Thursday, December 24th 2020
Prices of NAND Flash Controller ICs Poised to Rise by 15-20% due to Tightening Production Capacity for Foundry Services, Says TrendForce
In the upstream semiconductor industry, the major foundries such as TSMC and UMC are reporting fully loaded capacities, while in the downstream, the available production capacity for OSAT is also lacking, according to TrendForce's latest investigations. Given this situation, suppliers of NAND Flash controller ICs such as Phison and Silicon Motion are now unable to meet upside demand from their clients. Not only have many controller IC suppliers temporarily stopped offering quotes for new orders, but they are also even considering raising prices soon because the negotiations between NAND Flash suppliers and module houses over 1Q21 contracts are now at the critical juncture. The potential increases in prices of controller ICs from outsourced suppliers (IC design houses) are currently estimated to be the range of 15-20%.
With regards to the demand side, demand has risen significantly for eMMC solutions with medium- and low-density specifications (i.e., 64 GB and lower), for which NAND Flash suppliers have mostly stopped updating the NAND Flash process technology, while maintaining support with the legacy 2D NAND or the 64L 3D NAND process. This is on account of strong sales for Chromebook devices and TVs. As older processes gradually account for a lowering portion of bit output proportions from NAND Flash suppliers, these companies are exhibiting a lowered willingness to directly supply such eMMC products to clients. As a result, clients now need to turn to memory module houses, which are able to source NAND Flash components and controllers, to procure eMMC products in substantial quantities.
Hikes in prices of controller ICs will lead to hikes in module prices with mainstream 32 GB and 64 GB solutions for Chromebooks experiencing largest increases
TrendForce points out that even though the whole NAND Flash market is still in oversupply right now, medium- and low-density eMMC solutions will likely experience price hikes as they are in tight supply due to insufficient output of controller ICs. An increase in prices of controller ICs will result in a corresponding increase in the fixed costs of eMMC solutions. This, in turn, will put pressure on OEMs that are procuring components. With this scenario now becoming a reality, prices of those eMMC solutions that are in high demand could rise slightly in 1Q21. Examples include 32 GB and 64 GB solutions for Chromebook devices.
In the SSD market, the major NAND Flash suppliers such as Samsung are also the major device manufacturers. Most SSD manufacturers have in-house controller ICs that are made at foundries under long-term agreements. Hence, there have been no reports of price hikes or shortages for SSD controller ICs. However, TrendForce has observed that lead time has been prolonged for SSD controller ICs as well. Additionally, the share of SSD controller ICs that have been outsourced to IC design houses has increased for SSDs with PCIe 4.0. In the future, there is an increasing possibility that prices of SSD controller ICs will be affected by the statuses of outsourced IC suppliers.
With regards to the demand side, demand has risen significantly for eMMC solutions with medium- and low-density specifications (i.e., 64 GB and lower), for which NAND Flash suppliers have mostly stopped updating the NAND Flash process technology, while maintaining support with the legacy 2D NAND or the 64L 3D NAND process. This is on account of strong sales for Chromebook devices and TVs. As older processes gradually account for a lowering portion of bit output proportions from NAND Flash suppliers, these companies are exhibiting a lowered willingness to directly supply such eMMC products to clients. As a result, clients now need to turn to memory module houses, which are able to source NAND Flash components and controllers, to procure eMMC products in substantial quantities.
TrendForce points out that even though the whole NAND Flash market is still in oversupply right now, medium- and low-density eMMC solutions will likely experience price hikes as they are in tight supply due to insufficient output of controller ICs. An increase in prices of controller ICs will result in a corresponding increase in the fixed costs of eMMC solutions. This, in turn, will put pressure on OEMs that are procuring components. With this scenario now becoming a reality, prices of those eMMC solutions that are in high demand could rise slightly in 1Q21. Examples include 32 GB and 64 GB solutions for Chromebook devices.
In the SSD market, the major NAND Flash suppliers such as Samsung are also the major device manufacturers. Most SSD manufacturers have in-house controller ICs that are made at foundries under long-term agreements. Hence, there have been no reports of price hikes or shortages for SSD controller ICs. However, TrendForce has observed that lead time has been prolonged for SSD controller ICs as well. Additionally, the share of SSD controller ICs that have been outsourced to IC design houses has increased for SSDs with PCIe 4.0. In the future, there is an increasing possibility that prices of SSD controller ICs will be affected by the statuses of outsourced IC suppliers.
26 Comments on Prices of NAND Flash Controller ICs Poised to Rise by 15-20% due to Tightening Production Capacity for Foundry Services, Says TrendForce
iswas enough 30, 60, 120... But it's a lot of this has been produced in past there are large stocks that have not yet been sold.It's just kind of shocking that there is no excuse of power outages, flooding, lightning strikes, parts shortages, WHATEVER!
They've just given up the pretense of excuses and are now just blatantly, intentionally colluding to raise prices "by any means possible".
"Progress"? "Evolution"? You be the judge.
*you're welcome, Merry Christmas :)
The next trick the industry needs to learn is not equipping laptops with only 4 or 8GB of unupgradable, soldered RAM and charging a thousand bucks for it. RAM is ultra-cheap right now, I'm slapping 64 or 128GB in every workstation I roll out, not because they need it, but because DDR4 RAM is at the lowest purchase point it's likely to be for a looooonnng time.
If you're using a linux distro for consumer use, your disk requirements are much the same as any other OS.
In server management environments, the heavy-lifting servers themselves only tend to run very lightweight hypervisors. All of the real OS stuff is virtualised elsewhere, or managed by a dedicated appliance.
One of my most powerful servers costing in excess of €50K boots off a RAID1 pair of 16GB SD cards and has no other local storage to speak of, and that's true for many of the VM hosts in my estate and presumably is the norm for many other companies globally. I think that SD card is almost redundant, as it's more like an OS on an EEPROM and that machine has been rebooted maybe half a dozen times, ever.
I even had someone ask me yesterday if I could build him some workstations with 256 or 512GB, and I told him if he wants it, now is THE time to do it :)
www.techpowerup.com/275573/1-hour-power-outage-at-micron-manufacturing-plant-could-mean-increased-dram-prices-throughout-2021