An anonymous industry source has divulged a grim set of near-future circumstances to Tom's Hardware—they believe that "NAND packages consisting of four and eight NAND devices are already in short supply," thus causing an expected "skyrocketing" of prices within higher-capacity consumer SSD product lines. This sharp climb could happen within the first quarter of 2024, and the article outlines early warning signs—"price upticks are starting to show in retail already" as documented in graphs generated by CamelCamelCamel for a sampling consisting of three 2 TB NVMe models (Samsung 990 Pro, CORSAIR MP600 PRO LPX & Team Group MP44). Their analysis of this situation continued: "A single-sided SSD in an M.2-2280 form factor can carry four 3D NAND packages. Modern 2 TB and 4 TB drives in this form factor tend to use packages consisting of four or eight 3D NAND devices to ensure high performance. There is already a shortage of these packages today as SSD makers are struggling to find adequate supply."

Late summer going into the autumn of 2023 presented a great time to pick up SSD bargains, since manufacturers had flooded the market with far too much stock (following an oversupply of NAND units). The unnamed source believes that it could take two to three months for early 2024 NAND shortages to cause large ripple effects within consumer and enterprise markets. A January 9-dated TrendForce report proposes that NAND Flash contract prices are set to rise by 15 to 20% in Q1Y24, although Tom's Hardware reckons that this "acceptance of new rates is more likely among notebook makers." TrendForce anticipates enterprise SSD contract pricing to increase by roughly 18% - 23% within the first quarter of 2024.

Worldwide semiconductor revenue in 2023 totaled $533 billion, a decrease of 11.1% from 2022, according to preliminary results by Gartner, Inc.

"While the cyclicality in the semiconductor industry was present again in 2023, the market suffered a difficult year with memory revenue recording one of its worst declines in history," said Alan Priestley, VP Analyst at Gartner. "The underperforming market also negatively impacted several semiconductor vendors. Only 9 of the top 25 semiconductor vendors posted revenue growth in 2023, with 10 experiencing double-digit declines."

The combined semiconductor revenue of the top 25 semiconductor vendors declined 14.1% in 2023, accounting for 74.4% of the market, down from 77.2% in 2022.

Lexar, the leading consumer storage brand announces a collaboration with Silicon Motion, forming a significant partnership that will combine Lexar self-developed storage products with Silicon Motion industry-leading controller chips. This alliance aims to optimize portable storage solutions and enhance product competitiveness. During the first quarter of 2024, Lexar will be launching two Portable Solid-State Drive (PSSD) products.

The portable SSD single-chip controller solution from Silicon Motion, which combines integrated hardware, software, and data security features and is equipped with a USB 3.2 Gen 2 interface and four NAND channels, is utilized in both new devices. It meets the demands of game consoles and users who require high performance and low power consumption. These two new products are also highly portable and offer ample storage space due to the single-chip controller solution's compact size and increased storage capacity.

Patriot Memory brought their latest ware to the 2024 International CES that use recent advancements in tech on both the SSD and memory fronts. On the SSD front, this year sees 14 GB/s capable PCIe Gen 5 NVMe SSDs thanks to Phison's E26 Max14um controller; and a new crop of USB4 portable SSDs; while the memory front sees DDR5 speeds go far north of DDR5-6000, thanks to on-module CKDs. Patriot showed us examples of each.

First up, there's the Patriot Viper PV573 Gen 5 NVMe SSD. This thing comes in capacities of up to 4 TB, and combines a Phison E26 Max14um controller with Micron's latest B58R TLC NAND flash chips that offer 2400 MT/s per flash channel. The controller also gets some incremental thermal optimizations, which means the cooling solution for the PV573 is a 16.5 mm-tall fan-heatsink. The drive offers up to 14 GB/s sequential reads, with up to 12 GB/s sequential writes. There's also a slightly de-rated version of this drive, the Viper PV553, which has the same combination of controller and NAND flash, but with transfer speeds of up to 12.4 GB/s reads, with up to 11.8 GB/s writes.

Global semiconductor capacity is expected to increase 6.4% in 2024 to top the 30 million *wafers per month (wpm) mark for the first time after rising 5.5% to 29.6 wpm in 2023, SEMI announced today in its latest quarterly World Fab Forecast report.

The 2024 growth will be driven by capacity increases in leading-edge logic and foundry, applications including generative AI and high-performance computing (HPC), and the recovery in end-demand for chips. The capacity expansion slowed in 2023 due to softening semiconductor market demand and the resulting inventory correction.

Apple has been experimenting with Large Language Models (LLMs) that power most of today's AI applications. The company wants these LLMs to serve the users best and deliver them efficiently, which is a difficult task as they require a lot of resources, including compute and memory. Traditionally, LLMs have required AI accelerators in combination with large DRAM capacity to store model weights. However, Apple has published a paper that aims to bring LLMs to devices with limited memory capacity. By storing LLMs on NAND flash memory (regular storage), the method involves constructing an inference cost model that harmonizes with the flash memory behavior, guiding optimization in two critical areas: reducing the volume of data transferred from flash and reading data in larger, more contiguous chunks. Instead of storing the model weights on DRAM, Apple wants to utilize flash memory to store weights and only pull them on-demand to DRAM once it is needed.

Two principal techniques are introduced within this flash memory-informed framework: "windowing" and "row-column bundling." These methods collectively enable running models up to twice the size of the available DRAM, with a 4-5x and 20-25x increase in inference speed compared to native loading approaches on CPU and GPU, respectively. Integrating sparsity awareness, context-adaptive loading, and a hardware-oriented design pave the way for practical inference of LLMs on devices with limited memory, such as SoCs with 8/16/32 GB of available DRAM. Especially with DRAM prices outweighing NAND Flash, setups such as smartphone configurations could easily store and inference LLMs with multi-billion parameters, even if the DRAM available isn't sufficient. For a more technical deep dive, read the paper on arXiv here.

Phison Electronics Corp., a global leader in NAND flash controller and storage solutions, today announced the company's predictions for 2024 trends in NAND flash infrastructure deployment. The company predicts that rapid proliferation of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies will continue apace, with PCIe 5.0-based infrastructure providing high-performance, sustainable support for AI workload consistency as adoption rapidly expands. PCIe 5.0 NAND flash solutions will be at the core of a well-balanced hardware ecosystem, with private AI deployments such as on-premise large language models (LLMs) driving significant growth in both everyday AI and the infrastructure required to support it.

"We are moving past initial excitement over AI toward wider everyday deployment of the technology. In these configurations, high-quality AI output must be achieved by infrastructure designed to be secure, while also being affordable. The organizations that leverage AI to boost productivity will be incredibly successful," said Sebastien Jean, CTO, Phison US. "Building on the widespread proliferation of AI applications, infrastructure providers will be responsible for making certain that AI models do not run up against the limitations of memory - and NAND flash will become central to how we configure data center architectures to support today's developing AI market while laying the foundation for success in our fast-evolving digital future."

KIOXIA today released the maximum possible storage capacity for the microSDXC standard of 2 TB, with the release of the Exceria Plus G2 microSDXC 2 TB model. It is also the highest data storage density among any storage device by physical volume. To pull this off, KIOXIA innovated a NAND flash device that stacks sixteen 1 terabit (128 GB) layers, with a Z-height for the package being just 0.8 mm. The card meets UHS Class 3. application class A1, and video class V30, which means an assured write speed of at least 30 MB/s. The company claims maximum sequential read speeds of 100 MB/s, with 90 MB/s maximum write speeds. KIOXIA has initially released the card in its home market of Japan, and hopes to release it in other markets soon.

MSI, the world's leading gaming PC hardware brand, is excited to announce the launch of its next-gen flagship SSD, the SPATIUM M570 PRO FROZR, along with the high-performance model, SPATIUM M482, expanding its SSD product line. Featuring the revolutionary PHISON E26 PCIe Gen 5 controller paired with state-of-the-art 3D NAND flash and an innovative passive thermal solution, the SPATIUM M570 PRO FROZR introduces a new era in storage performance with lightning-fast read and write speeds of up to 12.4/11.8 GB/s.

This represents up to 1.8 times faster speeds compared to current PCIe 4.0 SSDs, accompanied by a temperature reduction of up to 20℃. The SPATIUM M482, built with high-quality, high-density 3D NAND flash, delivers top-tier performance for PCIe 4.0 with a sequential read speed of up to 7300 MB/s. Both models deliver a supremely responsive experience, gaining valuable milliseconds in latency for gameplay or processing gigabytes of files for professionals, content creators, and gamers. Performance-enhancing technologies include a DRAM cache buffer for M570 PRO, and a SLC cache for all announced models, supporting a comprehensive range of data error correction features including LPDC ECC and E2E Data Protection. These SSDs offer a high TBW (Terabytes Written) for excellent durability and longevity backed with a limited 5-year warranty.

You can check out our review of the MSI Spatium M570 Pro Frozr 2 TB SSD.

TrendForce reports a pivotal shift in the NAND Flash market for 3Q23, primarily driven by Samsung's strategic decision to reduce production. Initially, the market was clouded by uncertainty regarding end-user demand and fears of a subdued peak season, prompting buyers to adopt a conservative approach with low inventory and slow procurement. However, as market leaders like Samsung implemented substantial production cuts, buyers' attitudes shifted toward a more aggressive procurement strategy in anticipation of a market supply decrease. This led to a stabilization and even an uptick in NAND Flash contract prices by quarter-end, driving a 3% QoQ increase in bit shipments and culminating in a total revenue of US$9.229 billion, marking an approximate 2.9% increase.

The story unfolds with Kioxia and Micron—the only two to witness a dip in revenue rankings this quarter—while Samsung maintained its robust performance. Despite sluggish demand in the server sector, Samsung's fortunes rebounded thanks to a boost in consumer electronics, especially with high-capacity products in PCs and smartphones. Samsung emerged from a trough in Q3, with strategic inventory replenishments fueling further strategic stocking, and a shift in operational focus toward maximizing profit. This led to a minor 1-3% decrease in shipped bits, but a 1-3% increase in ASP, stabilizing Q3 NAND Flash revenue at US$2.9 billion.

Micron Technology, Inc., today announced it is shipping the Micron 3500 NVMe SSD, which leverages its 232-layer NAND to power demanding workloads for business applications, scientific computing, cutting-edge gaming and content creation, pushing the limits of what is possible. The Micron 3500 SSD, available in the M.2 form factor and with capacities up to 2 TB, provides a superior user experience over the competition as proven by its best-in-class SPECwpcsm performance, including an up to 71% improvement for product development applications.

"At Micron, we are focused on delivering exceptional products that best meet the rigorous needs of end-users," said Prasad Alluri, Micron's vice president and general manager of Client Storage. "With impressive specs like a remarkable 132% improvement in scientific computing benchmark scores, the 3500 SSD will turn your next PC or workstation into a powerhouse to enable insights and empower creativity."

Chinese memory maker Yangtze Memory Technology Corp (YMTC) is allegedly preparing its next-generation Xtacking 4.0 3D NAND flash architecture for next-generation memory chips. According to the documentation obtained by Tom's Hardware, YMTC has developed two SKUs based on the upgraded Xtacking 4.0: X4-9060, a 128-layer three-bit-per-cell (TLC) 3D NAND, and the X4-9070, a 232-layer TLC 3D NAND. By using string stacking on both of these SKUs, YMTC plans to make the 3D NAND work by incorporating arrays with 64 and 116 active layers stacked on top of each other. This way, the export regulation rules from the US government are met, and the company can use the tools that are not under the sanction list.

While YMTC has yet to fully disclose the specific advantages of the Xtacking 4.0 technology, the industry anticipates significant enhancements in data transfer speeds and storage density. These improvements are expected to stem from increased plane counts for optimized parallel processing, refined bit/word line configurations to minimize latency, and the development of modified chip variants to boost production yields. When YMTC announced Xtacking 3.0, the company offered 128-layer TLC and 232-layer four-bit-per-cell (QLC) variants and was the first company to achieve 200+ layer count in the 3D NAND space. The Xtacking 3.0 architecture incorporates string stacking and hybrid bonding techniques and uses a mature process node for the chip's CMOS underlayer. We have to wait for the final Xtacking 4.0 details when YMTC's officially launches the SKUs.

TrendForce has issued its latest findings, indicating that the global SSD market has rectified its supply and demand dynamics in 2022, following a resolution in the shortage of master control ICs that had hampered the market in 2021. Despite the normalization of supply, global SSD shipments witnessed a decline, with only 114 million units shipped in 2022—a 10.7% decrease from the prior year.

The top three SSD shipment leaders of 2022 were Kingston, ADATA, and Lexar, with Kingston and ADATA maintaining solid advantages and experiencing growth in market share over 2021. Lexar's growth was attributed to an aggressive push for revenue in anticipation of going public. Kimtigo, in 2022, made significant strides in expanding into industrial control and OEM markets, which in turn boosted its shipment volume and market share. Netac maintained its competitive edge in the SSD market alongside securing several government orders in the enterprise SSD sector, keeping its market share and ranking consistent with the previous year.

Yangtze Memory Technologies Corp (YMTC), China's biggest NAND flash memory manufacturer, has successfully raised billions of US Dollars in new capital to adapt to challenging US restrictions. According to the report from Financial Times, YMTC, which was added to a trade blacklist in December and barred from procuring US equipment to manufacture chips, exceeded its funding target. However, the exact amount remains undisclosed. The capital increase became necessary due to YMTC's substantial spending on finding alternative equipment and developing new components and core chipmaking tools. This financing round was oversubscribed by domestic investors, reflecting support for YMTC amid tightening US restrictions.

Last year, YMTC managed to raise 50 billion Chinese Yuan or about 7 billion US Dollars for equipment. Spending it all on the supply chain, the company is now looking to bolster its offerings with additional equipment for its memory facilities. One of the investors in the funding rally for YMTC has made a statement for Finanical Times: "If Chinese companies have equipment that can be used, [YMTC] will use it. If not, it will see if countries other than the US can sell to it. If that doesn't work, YMTC will develop it together with the supplier." This statement indicates that the company is looking into several options, where one is simply developing its custom machinery with the suppliers.

If you've been putting off purchasing that shiny new SSD, you might want to consider doing it before the end of the year, especially if you've been eyeing a model from Samsung, as the company will reportedly be increasing the pricing of its NAND flash starting now. NAND flash might have hit rock bottom, with all major manufacturers except possibly YMTC having cut production to try to push up pricing, but so far, nothing appears to have worked. Despite this, reports coming out of Taiwan's UDN News via TrendForce are suggesting that Samsung is getting ready to hike the price of its NAND flash products by 20 percent per quarter until the middle of 2024.

Admittedly this only gives Samsung about two and a half quarters to increase the pricing, but that's potentially three increases of 20 percent per increase. Samsung has reportedly already increased its NAND wafer prices by 10 to 20 percent this quarter, which according to TrendForce has had a knock on effect on enterprise SSD pricing, which has increased by five to 10 percent already. TrendForce is forecasting a consumer SSD price increase of eight to 13 percent before the end of the year, which might not seem like much, but if the pricing increases for another couple of quarters, we could be looking at 30 to 40 percent more expensive SSDs in the not too distant future. As such, it's going to be worth keeping an eye on SSD pricing, as it's likely that Samsung's competitors will follow suit and increase their NAND pricing as well, which will affect the broader market.

Samsung Electronics today reported financial results for the third quarter ended September 30, 2023. Total consolidated revenue was KRW 67.40 trillion, a 12% increase from the previous quarter, mainly due to new smartphone releases and higher sales of premium display products. Operating profit rose sequentially to KRW 2.43 trillion based on strong sales of flagship models in mobile and strong demand for displays, as losses at the Device Solutions (DS) Division narrowed.

The Memory Business reduced losses sequentially as sales of high valued-added products and average selling prices somewhat increased. Earnings in system semiconductors were impacted by a delay in demand recovery for major applications, but the Foundry Business posted a new quarterly high for new backlog from design wins. The mobile panel business reported a significant increase in earnings on the back of new flagship model releases by major customers, while the large panel business narrowed losses in the quarter. The Device eXperience (DX) Division achieved solid results due to robust sales of premium smartphones and TVs. Revenue at the Networks Business declined in major overseas markets as mobile operators scaled back investments.

According to sources close to Nikkei, the merger discussions between Western Digital and Kioxia has been terminated. Western Digital notified Kioxia about scrapping the possible transaction, citing the failure to obtain approval from SK Hynix, a significant shareholder of Kioxia, and disagreements over merger terms with Bain Capital, Kioxia's main shareholder. Western Digital and Kioxia, holding the fourth and second positions in the global NAND flash memory market, respectively, planned to join their NAND operations under one roof to create the world's largest maker of NAND memory and potentially enhance their competitive standing and profitability.

The merger was seen as a strategic move to rival Samsung's market dominance by leveraging the companies' combined resources and capabilities, and the plan was to happen as soon as the end of this month. However, the merger faced substantial opposition from SK Hynix, the world's third-largest NAND supplier with a 17.8% market share. Having invested more than $2.6 billion in a consortium led by Bain Capital that previously acquired Kioxia in 2018, SK Hynix expressed concerns that the proposed merger would adversely impact its market position and future collaboration opportunities with Kioxia. This opposition proved to be a pivotal obstacle, preventing the realization of the merger.

SK hynix Inc., today reported the financial results for the third quarter ended September 30, 2023. The company recorded revenues of 9.066 trillion won, operating losses of 1.792 trillion won and net losses of 2.185 trillion won in the three-month period. The operating and net margins were a negative 20% and 24%, respectively. After bottoming out in the first quarter, the business has been on a steady recovery track, helped by growing demand for products such as high-performance memory chips, the company said.

"Revenues grew 24%, while operating losses narrowed 38%, compared with the previous quarter, thanks to strong demand for high-performance mobile flagship products and HBM3, a key product for AI applications, and high-capacity DDR5," the company said, adding that a turnaround of the DRAM business following two quarters of losses is particularly hopeful. SK hynix attributed the growth in sales to increased shipments of both DRAM and NAND and a rise in the average selling price.

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., a world leader in advanced memory technology, today held its annual Memory Tech Day, showcasing industry-first innovations and new memory products to accelerate technological advancements across future applications—including the cloud, edge devices and automotive vehicles.

Attended by about 600 customers, partners and industry experts, the event served as a platform for Samsung executives to expand on the company's vision for "Memory Reimagined," covering long-term plans to continue its memory technology leadership, outlook on market trends and sustainability goals. The company also presented new product innovations such as the HBM3E Shinebolt, LPDDR5X CAMM2 and Detachable AutoSSD.

Jung-Bae Lee, President and Head of Memory Business of Samsung Electronics, the world's largest NAND memory supplier, has noted in the blog post that Samsung plans to develop its 9th Generation V-NAND memory with over 300 layers, aiming for mass production in 2024. Samsung's V-NAND uses a double-stack structure and is expected to have more active layers than its competitors' 3D NAND memory, such as SK Hynix's forthcoming 321-layer memory. The increase in layers allows Samsung to enhance storage density and performance in its future 3D NAND devices, focusing on input/output (I/O) speed. While the specific performance details of Samsung's 9th Generation V-NAND remain undisclosed, the memory is expected to be used in next-generation PCIe SSDs with the PCIe 5.0 standard.

Jung-Bae Lee has noted: "New structural and material innovations will be critical in the upcoming era of sub-10-nanometer (nm) DRAM and 1,000-layer vertical V-NAND. As such, we are developing 3D stacked structures and new materials for DRAM while increasing layer count, decreasing height, and minimizing cell interference for V-NAND." The 9th installment of V-NAND, scheduled for 2024, is utilizing 11 nm-class DRAM. Additionally, the blog post reassures the commitment to CXL Memory Modules (CMM), which will enable the composable infrastructure of next-generation systems, especially with high-capacity SSDs powered by V-NAND.

The drawn out merger talks between Kioxia and Western Digital's memory and NAND flash manufacturing businesses appears to have hit an unexpected bump on the road, in the shape of SK Hynix according to the Nikkei. As it happens, SK Hynix holds an indirect stake in Kioxia and as such, they need to approve the merger for it to be able to happen. Today, SK Hynix is the second biggest manufacturer of NAND flash, somewhat behind Samsung, but if the Kioxia WD merger were to take place, SK Hynix would be pushed into a third place in the market, which wouldn't benefit the company.

As such, SK Hynix is trying to push for a rather odd option for Kioxia, where SK Hynix wants Japanese SoftBank—who owns among other things, Arm—to step in as a partner with Kioxia. However, what SK Hynix seems to have forgotten is that WD's memory chips are made in the same fab as Kioxia's and it's highly unlikely that WD would be keen on seeing this last minute proposal by SK Hynix play out. The Kioxia WD merger would result in a new company where Kioxia would own 63 percent and WD 37 percent, based on current assets. However, WD is meant to add further capital to the merger, so it can get a 50.1 percent stake in the final company for its shareholders, with Kioxia ending up with 49.9 percent.

Swissbit, a leading manufacturer of industrial-grade flash memory solutions, today announced the release of its new product line of SATA SSDs. The series X-73, X-75 and X-78 are powered by cutting-edge industrial 112-layer 3D NAND technology, bringing unprecedented reliability and extended lifespan to the world's most crucial networks. The latest portfolio is built with Swissbit's dedication to quality and innovation. The new portfolio not only offers reduced Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) thanks to its extended product life cycle, but also comes with powersafe SSDs - Swissbit's industry-leading power loss protection feature.

The expanded SSD product line includes M.2 2242, M.2 2280, Slim SATA MO-297, and 2.5" form factors, and offers a wide capacity range from 40 GB up to 1.92 TB. With an industry-leading 100k P/E cycles, the high endurance versions in pSLC mode are aimed at addressing the increasing market demand for durable and reliable data storage solutions.

Micron Technology, Inc., today announced the Micron 7500 NVMe SSD for data center workloads. The 7500 SSD is the world's only mainstream data center SSD to feature 200+ layer NAND, utilizing Micron's 232-layer NAND and enabling up to 242% better random write performance than competitive drives. The SSD also delivers sub-1 millisecond (1 ms) latency for 6x9s quality-of-service (QoS) in mainstream drives, creating a new, industry-leading class of SSDs perfectly suited to deliver the consistency required in the cloud. The Micron 7500 SSD is designed to meet the demands of storage-intensive data center workloads, such as artificial intelligence (AI), databases, content delivery, real-time analytics, social media platforms, cloud computing and virtualization. Its remarkable QoS and performance provide rapid, reliable responsiveness for these demanding workloads. For example, the drive improves RocksDB performance by up to 2.1 times versus competitive SSDs.

"The Micron 7500 SSD is a game-changer for data center workloads, delivering blazing-fast performance, exceptional QoS reliability and advanced security unmatched by any other SSD in its class," said Alvaro Toledo, vice president and general manager of Micron's Data Center Storage group. "Thanks to Micron's industry-leading 232-layer NAND technology, we have achieved a breakthrough in latency, enabling response times below 1 ms for 6x9s QoS in mainstream drives. This means our customers can run their data-intensive workloads faster, more efficiently and with more predictability than ever before."

Micron Technology, Inc., one of the world's largest semiconductor companies, today marked a historic day with the opening of its new cutting-edge assembly and test facility in Batu Kawan, Penang, alongside the celebration of Micron's 45th anniversary. A ceremony officiated by Chief Minister of Penang, Yang Amat Berhormat Tuan Chow Kon Yeow, underscored the regional significance of Micron's expansion, highlighting the company's four and a half decades of innovation and excellence.

Micron previously invested $1 billion and will add up to another billion including construction and full equipping of this new facility over the next few years in Penang to increase factory space to a total of 1.5 million square feet. This expansion enables Micron Malaysia to boost production output and further strengthen its assembly and test capabilities, allowing it to supply leading-edge NAND, PCDRAM and SSD modules to meet the growing demand for transformative technologies such as artificial intelligence and autonomous or electric vehicles.

Hardware cybersecurity pioneer and industrial NAND storage specialist, Flexxon, today announced the launch of its latest security product, Xsign. Now available globally, the Xsign provides enhanced security through an innovative approach to unlocking sensitive data reserved only for authorized personnel.

With the use of the Xsign hardware security key, organisations will be provided with a tailored software platform that syncs only with the Xsign key, thereby granting access to pre-defined users. Beyond its function as a security key, the Xsign also operates as a traditional storage card, equipped with Flexxon's industry leading reliability and performance. Key beneficiaries of the solution include industries that handle personal and sensitive data like the healthcare, finance, and government and defense sectors.