Monthly Memory & Flash Market Watch
January 2025
Samsung to become largest shareholder in Rainbow Robotics accelerating future robot development
• The firm will exercise call option to increase stake to 35% and incorporate Rainbow Robotics as a subsidiary. By combining Samsung Electronics’ AI and software technology with Rainbow Robotics’ robotics technology, the collaboration plans to accelerate the development of intelligent advanced humanoids.
Kioxia achieves SPICE CL2 certification of UFS V.4.0 for automotive applications
• Automotive SPICE level 2 certification signifies that Kioxia has implemented structured processes for project management and software development, ensuring consistent quality and traceability.
• Universal flash storage (UFS) Ver. 4.0 devices deliver fast embedded storage transfer speeds in small package size and are targeted to variety of next-gen automotive applications, including infotainment, integrated cockpit system, ADAS and autonomous driving.
New Sandisk coming soon
• As a standalone flash and memory technology innovator in WDC, Sandisk is about to issue its new corporate logo in early 2025. It’s clean lines and minimalist design mirror the speed and efficiency of flash technology.
SK hynix Starts Mass Production of 4D NAND Flash with 1Tb Capacity
• The firm plans to provide the 321-high products from the 1H25 as the 1st supplier of the 4D NAND with more than 300 layers by finding a technological breakthrough for stacking.
• This new product comes with an improvement of 12% in data transfer speed,13% in reading performance compared with previous-gen, and data reading power efficiency enhancement by more than 10%.
Micron's HBM4E heralds a new era of customized memory for AI GPUs and beyond
• With a 2048-bit memory interface, HBM4E enables Micron to offer customized base dies for certain customers, providing more optimized solutions with potentially additional features. The custom logic dies are set to be made by TSMC using an advanced node, allowing them to pack more caches and logic for added performance and functionality.
• The HBM4E will follow mass production of HBM4 in 2026, and will definitely mark a step toward customized memory solutions for bandwidth-hungry AI, HPC, networking, and other applications.
SUPPLY TREND
2024-2025 Worldwide SSD Shipment
WW SSD demand is expected to reach the peak in the end of 2024, and 2025 shipment is expected to stay at high level
2024-2025 Worldwide DRAM Output
2024-2025 NAND Price Trend & Sufficiency Ratio
Flash Sufficiency: maintain at low level since 2024/B
Price Trend: NAND flash price drops to a low level in Q4’24, and will stay there throughout 2025 waiting for a new wave of strong demand
2024-2025 DDR4 Price Trend & Sufficiency Ratio
DRAM Sufficiency: maintain at extreme low level throughout 2024 but is likely to have more production in 2025 1H to fulfill HBM demands
Price Trend: 8Gb contract price had a strong bound at Q1/E’24, price level is similar since then. In 2025, DRAM price might drop a bit but stays at a relatively high place from the lowest spot price level
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) | ● | ▼ |
●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."
