Monthly Memory & Flash Market Watch
March 2026
Mass Production of Up to 36GB HBM4 Memory With Performance for AI Computing
• Samsung has started mass production of its HBM4 memory, becoming the first in the industry to do so. The chip reaches 11.7Gb/s and up to 13Gb/s for high‑performance AI workloads. It offers 24–36GB capacities via 12‑layer stacking, with plans to reach 48GB. HBM4 also delivers 40% better power efficiency and improved thermal performance.
KIOXIA Sampling QLC UFS V.4.1 Embedded Flash Memory Devices for High-Capacity Mobile Storage
• The chips use 8th‑generation BiCS FLASH 3D NAND and deliver major performance gains, including 25% faster sequential writes, 90% faster random reads, and 95% faster random writes over the previous generation. These devices target smartphones, tablets, PCs, AR/VR, IoT, and AI‑enabled products.
SanDisk AI‑driven storage upside: stock price jumps by 1,500% in almost a year
• AI data centers, hyperscalers, and enterprise customers are the primary growth engines, with revenue from AI‑related and semi‑custom clients rising 76% year over year. Besides, the firm’s industrial and automotive storage revenue grew 63%, showing that demand strength extends beyond pure AI infrastructure.
SKhynix to Establish U.S. Arm Specialized in AI Solutions
• SKhynix will establish a U.S.-based AI solutions subsidiary to drive new AI growth opportunities. Plans to leverage its advanced memory technologies, such as HBM, to deliver optimized AI data center systems and strengthen competitiveness. AI Co. will be formed through the restructuring of Solidigm, with SK hynix committing $10 billion in capital on a call basis. The new unit aims to enhance global AI strategies and deepen collaborations with AI firms in the U.S. and beyond.
Micron Breaks Ground on Advanced Wafer Fabrication Facility in Singapore
• Micron has begun construction on a new advanced wafer fabrication facility in Singapore. The company will invest about US$24 billion over 10 years to expand NAND manufacturing capacity. Production is expected to start in the second half of 2028 to meet rising AI‑related demand. The new fab will bolster Micron’s NAND Center of Excellence and support future technology transitions.
SUPPLY TREND
2025 – 2026 Worldwide NAND Flash Output
Driven by AI and datacenter growth, NAND flash demand has shifted sharply toward high-capacity enterprise SSDs, prompting a steady rise in 3D NAND output and a decline in Planar NAND—signaling a structural transition in supply to meet evolving market needs
2025-2026 Worldwide DRAM Output
2025-2026 NAND Price Trend & Sufficiency Ratio
Flash Sufficiency: CSP-driven AI expansion caused severe NAND shortages starting from Q3’25, and this might gradually improve in 2H26.
Price Trend: Overall NAND flash price rose sharply in Q4’25 with enterprise and cloud service provider (CSP) demand surging—driven by AI infrastructure expansion and server upgrades. The market condition is projected to continue in 2026, sustaining NAND flash prices at a high level.
2025-2026 DDR5 Price Trend & Sufficiency Ratio
DRAM Sufficiency: otal DRAM sufficiency remains in negative territory, indicating persistent undersupply, but the shortage begins to ease gradually after 1Q26.
Price Trend: DDR5 16Gb 5600MHz prices show a clear upward trend through 2025 into early 2026, with both contract and spot prices rising sharply from 4Q25 to 1Q26.
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."
