Monthly Memory & Flash Market Watch
February 2024
Samsung opens 3D DRAM research centre in Silicon Valley
• Samsung’s new US R&D lab revealed it has been preparing new 3D structures for sub-10-nanometer DRAM, enabling larger single-chip capacities that can exceed 100 gigabits.
Western Digital’s 2FQ24 end market revenue distribution: cloud 35% / client 37% / consumer 28%
• Cloud: Q/Q growth was attributed to higher nearline shipments to data center customers and better nearline pricing. Y/Y decrease was due to lower eSSD bit shipments.
• Client: Q/Q 2%↓,an increase in flash ASPs was more than offset by a decline in flash bit shipments.Y/Y increase was due to higher flash shipments, primarily driven by client SSD shipments for PC applications.
• Consumer: Q/Q growth was primarily due to seasonal strength in flash bit shipments. On a Y/Y basis, the increase in flash bit shipments was partially offset by a decline in flash ASPs as well as lower HDD shipments.
Kioxia to kill off its 30-year-old SSD brand Plextor and replace it with trademark SSSTC--Solid State Storage Technology.
SSSTC will focus solely on drives for enterprise, datacenter, and industrial applications.
SK hynix recorded an operating profit of 346 billion won in 4FQ23 amid a recovery of the memory chip market
•This marks the first quarter of profit following 4 straight quarters of losses.
• The firm took advantage of its market-leading technology in the DRAM space to actively respond to customer demand, which led to sales of its primary DDR5 and HBM3 products increasing by more than 4x and 5x QoQ compared with 2022, respectively.
Micron to invest in Indian semiconductor talent pipeline
• The MOU between Micron and India’s NAMTECH educational initiative is supported by the Indian government to create a self- sufficient semiconductor assembly and test ecosystem in the country.
• The company is a keen investor in India's semiconductor ecosystem. It is currently building an assembly and test facility in Sanand, Gujarat, which will create approximately 5,000 direct Micron jobs and 15,000 community jobs.
• Micron promised to invest another 4.3 billion yuan (US$ 606.2 million) in its chip-making plants in China.
SUPPLY TREND
2023-2024 Worldwide SSD Shipment
after peak shipment in 4Q23, WW SSD demand is expected to grow stably throughout 2024.
2023-2024 Worldwide DRAM Output
2023-2024 NAND Price Trend & Sufficiency Ratio
NAND Sufficiency: maintained at extreme low level from 2H23 to 2024
Price Trend: NAND Flash price is likely to climb continuously in 1H24, after a sharp rise in 4Q23
2023-2024 DDR4 Price Trend & Sufficiency Ratio
DRAM Sufficiency: maintained at extreme low level during 1Q-2Q24
Price Trend: 8Gb contract price demonstrated obvious growth in Jan.’24., and will remain higher than the spot low level in 2024
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 BiCS4 and BiCS5 |
● | ▲ | |
| 3D TLC (BiCS4) | ● | ▲ | |
| 3D TLC (BiCS5) | ● | ▲ |
●Smooth Supply ● Mildly Tight Supply ● Tight supply ▂ Flat ▲ Upward trend ▼ Downward trend
Insights
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How to Choose Industrial SSD for Medical Devices?
Medical devices are rapidly becoming more digital. From medical imaging systems, patient monitoring devices, endoscopy systems, and automated dispensing cabinets to healthcare edge gateways, an increasing number of healthcare applications must continuously record medical images, sensor data, operation logs, alarm events, and system status while supporting diagnostic and treatment workflows.
What Is an NVMe SSD?
Learn what an NVMe SSD is, how NVMe differs from SATA SSDs, and why NVMe storage is ideal for automation, industrial systems, and high-frequency data logging.
What Is ECC DRAM?
Learn what ECC DRAM is, how error correction works, and why it matters for data integrity, system stability, networking security, and mission-critical computing.
How to Choose NVR Storage: Key Factors for Efficient Surveillance Systems
NVR storage is not only about capacity planning. It also affects data integrity and long-term system reliability. For AI NVR and 24/7 recording environments, storage devices must handle heavy write workloads, RAID rebuilding, and continuous recording. As a result, choosing between HDD vs. SSD and selecting the right surveillance SSD have become critical for modern surveillance deployment.
What Is the SSD Temperature Range?
Temperature is the silent limiter of every SSD, and the SSD temperature range is both a performance spec as well as a reliability spec. Under sustained load, NVMe firmware tracks a composite temperature and will start to throttle lightly or heavily. So, write throughput drops hard and latency spikes. Heat also speeds charge leakage inside NAND, which accelerates retention loss. The effect worsens as cells age from program/erase wear. Thus, you burn endurance faster and raise data-retention trouble when the drive later remains unpowered.
Garbage Collection in Industrial SSDs: What You Need to Know
Garbage collection in SSDs is the controller's quiet cleanup job. It compacts still-valid pages into new space and erases blocks that are now mostly junk. That might sound weird until you remember NAND flash can't overwrite a programmed page. It must erase first, and erase happens at the block level, not per page. So, updates become "write elsewhere, then clean later."
