SK Hynix ran into issues earlier this month at one of its DRAM production fabs, due to impurities in zirconium high-k materials used in the production. The materials were supplied by SK Trichem and due to the impurities, the equipment at SK Hynix fab ended up leading to increased pressure in some of the manufacturing equipment and forced the production to be shut down. All the equipment at the fab had to be cleaned and some even replaced due to the impurities in the material.

The zirconium high-k material is deposited at the atomic level, atop the capacitors of the DRAM, as a precursor. Any impurities in such a material would lead to failed DRAM chips, but apparently there was no damage to the DRAM wafer production in this case, according to SK Hynix. The company will be ordering replacement material from two other suppliers for the time being and SK Trichem should be supplying a fresh batch by the end of the month.

Since 2022, DRAM suppliers have been adjusting their product mixes so as to assign more wafer input to server DRAM products while scaling back the wafer input for mobile DRAM products. This trend is driven by two reasons. First, the demand outlook is bright for the server DRAM segment. Second, the mobile DRAM segment was in significant oversupply during 2022. Moving into 2023, the projections on the growth of smartphone shipments and the increase in the average DRAM content of smartphones remain quite conservative. Therefore, DRAM suppliers intend to keep expanding the share of server DRAM in their product mixes. According to TrendForce's analysis on the distribution of the DRAM industry's total bit output for 2023, server DRAM is estimated to comprise around 37.6%, whereas mobile DRAM is estimated to comprise around 36.8%. Hence, server DRAM will formally surpass mobile DRAM in terms of the portion of the overall supply within this year.

It appears things are tougher at Micron than expected, as according to Boise State Public Radio, the company is looking at cutting an additional five percent of its workforce. Back in December, Micron announced it was planning to lay off around 10 percent of its global workforce, which at the time sat at around 49,000 employees, but it appears that cut wasn't enough, as company spokesman Tate Tran has confirmed the total headcount reduction is expected to around 15 percent, although that is for the entire year of 2023. This suggests that there might be several stages of layoffs, unless things improve and demand for Micron's products pick up.

The company is also lowering its capex, not just for 2023, but also for 2024, although the company is expecting more on building new fabs. Micron has already reduced its wafer starts, for both DRAM and NAND flash by around 20 percent. This is all taking place while the company is slowing down its tech node transitions and as such, its 1-gamma note will be moved to 2025. This means that Micron will be stuck at 232-layer 3D TLC NAND for longer than initially planned, which could lead to Micron losing market to its competitors, specifically SK Hynix and Samsung in this case, while allowing other competitors to catch up. Micron will reports is financial Q2 '23 results at the end of March, with previous quarters results indicating that Micron is expecting a drop in revenue of up to US$300 million compared to the previous quarter.

Winbond has joined the UCIe (Universal Chiplet Interconnect Express) Consortium, the industry Consortium dedicated to advancing UCIe technology. This open industry standard defines interconnect between chiplets within a package, enabling an open chiplet ecosystem and facilitating the development of advanced 2.5D/3D devices.

A leader in high-performance memory ICs, Winbond is an established supplier of known good die (KGD) needed to assure end-of-line yield in 2.5D/3D assembly. 2.5D/3D multichip devices are needed to realize the exponential improvements in performance, power efficiency, and miniaturization, demanded by the explosion of technologies such as 5G, Automotive, and Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Silicon Motion Technology Corporation ("Silicon Motion" or the "Company") today announced its financial results for the quarter ended December 31, 2022. For the fourth quarter of 2022, net sales (GAAP) decreased sequentially to $200.8 million from $250.8 million in the third quarter of 2022. Net income (GAAP) decreased to $23.5 million, or $0.71 per diluted American Depositary Share ("ADS") (GAAP), from net income (GAAP) of $42.9 million, or $1.29 per diluted ADS (GAAP), in the third quarter of 2022.

For the fourth quarter of 2022, net income (non-GAAP) decreased to $41.1 million, or $1.22 per diluted ADS (non-GAAP), from net income (non-GAAP) of $51.2 million, or $1.53 per diluted ADS (non-GAAP), in the third quarter of 2022.

SK hynix Inc. (or "the company") reported today financial results for 2022 ended on December 31. The company recorded revenues of 44.648 trillion won, an operating profit of 7.007 trillion won and a net income of 2.439 trillion won. Operating and net profit margin for the full year was 16% and 5%, respectively. "Revenues continued to grow last year, but the operating profit decreased compared with a year earlier as the industry entered into a downturn from the second half," the company said. "With uncertainties still lingering, we will continue to reduce investments and costs, while trying to minimize the impact of the downturn by prioritizing markets with high growth potential."

In 2022, SK hynix increased high-capacity DRAM shipments for server/PC markets, while boosting sales of DDR5 and HBM - of which products that the company has a solid market leadership - to customers in the growing markets of AI, Big Data, and cloud computing. Particularly, revenues for the data center SSD more than quadrupled compared with a year earlier.

Samsung Electronics today reported financial results for the fourth quarter and the fiscal year 2022. The Company posted KRW 70.46 trillion in consolidated revenue and KRW 4.31 trillion in operating profit in the quarter ended December 31, 2022. For the full year, it reported 302.23 trillion in annual revenue, a record high and KRW 43.38 trillion in operating profit.

The business environment deteriorated significantly in the fourth quarter due to weak demand amid a global economic slowdown. Earnings at the Memory Business decreased sharply as prices fell and customers continued to adjust inventory. The System LSI Business also saw a decline in earnings as sales of key products were weighed down by inventory adjustments in the industry. The Foundry Business posted a new record for quarterly revenue while profit increased year-on-year on the back of advanced node capacity expansion as well as customer base and application area diversification.

Kingston Technology Company, Inc., a world leader in memory products and technology solutions, today announced its 64 GB, 32 GB, and 16 GB Server Premier DDR5 4800MT/s Registered DIMMs have been validated on the 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable Processor (formerly codenamed Sapphire Rapids). For over 35 years Kingston has been the memory brand trusted by leading server manufacturers and the world's largest data centers. Server Premier is Kingston's industry standard memory solution sold by specification for use in white-box servers, and is platform validated and qualified by leading motherboard/system manufacturers. Featuring a locked BOM (Bill of Materials) to provide a consistent brand and revision of primary components (including DRAM, register, PMIC, SPD hub, thermal sensors, and PCB), all Kingston server memory solutions are 100% tested and undergo a rigorous dynamic burn-in process designed to catch early-life failures at the factory.

Intel's 4th Gen Xeon Scalable Processor is their first to support next-generation DDR5 server-class memory and features eight memory channels, arranged in up to two DIMMs per channel, or 16 DIMMs per CPU socket. At 4800MT/s, each DDR5 Registered DIMM provides a peak bandwidth of 38.4 GB/s, which when grouped in multi-channel configurations provides a marked increase in performance over DDR4-based servers. DDR5 introduces advanced features for a more reliable and more efficient memory subsystem, including on-die ECC (ODECC), double the number of banks and double the burst length, improved refreshes, inclusion of a power management circuit (PMIC), additional temperature sensors, decision feedback equalization (DFE), and dual independent 32-bit subchannels (40-bit for ECC).

SK hynix Inc. (or "the company", www.skhynix.com) announced today that its DDR5 product for servers using 1anm, the fourth generation of the 10 nm process technology, has been validated on the 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processor (formerly codenamed Sapphire Rapids) for the first time in the industry. "The validation of the 1anm DDR5 compatibility by Intel for its newest processor that supports DDR5 for the first time is monumental," SK hynix said. "We will seek a fast turnaround in the semiconductor memory industry by actively responding to the growing server market through DDR5, which is already in mass production."

The validation of the company's 1anm DDR5 product, which adopts 1anm technology using the EUV lithography process, is for 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors, Intel's latest server CPU launched on January 10th. The 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processor has been cited as a key to a turnaround in the industry, given that the launch of a next-generation server CPU requires server replacement and thus, results in a rapid increase in demand for high-performance memory chips. Experts predict that DDR5, expected to meet customers' such needs, will soon become the flagship product in the server DRAM market.

Taiwan-based memory products OEM Datotek has been in business selling flash memory and DRAM products since 2004, with one of its most notable clients being HP. At the 2023 International CES, the company showcased its latest-generation memory products spanning not just HP-branded flash drives, but also flash drives under its own marquee, besides M.2 NVMe and 2.5-inch SATA SSDs; and PC memory spanning DDR5 and DDR4 generations. The company sells various vanilla (JEDEC spec) DDR5 and DDR4 memory modules in both standard U-DIMM and SO-DIMM form-factors. For gamers and enthusiasts, the company has the Ares line of premium DDR5 and DDR4 memory products, which come in overclocked speeds such as DDR5-6000 or DDR4-4000, including with RGB LED illumination.

Among its SSD products are a new PCIe Gen 5 NVMe SSD under the Ares brand, Gen 4 NVMe drives under the Ares Dark Sword brand, and various Gen 3 NVMe SSDs under the main Datotek brand. We also spotted several USB 3.2 portable SSDs, as well as 2.5-inch SATA 6 Gbps ones under the main brand. The idea here is to attract more brands for OEM partnerships the way rival Biwin makes SSD and DRAM products for various top brands (such as HP and Acer).

TrendForce's latest analysis of the DRAM market finds that the inventory pressure on suppliers remain significant due to the persistently weak demand for consumer electronics. Among the top three DRAM suppliers, only Samsung has seen a slight drop in inventory level thanks to its highly competitive pricing strategy. To prevent DRAM prices as a whole from making another sharp dive, a few suppliers such as Micron have been cutting production. Therefore, the QoQ decline in DRAM prices are projected to shrink to around 13~18% for 1Q23. However, the slump will have yet to reach the bottom at that time. Regarding the QoQ changes in the prices of the major categories of DRAM products for 1Q23, PC DRAM and server DRAM are projected to again register a drop that is near 20%. Conversely, mobile DRAM will experience the smallest price decline because its profit margin is ready the thinnest.

Consumer electronics giant Samsung had what can only be described as a terrible fourth quarter in 2022, with profits falling by around 4.3 trillion Korean Won, or US$3.4 billion, a drop of 69 percent compared to the previous year. This will be Samsung's lowest profit since Q3 2014 and Samsung has grown a lot as a company in those eight years. The revenue was also down nine percent from the third quarter of 2022, suggesting that Samsung is in for a rough start to the new year.

There seems to be a combination of reasons for the drop in profit, from lower demand for Samsung's range of smartphones and other consumer electronics, but also due to lower demand for memory chips, both DRAM and NAND, both of which Samsung is a big producer of. Samsung stated that "for the memory business, the decline in fourth-quarter demand was greater than expected as customers adjusted inventories in their effort to further tighten finances," which places Samsung in the same situation as its major competitors, who have also reported huge demand slumps.

Lexar, a leading global brand of flash memory solutions, is unveiling new products specifically made for gaming at the Consumer Electronics Show 2023 (CES 2023). The new gaming portfolio includes a variety of products, including DRAM, internal SSDs, portable gaming SSDs, and to keep up with increasing mobile category growth, microSD cards.

Among the gaming lineup are the new ARES DDR5 RGB 6000 MHz, as well as existing products NM800PRO with Heatsink M.2 2280 PCIe Gen 4 x4 NVMe SSD, the SL660 BLAZE Gaming Portable SSD, and the PLAY microSD UHS-I Card. "We are excited to bring the quality, performance, and reliability you expect in our professional photo and video products to the gaming market. Our gaming products are designed to meet the unique needs of gamers and enable them to play at their peak without worrying about load times, game lag, or stuttering graphics," said Joel Boquiren, General Manager of Lexar.

According to Reuters, Samsung is gearing up to increase the chip production capacity at its P3 factory in Pyeongtaek in South Korea, despite the fact that there's a general slowdown in the semiconductor industry, in addition to the general economic downturn. Samsung is apparently planning on adding 12-inch wafer capacity for DRAM, while also adding more 4 nm chip capacity. The P3 fab kicked off production of Samsung's most cutting-edge NAND flash chips earlier this year and is the company's largest fab overall. According to Reuters, Samsung is aiming to add at least 10 new EUV machines in 2023.

In related news via The Elec, Samsung has seen costs increase significantly when it comes to materials costs relating to the expansion of the P3 fab. So far, the company has racked up extra costs of over a trillion korean Won, or more than US$786 million, largely due to all of its contractors having raised their prices. The report also mentioned that some parts of the expansion of the P3 fab has been delayed by as much as a year, which isn't good news for Samsung and it likely means that the company will see further increases in costs before the expansions are finished.

As we're nearing the end of 2022, there is more news about layoffs and this time around it's Micron that is looking at laying off some 10 percent of its workforce. The company announced its FQ1 '23 earnings today, or fiscal quarter one 2023, since not all companies follow the standard year when it comes to financial reporting. Micron saw revenues of US$4,085 billion for the quarter, down from US$6,643 billion in the previous quarter and down from US$7,687 billion the same quarter a year ago. However, the company made a net loss of US$195 million.

Micron's CEO Sanjay Mehrotra stated "Micron's strong technology, manufacturing and financial position put us on solid footing to navigate the near-term environment, and we are taking decisive actions to cut our supply and expenses. We expect improving customer inventories to enable higher revenue in the fiscal second half, and to deliver strong profitability once we get past this downturn." These decisive actions include cutting 10 percent of its workforce according to Reuters, although this won't take place until sometime in 2023. Micron is also planning a cut in its CAPEX plans for its fiscal 2024, i.e. the company won't be investing as heavily as planned in new fabs, despite being granted money to do so by the US government.

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., the world leader in advanced memory technology, today announced the development of its 16-gigabit (Gb) DDR5 DRAM built using the industry's first 12-nanometer (nm)-class process technology, as well as the completion of product evaluation for compatibility with AMD. "Our 12 nm-range DRAM will be a key enabler in driving market-wide adoption of DDR5 DRAM," said Jooyoung Lee, Executive Vice President of DRAM Product & Technology at Samsung Electronics. "With exceptional performance and power efficiency, we expect our new DRAM to serve as the foundation for more sustainable operations in areas such as next-generation computing, data centers and AI-driven systems."

"Innovation often requires close collaboration with industry partners to push the bounds of technology," said Joe Macri, Senior VP, Corporate Fellow and Client, Compute and Graphics CTO at AMD. "We are thrilled to once again collaborate with Samsung, particularly on introducing DDR5 memory products that are optimized and validated on "Zen" platforms."

ADATA, the world's leading memory module brand and XPG, their performance and gaming arm, today announced that they will be attending the CES 2023, where they will showcase a number of new products with the theme "Make it Fusion, Make it Xtreme!" The feature product to be displayed will be the XPG FUSION 1600 W Titanium power supply developed in collaboration with Delta Electronics. Other impressive power supplies also equipped with the latest ATX 3.0 and PCIe 5.0, such as the XPG CYBERCORE II and CORE REACTOR II series will be shown as well.

ADATA will also present impressive offerings in other categories, such as the XPG PCIe Gen5 SSD which offers a patented heat dissipation design, up to 8 TB of storage space, and read/write speed of up to 14,000 MB/s. Additionally, ADATA will present other award-winning memory and storage products, as well as gaming focused products in system, chassis, special themed pc build and peripherals categories.

Netac, a Chinese maker of memory and storage devices, has developed DDR5 memory modules with impressive speeds. The company has used SK Hynix A-type dies to create DDR5 memory with up to 8000 MT/s rates. With incredible speeds comes significant latency, whereas the DDR5-8000 memory kit comes with a CAS latency of 38-48-48-128. Netac has determined that these DRAM modules require as much as 1.5 Volts to power it. The base kit starts at 6000 MT/s, with 6200/6600/7200/7600 and 8000 MT/s variations mentioned above. Available in silver and black, these memory modules are equipped with an ARGB strip at the top that works with every RGB control software of motherboard makers.

You can check out the images and specification table below.

Global sales of total semiconductor manufacturing equipment by original equipment manufacturers are forecast to reach a new high of $108.5 billion in 2022, rising 5.9% from the previous industry record of $102.5 billion in 2021, SEMI announced today in its Year-End Total Semiconductor Equipment Forecast - OEM Perspective at SEMICON Japan 2022. The record high caps three consecutive years of record revenue. The global total semiconductor manufacturing equipment market is expected to contract to $91.2 billion next year before rebounding in 2024 driven by both the front-end and back-end segments.

"Record fab constructions have driven total semiconductor manufacturing equipment sales to cross the $100 billion mark for a second straight year," said Ajit Manocha, SEMI president and CEO. "Emerging applications in multiple markets have set expectations for significant semiconductor industry growth this decade, which will necessitate further investments to expand production capacity."

SK hynix Inc. announced today that it has developed working samples of DDR5 Multiplexer Combined Ranks (MCR) Dual In-line Memory Module, the world's fastest server DRAM product. The new product has been confirmed to operate at the data rate of minimum 8 Gbps, and at least 80% faster than 4.8 Gbps of the existing DDR5 products. MCR DIMM is an achievement coming from out-of-the-box thinking with an aim to improve the operation speed of DDR5. Challenging the prevailing concept that the operation speed of DDR5 relies on that of DRAM chip itself, engineers sought to find a way to improve the speed of modules instead of chips for development of the latest product.

SK hynix designed the product in a way that enables simultaneous operation of two ranks by utilizing the data buffer installed onto the MCR DIMM based on Intel's MCR technology. By enabling simultaneous operation of two ranks, MCR DIMM allows transmission of 128 bytes of data to CPU at once, compared with 64 bytes fetched generally in conventional DRAM module. An increase in the amount of data sent to the CPU each time supports the data transfer rate of minimum 8 Gbps, twice as fast as a single DRAM.

The next-generation GDDR7 memory standard is shaping up nicely, to double bandwidth and density over the current GDDR6. In a company presentation detailing upcoming memory technologies, Samsung revealed that GDDR7 uses PAM3 signalling. While ones and zeroes are stored in DRAM memory cells, it is transmitted between devices (such as the DRAM chip and the GPU) in electrical waveforms known as "signals." Ones and zeroes are interpreted by patterns in the signal waveform.

Conventional GDDR6 memory uses NRZ (non-return to zero) or PAM2 signalling to achieve data-rates starting from 14 Gbps, with 24 Gbps expected to be the fastest production GDDR6 memory speed on offer, however some of the faster GDDR6 speeds such as 18 Gbps, 20 Gbps, and 22 Gbps couldn't hit production soon enough for the development phase of the GeForce RTX 30-series "Ampere" GPU, and so NVIDIA and Micron Technology co-developed the GDDR6X standard leveraging PAM4 signalling, to offer speeds ranging between 18 Gbps to 23 Gbps (or higher) several quarters ahead of this faster JEDEC-standard GDDR6.

As advanced graphics and display technologies develop, they are blurring the lines between metaverse and our everyday experience. Much of this important shift is being made possible by the advancement of memory solutions designed for graphics products. One of the biggest challenges for improving virtual reality is taking the complexities of real-world objects and environments and recreating them in a virtual space. Doing so requires massive memory and increased computing power. At the same time, the benefits of creating more true-to-life metaverse will be far reaching, including real-life simulations of complicated scenarios and more, sparking innovation across a number of industries.

This is the central idea behind one of the most popular concepts in virtual reality: digital twin. A digital twin is a virtual representation of an object or space. Updated in real-time in accordance with the actual environment, a digital twin spans the lifecycle of its source and uses simulation, machine learning and reasoning to help decision-making. While until recently this was not feasible proposition due to limitations on data processing and transference, digital twins are now gaining traction thanks to availability of high bandwidth technologies.

According to data from Gartner, the semiconductor market is expected to decline by up to 3.6 percent in 2023, from a growth of 4 percent this year and 26.3 percent in 2021. This might not be surprising to those that have followed recent developments in the semiconductor market, but it also looks like revenue for 2023 will be closer to that of 2021. This might in part be related to higher costs of manufacturing, but consumer demand is expected to be down in 2023, largely due to less disposable income, related to the current situation with rising inflation and increasing costs elsewhere.

Gartner claims that the enterprise market has been relatively stable and the consulting firm isn't expecting the enterprise market to decline as much as the consumer market when it comes to semiconductor demand. That said, Gartner is expecting the memory market to decline by up to 16.2 percent in 2023, as there's already an oversupply in the market. Likewise, it expects that the NAND flash market will see a decline by up to 13.7 percent in 2023. What isn't clear is how this weaker demand will affect retail prices, but as we've already seen, the DRAM and NAND flash manufacturers have already hit the brakes, to try and prevent a price crash.

Market intelligence firm TrendForce reports that the whole NAND Flash market was severely weakened by plummeting demand in 3Q22. Because shipments of end products including consumer electronics and servers had been below expectations, the overall NAND ASP fell by 18.3% QoQ. Furthermore, the general economic outlook remained pessimistic, so enterprises across many sectors started to scale back their capital expenditure plans and halted the momentum of their procurement activities. Due to this development, the problem of excess inventory eventually spread to NAND Flash suppliers. The pressure on suppliers to make sales was ratcheted up dramatically. According to TrendForce's investigation, NAND Flash bit shipments fell by 6.7% QoQ for 3Q22, and the overall NAND Flash ASP also kept sliding. On account of the unfavorable market situation, the NAND Flash industry recorded a total revenue of around US$13.71 billion for 3Q22. The QoQ revenue decline reached as much as 24.3%.

The ranking of NAND Flash suppliers by revenue saw two notable changes for 3Q22. First, SK Group moved down to third place as it suffered the largest revenue drop among suppliers. Its revenue slipped by 29.8% QoQ to US$2.54 billion mainly due to the significant deterioration of the demand for PCs and smartphones. Its subsidiary Solidigm was also affected by the slowdown in server procurements. Previously, servers had a fairly stable demand situation compared with other kinds of end products. However, server demand eventually buckled in 3Q22 as result of enterprises cutting capital expenditure and undergoing a period of inventory correction. Compared with 2Q22, SK Group (that encompasses SK hynix and Solidigm) posted a drop of 11.1% in bit shipments and an even steeper decline of more than 20% in ASP.

KLEVV, an emerging memory brand introduced by Essencore, is excited to announce three new consumer-grade M.2 NVMe SSDs, the CRAS C930, C910, and C730. The new CRAS M.2 NVMe SSD lineup aims to serve a wide range of users, enabling entry-level to top-tier enthusiasts with industry-leading storage technology. Both CRAS 930 and C910 come with an optional add-on heatsink for users to maximize their freedom in the setup.

With an impressive 1500 TBW endurance lifecycle and a significant emphasis on DRAM cache buffer, the CRAS C930 is built to withstand harsh workloads. Utilizing the latest PCIe Gen4 x4 interface supported by NVMe 1.4, it delivers break-neck sequential read/write speed of up to 7400/6800 MB/s at 2 TB max capacity and 4K random read/write up to 1000K IOPS. Exceptional engineering and design elements make the CRAS C930 the crown jewel of KLEVV's new M.2 NVMe SSD lineup, capable of running on PCs, Laptops, and even PS5 consoles. Additionally, the flat fin heatsink addon is a great inclusion with up to 20% temperature reduction, giving users complete flexibility in their choice.