According to Nikkei, the newly established trade limitations between Japan and South Korea, could end up compromising global memory supply by simply restricting chemicals export. As the report says, Japan has limited its export of three vital chemicals (like orthophosphoric, hydrobromic and citric acid) used in semiconductor manufacturing, to South Korea.

Unlike before, a company that exports a chemical, now has to ask for a permission from the Japanese government, so it could supply the semiconductor foundries in South Korea. The end result of such move could be severely damaged global memory supply, as over 70% of DRAM and over 50% of NAND memory is manufactured in South Korea. Government processing of applications for exporting chemicals is estimated to take about three months, while the memory makers usually only hold around one of two months of extra supply for manufacturing. SK Hynix, a third biggest memory manufacturer by revenue, said that if it doesn't get enough stock of materials, it would have to halt production. Samsung is asserting the situation for now, without any elaboration on that. These events could lead to increased memory price and overall less supply.

In another episode of the "so timely considering market projections for NAND pricing" news, Toshiba and Western Digital have disclosed expected impacts following an unexpected, 13-minute power outage on June 15th, that affected the companies' joint manufacturing facilities in Yokkaichi, Japan. Western Digital announced a loss of almost 6 Exabytes of NAND production - Toshiba is expected to have lost anywhere between 6 Exabytes and 9 Exabytes themselves, since they usually have their factories working closer to full capacity. Return to standard manufacturing rates is expected to only occur by mid-July.

Damage includes impacted wafers that were being processed, the facilities, and production equipment, hence the need for an extended inoperability period to seriously assess damages and required reinvestment. 35% of the world's NAND supply is produced at this Yokkaichi Operation campus (which includes six factories and an R&D center), so this outage and NAND flash loss is likely to impact the global markets. Whether or not this is enough to move the needle from oversupply to undersupply is as of yet unknown, but it is unlikely so - although pricing changes are expected after Q3 and Q4 orders have been settled (whose pricing has already been settled and can't be subject to change). Loss of confidence in the Toshiba and Western Digital manufacturing venture, however, could help offset some of that pricing increase. Obviously, companies have insurance policies that cover them in case of such unexpected events - should they fall squarely out of the control of said companies.

ASUS at Computex 2019 showcased a myriad of products - as is usual, for one of the foremost PC hardware manufacturers. This news piece breaks down two of these products: the TUF Gaming VG27AQ monitor and the ROG STRIX 650 W Gold power supply. Starting with that which allows you to see, the TUF Gaming VG27AQ monitor features both ULMB and Adaptive Sync support (in the form of AMD's FreeSync and NVIDIA's G-Sync). Dubbed ELMB, the new feature allows the monitor to keep its Active Sync features active for super smooth gameplay, whilst enabling motion blur reduction - usually, a choice between the two technologies has to be made.

The 27" screen offers an IPS panel with a 2560 x 1440 pixel resolution, 1 ms response time and maximum 155 Hz refresh rate (Adaptive Sync works between the 40-155 Hz interval) over a DisplayPort connection (144 Hz max over HDMI). A maximum brightness of 350 cd/m² doesn't win any serious accolades, but is more than enough for gaming scenarios. Connectors stand at 2x HDMI 1.4 ports, 1x DisplayPort 1.2, and 2x USB 3.0 ports.

Intel was the historic leader in silicon manufacturing and sales from 1993 through 2016, the year it lost its lead to Samsung. The issue wasn't so much to do with Intel, but more to do with market demands at the time - if you'll remember, it was the time of booming DRAM pricing alongside the smartphone demand increase that propagated stiff competition and manufacturers trying to outgun one another in the form of specs. The DRAM demand - and its ridiculous prices, at the time - propelled Samsung towards the top spot in terms of revenue, leaving Intel in the dust.

However, with the decrease in DRAM pricing following the reduce in smartphone demand and increased manufacturing capabilities of semiconductor manufacturers, which flooded the market with product that is being more slowly digested, has led to the drop of the previously-inflated Dram pricing, thus hitting Samsung's revenues enough for Intel to again become "top dog" in the silicon manufacturing world - even as the company struggles with its 10 nm rollout and faced supply issues of their own. As IC Insights puts it, "Intel replaced Samsung as the number one quarterly semiconductor supplier in 4Q18 after losing the lead spot to Samsung in 2Q17. (...) With the collapse of the DRAM and NAND flash markets over the past year, a complete switch has occurred, with Samsung having 23% more total semiconductor sales than Intel in 1Q18 but Intel having 23% more semiconductor sales than Samsung just one year later in 1Q19!".

Growing anger among PC manufacturers, retailers, and consumers in general, over supply issues with Intel processors, compounded with rising prices, and prompted Bob Swan, CFO and Interim-CEO of Intel, to write an open-letter, addressed to customers and partners, which counts you, since we received it in our main news channel from Intel. The language in the e-mail is straightforward and we wouldn't want to interpret it further than Intel grappling with a combination of massive demand from both its cloud-computing customers, and PC manufacturers hit by a surge of customers upgrading their machines (probably because it took Intel 10 years to increase CPU core counts, giving people a reason to upgrade).

To mitigate this, Intel is firing up all its manufacturing assets, across Oregon, Arizona, Ireland and Israel, in addition to its main foundries, by pumping in an additional $1 billion in capital expenditure (which is now at $15 billion). The letter doesn't miss out mentioning 10 nm, that the company is making progress with yields, and that volume production should roll out in 2019 (without offering guidance as to when). Intel also reassured PC OEMs that their supply teams will be in closer contact with them over the coming weeks. Without further ado, the open-letter follows verbatim.The letter follows.

DigiTimes, citing "sources from the upstream supply chain", is reporting an expected decrease in graphics card pricing for July. This move comes as a way for suppliers to reduce the inventory previously piled in expectation of continued demand from cryptocurrency miners and gamers in general. It's the economic system at work, with its strengths and weaknesses: now that demand has waned, somewhat speculative price increases of yore are being axed by suppliers to spur demand. This also acts as a countermeasure to an eventual flow of graphics cards from ceasing-to-be miners to the second-hand market, which would further place a negative stress on retailers' products.

Alongside this expected 20% retail price drop for graphics cards, revenue estimates for major semiconductor manufacturer TSMC and its partners is being revised towards lower than previously-projected values, as demand for graphics and ASIC chips is further reduced. DigiTimes' sources say that the worldwide graphics card market now has an inventory of several million units that is being found hard to move (perhaps because the products are already ancient in the usual hardware tech timeframes), and that Nvidia has around a million GPUs still pending logistical distribution. Almost as an afterthought, DigiTimes also adds that NVIDIA has decided to postpone launch of their next-gen products (both 12 nm and then, forcibly, 7 nm) until supply returns to safe levels.

We've previously touched upon whether or not NVIDIA should launch their 1100 or 2000 series of graphics cards ahead of any new product from AMD. At the time, I wrote that I only saw benefits to that approach: earlier time to market -> satisfaction of upgrade itches and entrenchment as the only latest-gen manufacturer -> raised costs over lack of competition -> ability to respond by lowering prices after achieving a war-chest of profits. However, reports of a costly NVIDIA mistake in overestimating demand for its Pascal GPUs does lend some other shades to the whole equation.

Write-offs in inventory are costly (just ask Microsoft), and apparently, NVIDIA has found itself in a miscalculating demeanor: overestimating gamers' and miners' demand for their graphics cards. When it comes to gamers, NVIDIA's Pascal graphics cards have been available in the market for two years now - it's relatively safe to say that the majority of gamers who needed higher-performance graphics cards have already taken the plunge. As to miners, the cryptocurrency market contraction (and other factors) has led to a taper-out of graphics card demand for this particular workload. The result? NVIDIA's demand overestimation has led, according to Seeking Alpha, to a "top three" Taiwan OEM returning 300,000 GPUs to NVIDIA, and "aggressively" increased GDDR5 buying orders from the company, suggesting an excess stock of GPUs that need to be made into boards.

According to DigiTimes, the entire AIB partner and graphics card supply channel is gearing up to an expected demand decrease for graphics cards in the second half of 2018. This marks an expectation on the continuation of the downward trend since December 2017, a time where Bitcoin (and as such, alternate cryptocurrencies) were at all-time highs. As profits decrease, difficulty increases, and mining players offload their graphics cards to still-interested buyers of their hardware, the market's ability to trade existing graphics cards and absorb new inventory is dwindling. Naturally, this reduced demand means that prices for new graphics cards have also been decreasing and somewhat stabilizing towards pre-mining boom prices.

However, producers of graphics cards obviously don't want to give away their record-high profits in their entirety; and they're showing some reluctance, some "pricing memory" on their graphics cards, maintaining gross margins in the 20% area, double that of pre-mining pricing. As such, graphics card makers are again abandoning the mining boom as a source of stable revenue, looking to other solutions (such as servers, datacenter acceleration and such, DigiTimes reports in the case of TUL). Another thing that would certainly help graphics card manufacturers in keeping up high demand and profits, of course, would be the impending release of a new NVIDIA architecture... At least for those that have AIB status with the company.

If there's one green, DIY upgrade path available for users far and wide right now is acquiring an SSD. With prices on RAM being crazy enough as they are (even if slightly better now compared to some months ago), and the finally cooling prices on graphics cards (due, in no small part, to this), the latest times have been hard for users looking for a straight upgrade. SSDs, however, provide one of the most impactful system upgrades for any kind of user's workload - and pricing on these has been as merry as merry can be, with a chance of improving even more in the future.

DigiTimes, quoting industry sources, reports that NAND flash supply should see improvements from its 4Q17 state in 2018. This likely doesn't come as much of a surprise - 2017 has been a sort of "squeeze" year for NAND and DDR memory manufacturing, with companies increasing production without committing to fully satisfy demand, which in turn translates to longer term higher pricing of memory. Still, those tentative increases to production capabilities should begin to release the memory pricing squeeze during 1Q18, with ASP (average selling price) coming down.

The increase in production and supply doesn't come solely from factory floor expansions, however; there's also been reports of increased yields of 3D NAND fabrication technologies, which should also increase availability in the best way possible for manufacturers.

There were some rumors regarding an expected low availability of Intel's latest, 8th Gen "Coffee Lake" CPUs. Then, in a new report, those rumors were sort of confirmed by Newegg. Now, we have it straight from the blue giant themselves, as Intel has announced that they're adding another facility to their 8th Gen Coffee Lake production and certification facilities. Stock of Intel 8th Gen CPUs has been spotty, to say the least, and pricing of the lineup's unlocked CPUs (8600K and 8700K, which are the most interesting for enthusiasts) have been particularly affected. If current output isn't enough to satisfy demand, the oldest trick in the book is to simply improve output. And Intel is doing it.

While Intel has been mainly using its assembly and test facilities based in Malaysia, the company is adding a new, certified assembly to the list: one in Chengdu, China. That shouldn't send alarms ringing, however; Intel's assembly and test facilities are a part of Intel's Copy Exactly! (CE!) program. This means that in order to be certified, all facilities must have identical methodologies and process technologies across different production sites throughout the world - there should be no quantifiable difference in quality. Intel's customers will begin to receive the aforementioned processors assembled in China starting from December 15. There is no real way to know exactly how much difference the new assembly facility will make on the worldwide supply of Intel 8h Gen CPUs - but it should only improve.

DRAMeXchange, a division of TrendForce, has come forward with the expected announcement that DRAM output in 2018 likely won't be enough to fully satisfy supply. This has been the case for some time now. However, what started with simple insufficient output that could contain the explosion of DRAM capacity in smartphones seems to now be turning into a conscious decision by the three top memory manufacturers. Samsung, Micron, and SK Hynix are seemingly setting output at a lower than required level so as to artificially inflate pricing due to low supply. TrendForce themselves say so, in that these suppliers "(...) have opted to slow down their capacity expansions and technology migrations so that they can keep next year's prices at the same high level as during this year's second half. Doing so will also help them to sustain a strong profit margin."

DRAM production is expected to increase by 19,6% in 2018; however, this ratio is lower than the expected growth in demand, which is being pegged at 20,6%. This means 2018 is likely to see increased constraint in the supply channels (whereas 2018 was actually expected to see a slight relief in supply issues). This means that pricing will either stabilize or tend to increase from current levels. To be fair, semiconductor production isn't as simple as hitting a "increase production by 10x" button; reports say that all three players are contending with insufficient room to expand output on their production lines, and getting a new production facility online isn't a trivial effort - neither in funds, nor on time. However... All involved companies would much rather keep prices as they are than see them being brought down by oversupply.