JEDEC Solid State Technology Association and Compute Express Link (CXL) Consortium today announced the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to formalize collaboration between the two organizations. The agreement outlines the formation of a joint work group to provide a forum that facilitates communication and sharing of information, requirements, recommendations and requests with the intent that this exchange of information will help standards developed by each organization augment one another.

"The MOU between JEDEC and CXL Consortium will establish a framework for ongoing communication to align future efforts between the two organizations. The joint work group will collaborate on useful solutions for form factors, management, security, and DRAM and other memory technologies," said Siamak Tavallaei, CXL Consortium President.

According to TrendForce investigations into the DRAM market, under pressure from ever-increasing output, Korean manufacturers have significantly increased their willingness to compromise on pricing in order to stimulate buying from distributors and customers, leading to a steady expansion of falling prices. In addition to Korean manufacturers enthusiastically slashing prices, low-priced chips from the spot market are also circulating in the market. Other suppliers have no choice but to follow suit and fervently reduce pricing for sales, rapidly exacerbating the 3Q consumer DRAM price drop from the original estimate of 8~13% to a quarterly decline of 13-18%.

Looking forward to Q4, it will be difficult for stocking momentum to recover before terminal inventories have been completely depleted. TrendForce expects the price of consumer DRAM to continue to fall until oversupply in the market is alleviated. Thus, consumer DRAM pricing will carry on moving lower by another 3~8% in Q4 and the possibility of sustained decline cannot be ruled out.

As the world dives further into the high-speed DDR5 generation, DDR5 technologies are urged to meet the demands for more reliable and durable products. Team Group, a world-leading memory manufacturer, continues to pursue advancement and is dedicated to providing an upgraded DDR5 solution to offer higher frequencies to users around the world. Today, Team Group launches ELITE PLUS DDR5 Desktop Memory with a brand new heat sink design to effectively increase reliability. Furthermore, Team Group announces a new frequency of 6,000 MHz for ELITE DDR5 to further increase operating performance and deliver an ultra-smooth user experience. The ELITE PLUS DDR5 and ELITE DDR5 6,000 MHz Desktop Memory will be available to global users via Amazon and Newegg in North America soon.

ELITE PLUS DDR5 Desktop Memory is equipped with a sleek, simple, and asymmetric aluminium heat sink that has been specially designed to be non-conductive and to protect against scratches, acids, rusting and rotting to provide full protection for the DDR5 module. ELITE PLUS DDR5 Desktop Memory is also equipped with a 1.1 V standard working voltage which further reduces energy consumption for each unit of bandwidth comparing to the 1.2 V in DDR4, providing a more efficient power usage. The DDR5 module is equipped with PMICs for effective power distribution, reliable power supply, and minimal noise interference. The IC supports on-die ECC, a feature that self-corrects DRAM cells for enhanced stability and reliability by reducing risks of information errors.

According to TrendForce, DRAM market demand bit growth will only amount to 8.3% in 2023, sub-10% for the first time in history, and far lower than supply-side bit growth of approximately 14.1%. Data indicates the DRAM market to be severely oversupplied at least in 2023 and prices may continue to decline. NAND Flash is still in a state of oversupply and, although prices are expected to fall in the first half of next year, NAND Flash has built-in price elasticity compared to DRAM and average prices are expected to stimulate density growth in the enterprise SSD market after declining for several consecutive quarters. Demand bits are expected to grow by 28.9%, while supply bits will grow by approximately 32.1%.

From the perspective of various applications, rising inflation continues to impact demand in consumer markets, so the primary goal of memory brands has been to prioritize inventory correction. Especially in the past two years, a shortage of upstream components caused by the pandemic led memory brands to overbook purchase orders while sluggish sales on the distribution channel side have resulted in slow depletion of current notebook inventory, resulting in a further weakening of notebook demand in 2023. In terms of PC DRAM, the proportion of DDR4 and LPDDR4X in PC applications will fall further while the penetration rate of LPDDR5 and DDR5 continues to rise. However, the price premium of DDR5 will limit the growth of density in PCs. DRAM density in PCs is estimate to increase by approximately 7% annually in 2023. If manufactures cut DDR5 pricing more aggressively next year, installed capacity may be driven up to 9%, depending on whether DDR5 price concessions can be effectively reconciled with DDR4.

Samsung Electronics, the world leader in advanced memory technology, today unveiled an array of next-generation memory and storage technologies during Flash Memory Summit 2022, held at the Santa Clara (California) Convention Center, Aug. 2-4. In a keynote titled "Memory Innovations Navigating the Big Data Era," Samsung spotlighted four areas of technological advancement driving the big data market—data movement, data storage, data processing and data management—and revealed its leading-edge memory solutions addressing each field.

To maximize data center efficiency in an increasingly data-driven world, Samsung introduced a next-generation storage technology, "Petabyte Storage." The new solution will allow a single server unit to pack more than one petabyte of storage, enabling server manufacturers to sharply increase their storage capacity within the same floor space with a minimal number of servers. High server utilization will also help to lower power consumption.

SK hynix has developed its first DDR5 DRAM-based CXL (Compute Express Link) memory samples and strengthened its presence in next-generation memory solutions market. The form factor of the sample is EDSFF (Enterprise & Data Center Standard Form Factor) E3.S and it supports PCIe 5.0 x8 Lane, uses DDR5 standard DRAM and is equipped with CXL controllers. CXL, which is based on PCIe (Peripheral Component Interconnect Express), is a new standardized interface that helps increase the efficiency of utilizing CPUs, GPUs, accelerators, and memory. SK hynix has participated in the CXL consortium from an early stage, and is looking to secure CXL memory market leadership.

The essential point of the CXL memory market is expandability. The CXL memory allows for flexible memory expansion compared to current server market, where the memory capacity and performance are fixed once the server platform is adopted. CXL also has high growth potential as it is an interface spotlighted for high performance computing systems such as AI and big data related applications.

Micron Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ: MU) commends and thanks the Biden Administration for their leadership and the bipartisan work of Congress for passing the "Chips and Science" legislation. This is a big step towards securing the future of semiconductor manufacturing in the United States and advancing American innovation and competitiveness for years to come.

This legislation will bring leading-edge semiconductor manufacturing to the U.S., creating tens of thousands of jobs and tens of billions of dollars of new investments - transforming U.S. semiconductor innovation and supply chain resilience.

As we approach the launch of Intel's upcoming Raptor Lake desktop processors, we are getting more leaks of testing performed by system integrators and 3rd parties that have early access to the engineering sample (ES) chips. A few days ago, we saw an Intel Core i7-13700K CPU run Geekbench 5 benchmark with the older DDR4 memory on ASRock Z690 Steel Legend WiFi 6E. Today, we are seeing a similar test performed on the same processor, with ASRock Z690 Steel Legend WiFi 6E/D5 equipped with DDR5 memory. While the previous DDR4 testing used modules running at 3200 MT/s, the DDR5 testing uses 5200 MT/s rated DRAM with unknown timings and setup.

As far as performance goes, the single-core result of the 16-core Intel Core i7-13700K processor was 2090 points with DDR4, while DDR5 showed a slight regression of 2069 points. Of course, this could be attributed to the margin of error. As far as multi-core performance goes, the DDR4 testing managed to produce 16542 points, whereas the DDR5-equipped platform scored 19811 points. This is an immediate 20% performance uplift in multi-core score. It shows that all the cores present in Raptor Lake processors are starving for bandwidth, and a faster memory protocol can bring quite an improvement. As usual, we have to wait to confirm this information with our testing so that we can draw more conclusions.

The IRDM gaming brand, meeting the expectations of gamers and PC builders, introduces new white DRAM memory modules, which are distinguished by red details and marking of heat sinks. The IRDM PRO DDR4 Crimson White series is a response to the growing interest in PC sets made of white components. The latest modules in the IRDM portfolio are characterized by a frequency of 3600 MHz with timings 18-22-22 and a voltage of 1.35 V. The offer includes single modules with capacities of 8 and 16 GB, as well as the increasingly popular Dual Channel 16 and 32 GB sets.

IRDM PRO DDR4 Crimson White is a memory designed for gamers, enthusiasts and users expecting fast and stable operation of their computer set. The memories are based on an 8-layer white PCB and selected Samsung D-Die memory chips. The whole module is enclosed in a stylish white heat sink with a distinctive crimson IRDM brand logo.

Kingston FURY, the gaming division of Kingston Technology Company, Inc., a world leader in memory products and technology solutions, announced today the release of Kingston FURY Renegade DDR5 and Kingston FURY Renegade DDR5 RGB memory. The Kingston FURY Renegade DDR5 family is engineered to maximize the performance of your system.

Kingston FURY Renegade DDR5 family pushes the performance of next-gen DDR5 platforms to the extreme with ultra-fast memory up to 6400MT/s1and quick CL32 timings. With premium components hand-tuned by engineers, rigorously tested for compatibility across the industry's leading motherboards, backed by 100% factory testing at speed, and Intel XMP 3.0 Certified, customers can enjoy the ultimate overclock experience.

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., the world leader in advanced memory technology, today announced that it has begun sampling the industry's first 16-gigabit (Gb) Graphics Double Data Rate 6 (GDDR6) DRAM featuring 24-gigabit-per-second (Gbps) processing speeds. Built on Samsung's third-generation 10-nanometer-class (1z) process using extreme ultraviolet (EUV) technology, the new memory is designed to significantly advance the graphics performance for next-generation graphics cards (Video Graphics Arrays), laptops and game consoles, as well as artificial intelligence-based applications and high-performance computing (HPC) systems.

"The explosion of data now being driven by AI and the metaverse is pushing the need for greater graphics capabilities that can process massive data sets simultaneously, at extremely high speeds," said Daniel Lee, executive vice president of the Memory Product Planning Team at Samsung Electronics. "With our industry-first 24 Gbps GDDR6 now sampling, we look forward to validating the graphics DRAM on next-generation GPU platforms to bring it to market in time to meet an onslaught of new demand."

Hyperscalers such as Microsoft, Google, Amazon, etc., all run their cloud divisions with a specific goal. To provide their hardware to someone else in a form called instance and have the user pay for it by the hour. However, instances are usually bound by a specific CPU and memory configuration, which you can not configure yourself. But instead, you can only choose from the few available options that are listed. For example, when selecting one virtual CPU core, you get two GB of RAM and can go as high as you want with CPU cores. However, the available RAM will also double, even though you might not need it. When renting an instance, the allocated CPU cores and memory are yours until the instance is turned off.

And it is precisely this that hyperscalers are dealing with. Many instances don't fully utilize their DRAM, making the whole data center usage inefficient. Microsoft Azure, one of the largest cloud providers, measured that 50% of all VMs never touch 50% of their rented memory. This makes memory stranded in a rented VM, making it unusable for anything else.

At Azure, we find that a major contributor to DRAM inefficiency is platform-level memory stranding. Memory stranding occurs when a server's cores are fully rented to virtual machines (VMs), but unrented memory remains. With the cores exhausted, the remaining memory is unrentable on its own, and is thus stranded. Surprisingly, we find that up to 25% of DRAM may become stranded at any given moment.

Micron today announced commercial and industrial channel partner availability of Micron DDR5 server DRAM in support of industry qualification of next-generation Intel and AMD DDR5 server and workstation platforms. The move to DDR5 memory enables up to an 85% increase in system performance over DDR4 DRAM. Micron's new server DDR5 memory maximizes performance for AI, HPC and data-intensive applications that require more CPU compute capacity and higher memory bandwidth than DDR4 technology can support.

"As data continues to grow exponentially, the need to derive insights from that data is critical to business success," said Teresa Kelley, vice president and general manager of Micron's Commercial Products Group. "Data center operators need to maximize platform performance with advanced memory capabilities and processor advancements. Micron DDR5 server DRAM provides unparalleled bandwidth to manage even the most memory-intensive applications. Micron has been on the forefront of the industry's transition to DDR5 memory technology and is committed to empowering data center customers and channel partners in their server DDR5 DRAM qualification and readiness efforts."

According to the latest TrendForce research, despite the rapid weakening of overall consumer demand in 1H22, DRAM manufacturers previously presented a tough stance on price negotiations and gave little ground, steadily conveying inventory pressure from buyers to sellers. Facing uncertain peak-season demand in 2H22, some DRAM suppliers have begun effectively expressing clear intentions to cut prices, especially in the server field, where demand is relatively stable, in order to reduce inventory pressure. This situation will cause 3Q22 DRAM pricing to drop from the previous 3~8% to nearly 10% QoQ. If a price war is incited due to companies competing for sales, the drop in prices may exceed 10%.

PC OEMs have continuously downgraded their shipment prospects. With average DRAM inventory levels at more than two months, unless a huge price incentive exists, there is no urgent demand for procurement. At the same time, thanks to continuous adoption of the advanced 1Z/1alpha process, supply continued to increase in 3Q22. DDR4 output could not be effectively reduced due to high pricing limiting the penetration rate of DDR5. The price decline of PC DRAM in 3Q22 is revised to 5~10%.

The Exascale supercomputing race is now well underway, as the US-based Frontier supercomputer got delivered, and now we wait to see the remaining systems join the race. Today, during 79th HPC User Forum at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Terri Quinn at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) delivered a few insights into what El Capitan exascale machine will look like. And it seems like the new powerhouse will be based on AMD's Instinct MI300 APU. LLNL targets peak performance of over two exaFLOPs and a sustained performance of more than one exaFLOP, under 40 megawatts of power. This should require a very dense and efficient computing solution, just like the MI300 APU is.

As a reminder, the AMD Instinct MI300 is an APU that combines Zen 4 x86-64 CPU cores, CDNA3 compute-oriented graphics, large cache structures, and HBM memory used as DRAM on a single package. This is achieved using a multi-chip module design with 2.5D and 3D chiplet integration using Infinity architecture. The system will essentially utilize thousands of these APUs to become one large Linux cluster. It is slated for installation in 2023, with an operating lifespan from 2024 to 2030.

Nanya Technology, part of the Formosa Plastics Group, which is one of the largest conglomerates in Taiwan, will hold a ground-breaking ceremony for its new 12-inch fab that will be built in New Taipei City later this week. It'll be the biggest investment Nanya has done in the past decade, as the company is investing US$10.1 billion into building the new fab. This is obviously a lot less than TSMC is investing, but DRAM is made on different nodes to those that TSMC makes its customers products on, since DRAM doesn't benefit as much from node shrinking as other types of semiconductors.

The new fab will be located near one of Nanya's current fabs, in the Taishan district. Mass production is scheduled to start some time in 2025 and the fab is said to have a monthly capacity of around 45,000 wafers. Right now it's scheduled for a 10 nm technology node, but this might change by the time that the fab is up and running, especially considering that Nanya is already producing a range of 10 nm based products in some of its current fabs. Nanya's goal is to develop its next generation of 10 nm DRAM independently from other DRAM makers, as to avoid having to pay patent licence fees to its competitors.

According to TrendForce research, despite the significance of peak season and rising DDR5 penetration, the 3Q22 DRAM market still succumbed to the negative impact of weak consumer electronics demand resulting from the Russian-Ukrainian war and high inflation, which in turn led to an increase in overall DRAM inventory. This is the primary reason for a 3-8% drop in DRAM prices in 3Q22 and a more than 8% pricing dip in certain DRAM products for PCs and smart phones cannot be ruled out.

In terms of PC DRAM, sustained weakening of demand has led to PC OEMs adjusting their annual shipment targets and also caused DRAM inventories to soar rapidly. In 3Q22, PC OEMs remain focused on adjusting and destocking DRAM inventories, making a rebound in purchasing momentum unlikely. At the same time, since the overall DRAM industry remains oversupplied, even if PC demand is sluggish, suppliers still experienced difficulties in reducing their PC DRAM supply, resulting in a slight quarterly increase in the number of supplied bits. Therefore, PC DRAM pricing is forecast to drop by 3~8%

PC OEMs have revealed to market intelligence firm Trendfocus that Microsoft wants them to stop the use of hard-disk drives (HDDs, or mechanical hard-drives) as the main boot device in products powered by Windows 11, from 2023. It's not known how the company will go about enforcing this. One theory holds that it may amend the Minimum System Requirements for the operating system to specify a flash-based storage device, such as an SSD. If push comes to shove, the OS could even refuse to deploy on a machine with an HDD as the boot device.

What's also not known is how this affects SSHDs (hard drives with tiny flash-based storage media and an access-based data-juggling mechanism). Microsoft's decision should come as a boon for entry-level notebook and desktop buyers; as this segment sees OEMs use HDDs as the boot device, the most. There could be a push toward at least DRAMless QLC SSDs, or even single-chip SSDs. Regardless, it's clear that 2.5-inch HDDs are on their way out of the industry. HDD as a technology may still exist in the 3.5-inch form-factor, as they are in high demand from the data-center and surveillance markets as cold storage devices.

Although Micron is a predominantly US company, it also has some fabs in Japan, Singapore, the PRC and Taiwan, many of which became part of Micron after it bought other companies. Based on Micron's Computex presentation, it's getting ready to upgrade one of its three fabs in Taichung with extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography technology later this year. This is in preparation for the company to move to what it calls its 1-gamma process node for DRAM. Initially this seems to be a R&D node to help the company prepare for a wider rollout of EUV technology. Micron's current DRAM is based on its 1-alpha node and it's planning to move its 1-beta node into volume production next year, in its Taiwan fabs.

Micron's current 1-alpha node is based on DUV technology and was introduced last year, with the company claiming it had a 40 percent improvement in memory density over its previous 1Z node. Micron no longer mentions its die size in the commonly used nanometer measurement, but its 1Z node is said to have been around 11 to 13 nm, so it's likely that the 1-beta node will end up below 10 nm, if its 1-alpha node isn't already below 10 nm. Micron's longer term roadmap also includes a 1-delta node, which was meant to be its first EUV product, but this now seems to have been moved forward to its 1-gamma node. It's likely that Micron will be moving its other fabs to EUV in due time as well, but DRAM has so far not benefitted as much from node shrinks compared to most other types of integrated circuits, so it'll be interesting to see what gains EUV might bring.

Kingston FURY, the gaming division of Kingston Technology Company, Inc., a world leader in memory products and technology solutions, announced today the release of Kingston FURY Beast DDR5 RGB memory. The Kingston FURY Beast family boasts the first DDR5 module used to break 10,000MT/s, this latest addition to the portfolio features enhanced RGB lighting effects with a new heatspreader design that provides bright and smooth illumination.

Kingston FURY Beast DDR5 RGB is the perfect solution to customise the style of next-generation DDR5 systems. Intel XMP 3.0-Ready and Certified, and qualified by the world's leading motherboard manufacturers, Kingston FURY Beast DDR5 RGB lets users build with confidence. With Kingston FURY CTRL2 software, users can choose from a library of preset patterns and effects. Alternatively, users can customise the smooth and vibrant RGB effects to make their system completely unique. All Kingston FURY Beast DDR5 RGB modules feature the patented Kingston FURY Infrared Sync Technology, which keeps the lighting effects in perfect lockstep.

Sabrent Rocket 8 GB, 16 GB, and 32 GB DDR5-UDIMM's 4800 MHz Memory Modules for PC's. It seems like DDR4 has ruled the roost forever. Finally, new motherboards and architectures have allowed memory to grow wings with the advent of DDR5. Improved clock speeds promise up to twice the bandwidth of DDR4, all with lower voltage for better efficiency. To further help with that last bit, DDR5 has on-board power management to reduce motherboard cost and complexity. Sabrent's new DDR5 kits simply plug and play, install your memory kits of choice, enter the BIOS and hit AUTO, and reboot. For those that want to OC these kits, there is plenty of headroom to advance speeds if you want.

Reliability has also been improved by the introduction of on-die error-correction technology. Memory availability is improved by splitting the internal 64-bit (72-bit with ECC) channel into two independent, 32-bit channels (40-bit with ECC) and the addition of the same bank refresh. Combined with other features, including those that allow for up to four times the module capacity with consumer DRAM, DDR5 ensures your multi-core CPU won't be memory starved.

Transcend, released its industrial-grade 112-layer 3D NAND SSDs designed with DRAM cache. The outstanding random speeds and endurance are ready to serve the 5G communication and AIoT markets as digital transformation continues apace. Smart infrastructures have been deployed globally, and the demands for IoT, edge computing, and industrial automation heightened. Transcend's storage solutions are expected to satisfy these critical missions.

Transcend SSDs are built with high-quality 112-layer flash memory and a DRAM cache, which temporarily stores data, shortening the data processing time and increasing random read speed. As the data can be accessed on the DRAM cache instead of the flash, the number of NAND flash being written is reduced, prolonging the lifespan of flash memory while increasing the drive endurance. The drives come with a PCIe and SATA III 6 Gb/s interface, covering various form factors including 2.5", M.2, mSATA, and half-slim types. With 3K P/E cycles and capacities of up to 4 TB, the SSDs are capable of working under an extended temperature range (-20°C~75°C). Wide-temperature (-40°C~85°C) models are available to withstand harsh industrial conditions.

Samsung Electronics, the world leader in advanced memory technology, today announced its development of the industry's first 512-gigabyte (GB) Compute Express Link (CXL) DRAM, taking an important step toward the commercialization of CXL which will enable extremely high memory capacity with low latency in IT systems. Since introducing the industry's first CXL DRAM prototype with a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) controller in May 2021, Samsung has been working closely with data center, enterprise server and chipset companies to develop an improved, customizable CXL device.

The new CXL DRAM is built with an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) CXL controller and is the first to pack 512 GB of DDR5 DRAM, featuring four times the memory capacity and one-fifth the system latency over the previous Samsung CXL offering. "CXL DRAM will become a critical turning point for future computing structures by substantially advancing artificial intelligence (AI) and big data services, as we aggressively expand its usage in next-generation memory architectures including software-defined memory (SDM)," said Cheolmin Park, Vice President of Memory Global Sales & Marketing at Samsung Electronics, and Director of the CXL Consortium. "Samsung will continue to collaborate across the industry to develop and standardize CXL memory solutions, while fostering an increasingly solid ecosystem."

Despite rumours of both production issues and node delays, Samsung has assured its shareholders during its first quarter conference call, that the company is on track. Its yield rate from its 5 nm node was said to have entered maturity, meaning that yields have entered Samsung's expected levels. However, Samsung did admit that its 4 nm node had seen some delays with the ramp up, but it has now entered the expected yield rate curve. The company is also working on an new R&D line for its upcoming 3 nm node, but didn't go into any further details.

As for Samsung's DRAM products, there were rumours that its 12 nm 1b process node had hit some snags and that the company was going to skip ahead to its 1c node, something the company denied. Samsung added that the development of 1b was proceeding stably and that the 1c node is expected to be done on schedule. The company also said that media reports of issues at Samsung's foundry business were overblown and that order books are full, which is why some of its customers have had to produce additional parts with TSMC. Samsung's foundry business reportedly saw an increase in operating profit of 50 percent compared to last year, as well as an increase in revenue of 19 percent.

Viper, the trademarked gaming brand of PATRIOT and a global leader in performance memory, solid-state drives, and flash storage solutions today is proud to announce the market launch of their new VIPER VENOM RGB and non-RGB DDR5 high-performance DRAM memory kits. These brand-new VIPER VENOM DDR5 memory kits are available with and without the RGB illumination, it provides enhanced speeds ranging up to 6200 MHz with kit capacities of 16 GB-32 GB to meet the harsh demand for PC enthusiasts and hardcore gamers.

"Our VIPER Gaming fans waited quite a while for quality DDR5. The VIPER VENOM DDR5 is the first DDR5 DRAM that we distributed for hardware enthusiasts, hardcore gamers, and case modders addicted to unparalleled system performance and stability. VIPER's engineering team has put countless efforts to guarantee excellent compatibility and higher reliability across Intel 's latest platforms, currently." said Roger Shinmoto, Vice President of VIPER GAMING. "Our first launch of Venom DDR5 on 4/28 will feature the highest frequency version at 6200 MHz. We hope the enthusiasts or overclockers be able to experience the physical power of Viper Venom DDR5 at the market launch. However, due to the global shortage of memory chips, we have decided to launch the mainstream frequency models like 5200/5600/6000 MHz sometime in the coming months." He added.