Monthly Memory & Flash Market Watch
May 2025
Samsung discontinuing DDR4 production in late 2025
• The company is making the move to free up manufacturing capacity for more lucrative technologies, including DDR5 and LPDDR5 memory for newer systems, as well as HBMs for GPUs and AI systems.
• Orders for DDR4 memory chips is expected to end in June/B, with delivery for 8GB and 16GB laptop and desktop modules by December 2025.
Kioxia Announced Development of PCIe 5.0-Compatible Broadband Optical SSD for Next-Gen Green Data Centers
• In next-gen green data centers, by replacing the electrical wiring interface with optical and utilizing broadband optical SSD technology significantly increases the physical distance between the compute and storage devices, it also contributes to the flexibility and efficiency of data center system design, where digital diversification and the evolution of GenAI require complex, high-volume, high-speed data processing.
SK hynix Completes Customer Validation of CXL 2.0-based DDR5
• Completion of customer qualification of 96GB product to help customers reduce costs when applied to server systems
• 128GB product of improved performance, equipped with 1bnm 32Gb DDR5, also in customer validation process
• Company to provide value unmatched by others through ‘Optimal Innovation’
Micron Announces Business Unit Reorganization
• The reorganization is market segment-based to capitalize on the transformative growth driven by AI, from data centers to edge devices.
• 4 business units are included: 1. Cloud Memory (CMBU): large hyperscale cloud customers and HBM for all data center customers. 2. Core Data Center (CDBU): OEM data center customers and storage solutions for all data center customers. 3. Mobile and Client (MCBU): mobile and client segments. 4. Automotive and Embedded Business (AEBU): automotive, industrial and consumer segments.
SUPPLY TREND
2024-2025 Worldwide SSD Shipment
WW SSD demand reached the highest point of total 2024 shipment amount in Q4’24, and 2025 1H shipment is expected to stay at even higher level than the previous stage.
2024-2025 Worldwide DRAM Output
2024-2025 NAND Price Trend & Sufficiency Ratio
Flash Sufficiency: maintain at low level since 2024.
Price Trend: NAND flash price drops to a low level in Q4’24, yet a slight bound in 2025 is expected due to chip makers’ plan of production cut considering the general demand isn’t significantly strong, which is also affected by US uncertain tariff policy.
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 will stay at a relatively high place from spot price level considering consistent production cut on DDR4, and the spot price curve is gradually converging toward the contract price.
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."
