatively lower level in Q2, and is expected to stay at a higher level than current stage in 2026

2024-2025 Worldwide DRAM Output

DRAM production capacity is focused on server DIMM and mobile applications. Industry analysts expect overall demand for advanced-process DRAM to continue rising through 2026

2024-2025 NAND Price Trend & Sufficiency Ratio

Flash Sufficiency: maintain at low level since 2024.

Price Trend: NAND flash price had a slight bound in 2025/B and is expected to maintain at an average level throughout 2025 as chip makers’ plan of production cut continues, despite the general demand isn’t significantly strong and some inventory exists.