Tag: DRAM

Micron announces technology enablement programme

Posted on July 20, 2020 by - News

Memory and storage outfit Micron has announced its new technology enablement programme (TEP), which will provide customers with early access to technical resources and products, including DDR5 DRAM.

Micron said that the programme has been designed to help with the design, development and qualification of next-generation computing platforms that use DDR5.

Qualified partners such as Cadence, Montage, Renesas and Synopsys, will be able to get their paws on DDR5 components and modules, new DDR5 products as they become available and technical resources.

Worldwide chip sales decimated by coronavirus

Posted on April 14, 2020 by - News

Coronavirus has killed off any hope of a 12.5 percent growth forecast, according to Gartner bean counters.

Now after shuffling their tarot cards, the augers at Big G think that worldwide semiconductor revenue is forecast to decline by 0.9 percent during 2020 due to the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Expected revenue has been slashed from the previous quarter’s forecast by $55 billion, falling from $470 billion to $415 billion, according to Gartner. This represents an overall decline in year-on-year revenues against 2019 figures.

Extreme ultraviolet technology could be the next big thing

Posted on March 30, 2020 by - News

Electronics giant Samsung has announced that it has successfully shipped a million of the first 10nm-class (D1x) DDR4 DRAM modules based on extreme ultraviolet (EUV) technology.

The new modules have now completed global customer evaluations, the firm said, and will pave the way for more cutting-edge EUV process nodes for use in PC, mobile, enterprise server and datacentre applications.

China edges into DRAM market

Posted on March 16, 2015 by - News

chinaflagThe major players in the dynamic random access memory (DRAM) market continue to be South Korean and Taiwanese companies, with only one US company, Micron competing in the marketplace.

But it looks like that’s set to change because a consortium of Chinese vendors bought Silicon Solution, a fabless firm quoted on Nasdaq.

Memory watch analysts DRAM Exchange said the consortium of high end investors was backed by the Chinese government. The government has pledged to invest 120 billion yuan in the semiconductor industry and this move shows just how seriously China takes the aim.

Right now, said the analysts, China’s imports of semiconductors – be they CPUs, DRAM and Flash memory exceed its petrol imports.

Intel is in bed with some Chinese semiconductor companies, and that, in itself is a significant factor.

China spent over $10 billion in importing DRAM last year – that’s 20 percent of the worldwide production of the semiconductors. Of that imported memory, 55 percent was for mobile memory, while PCs represented 19 percent and server memory eleven percent.

So it’s logical that to reduce this trade gap, China continues to invest in DRAM to give it a degree of self sufficiency.

How that will pan out for the competition remains to be seen.

 

Mobile memory sales soared

Posted on February 12, 2015 by - News

Semiconductor wafer: Wikimedia CommonsShipments of DRAM aimed at the mobile market rose 27.8 percent in the fourth quarter of 2014, amounting to a value of over $3.6 billion.

That’s according to market intelligence company DRAM Exchange, which observed that mobile DRAM now accounts for 40 percent of all shipments of this memory type.

Increased shipments of smartphones account for the lion’s share of mobile memory sales, and DRAM Exchange said in its report that sales look strong in the first quarter of this year – traditionally one of the weaker quarters in the memory market.

The report said that the industry is waiting for the release of the next generation LPDDR4 – right now only Qualcomm supports this memory type. It is expecting some high end smartphones to ship in the second quarter of this year.

As far as manufacturers are concerned, Samsung remains the leader, followed by SK Hynix and Micron. These last two are the main suppliers for Apple iPhone 6s.

Samsung say a small drop in revenues of 5.2 percent, but Micron says its revenues soar by 27.8 percent in the fourth quarter.

DRAM market shows unseasonal growth

Posted on February 10, 2015 by - News

nand-chipsSales of DRAM rose by 8.2 percent in the fourth quarter, bucking the usual pattern in the memory market.
DRAM Exchange, which tracks the memory market said manufacturers of devices migrated fast to 20 and 25 nanometre production, and the additional output meant quarterly revenues worldwide amounted to $13 billion.
The firm said that Samsung has shown the most profit from making DRAM, with typical operating margins of 47 percent.
SK Hynix also makes healthy margins of 42  percent, while American DRAM maker Micron managed to turn in margins of 29.5 percent.
Although Micron is still manufacturing using 30 nanometre technology, it raised production of DRAM for servers, which is the most lucrative application.
Samsung started volume production on 20 nanometre in the fourth quarter and the yield rate and output of chips made at 25 nanometre has increased.
Micron has begun sampling on the 20 nanometre process but plans to migrate so fast that there will be 80,000 wafer starts a month by the end of this year.

 

Semiconductor spending inches up

Posted on January 14, 2015 by - News

nand-chipsCapital spending by semiconductor companies grew by 12.9 percent last year, but will only grow by 0.8 percent this year.
That’s according to market intelligence company Gartner which said capital spending will generate revenues of $65.7 billion this year.
Bob Johnson, a VP at Gartner, said that equipment spending outstripped capital spending last year and will do the same this year. 2016 will be a different kettle of fish. Manufacturers will exercise caution this year.
This year, chip foundries will outspend logic device manufacturers but there’s a danger of the mobile market being saturated and that will dampen the need for new capacity.
Memory manufacturers are likely to switch their manufacturing from NAND to DRAM because the market is more favourable for the latter than the former. But that will switch net year, because DRAM will be in oversupply.
Demand for solid state drives will mean more capacity shifts during the next three years.

 

Chip sales up in 2014

Posted on January 6, 2015 by - News

Sales of semiconductors rose by 7.9 percent in 2013, with Intel continuing to rule the chip roost.
intel_log_reversedA report from Gartner said the top 25 vendors revenues rose by 11.7 percent, with those vendors grabbing 72.1 percent of the entire market revenues.
But it was DRAM sales that really shone last year.  Gartner said the market grew by 31.7 percent during the year and undersupply and stable pricing continued to be the order of the day.
Andrew Norwood, a VP at Gartner, said all device categories grew in 2014 but the memory market outstripped them all.
Norwood said Intel saw a return of growth in 2014 after two years of seeing its revenues decline.
Intel’s Datacenter Group was the most stable of its different business units.
While Intel will reach its target of selling 40 million tablet microprocessors in 2014, they’re being sold at big discounts and with subsidies for vendors buying them.
Intel’s been the number one chip company for the last 23 years and owns 15 percent of the 2014 semiconductor market.
The next four top semi companies are Samsung, Qualcomm, Micron and SK Hynix.

 

Chip market starts to boom

Posted on December 22, 2014 by - News

nand-chipsRevenue from worldwide sales of semiconductors will rise by nearly 10 percent this year, its strongest performance since 2010.

Figures released by IHS Technology show that global revenues will be worth $353.2 billion this year, a rise from $322.8 billion in 2013.

Dale Ford, chief analyst at IHS, said the growth is broad based – a nearly all semiconductor suppliers have benefited.

IHS segments the semiconductor market in 28 ways, and Ford said that 22 of those have grown this year, compared to 12 showing growth in 2013.

DRAM and flash memory were the movers and shakers in the market, and while revenues for those sectors have risen by around 20 percent, other segments are also showing healthy growth.

DRAM and light emitting diodes (LEDs) have shown growth, and microprocessor markets are also showing strong growth.

Mediatek and Avago are showing strong growth in the semi league table.

The top five players, as the following table shows, are Intel, Samsung, Qualcomm, Micron, SK Hynix and Texas Instruments.
leagueofchips

Chip sales to hit $338 billion

Posted on October 2, 2014 by - News

nand-chipsSales of semiconductors in 2013 are likely to reach as much as $338 billion during 2014.

That’s according to market research company Gartner, which says that’s a 7.2 percent hike compared to 2013.

DRAM showed a revenue growth of 26.3 percent in 2014 and will generate as much as $44.1 billion for the entire year.  But memory sales are subject to wildly fluctuating cycles, and Gartner believes there will be oversupply in 2016 meaning revenues then will drop by over a quarter.

Jon Erensen, research director at Gartner, said semiconductor revenues reached an all time record in Q3 2014.

He said that there will be a flood of new product introductions as we head into the holiday season.

He also predcts that sales of smartphones and ultramobiles will increase by 27 percent and 18.9 percent respectively.

But semiconductor growth in 2015 is only likely to hit 5.8 percent, because there will be oversupply from chip fabrication plants.

DRAM shortage continues to bite

Posted on January 7, 2014 by - News, Products

nand-chipsIt looks as though the shortage of DRAM will continue well into 2014.

A fire at an SK Hynix factory last year was primarily responsible for the run on DRAM and even though the company says that production has resumed, there is still an element of catch up.

According to Taiwanese wire Digitimes, speciality DRAM chips are particularly badly affected due to increased demand from various sectors for SDRAMs.

Spot prices for DDR3 memory have risen and are expected to rise even further as the year goes on.

Hynix downplays massive fire in chip plant

Posted on September 5, 2013 by - News

silicon-waferSK Hynix, the world’s second biggest maker of memory chips, is in damage control mode, quite literally. A blaze gutted parts of one of its plants in Wuxi, China, but the company is now trying to reassure the market by saying that damage was largely superficial.

The memory maker claims supply volume will not be affected, as there was no major damage to production equipment. It looked spectacular, but luckily the blaze doesn’t appear to have done much damage. One person suffered a minor injury and the company insists it will resume operations “in a short time period”.

However, the world was watching for good reason. The fab in question produces an estimated 15 percent of the world’s DRAM. Any extended outage would have had a massive effect on supply and prices. Luckily, SK Hynix insists the market will not be affected and the supply chain has nothing to worry about. Furthermore, the company says there is no material damage to any fab equipment in the clean room

The fire started yesterday afternoon and it took almost two hours to extinguish. What made it look a lot worse to onlookers was the fact that it churned out a lot of black smoke, which was concentrated in air purification facilities, which pretty much saved the plant but made the whole incident look a lot more ominous.

Semicon market shows signs of life

Posted on August 30, 2013 by - News

silicon-waferThe global semiconductor market appears to be recovering. According to Semiconductor Intelligence, the market was up 6 percent sequentially in the second quarter, which was the best result in two years. What’s more, the firm now expects to see six percent growth on an annual basis.

However, forecasts for 2014 are a mixed bag. Semiconductor Intelligence expects 15 percent of growth, while IDC sees only 2.9 percent and there are a few other outfits in the middle. The average forecast is 9.4 percent, reports Digitimes.

Guidance greatly varies from vendor to vendor. AMD is expecting 22 percent growth thanks to new design wins, we are guessing console custom chips. STMicroelectronics hopes to stay flat, but excluding wireless ST expects 3.5 percent growth. Samsung is not saying much, although it expects growth for DRAM, NAND and image sensors. Micron has not provided guidance either.

Semiconductor Intelligence expects much of the growth in the semiconductor market next year will be generated as a result of the improving global economy. However, the economy is still volatile and the same is true of the tech industry.

The real problem is that much of the growth appears to be coming from SoCs and memory, rather than big processors which tend to carry the highest margins.

DRAM shortage to last through 2013

Posted on May 13, 2013 by - News, Products

nand-chipsThe DRAM supply shortage isn’t getting better and memory maker Inotera now believes it will drag on until the end of the year. Strong demand for smartphones and tablets is to blame, and prices are going up as well.

Inotera believes the drought could even extend into the next year. The average price of benchmark DDR3 4GB modules already rose 13 percent last month according to DRAMeXchange. In fact, the price of DDR3 4GB DRAM has already gone up by about 70 percent in 2013, reports Taipei Times.

DRAMeXchange said demand for DRAM is starting to pick up, reversing an extended period of oversupply. However, the shortage is not bad news for memory makers.

Inotera is hoping to do much better in the second quarter than in the first quarter, in which it managed to narrow its net loss. Memory maker Nanya was profitable in the first quarter and it is reporting that its average selling prices for Q1 rose 30.5 compared from the fourth quarter.

Although the PC slowdown did not help memory makers, phones, tablets and next-gen gaming consoles should help drive demand up and mitigate oversupply issues.