TrendForce reports that a recovery in demand for general servers—coupled with an increased production share of HBM by DRAM suppliers—has led suppliers to maintain their stance on hiking prices. As a result, the ASP of DRAM in the third quarter is expected to continue rising, with an anticipated increase of 8-13%. The price of conventional DRAM is expected to rise by 5-10%, showing a slight contraction compared to the increase in the second quarter.

TrendForce notes that buyers were more conservative about restocking in the second, and inventory levels on both the supplier and buyer sides did not show significant changes. Looking ahead to the third quarter, there is still room for inventory replenishment for smartphones and CSPs, and the peak season for production is soon to commence. Consequently, it is expected that smartphones and servers will drive an increase in memory shipments in the third quarter.

TrendForce's latest forecasts reveal contract prices for DRAM in the second quarter are expected to increase by 13-18%, while NAND Flash contract prices have been adjusted to a 15-20% Only eMMC/UFS will be seeing a smaller price increase of about 10%.

Before the 4/03 earthquake, TrendForce had initially predicted that DRAM contract prices would see a seasonal rise of 3-8% and NAND Flash 13-18%, significantly tapering from Q1 as seen from spot price indicators which showed weakening price momentum and reduced transaction volumes. This was primarily due to subdued demand outside of AI applications, particularly with no signs of recovery in demand for notebooks and smartphones. Inventory levels were gradually increasing, especially among PC OEMs. Additionally, with DRAM and NAND Flash prices having risen for 2-3 consecutive quarters, the willingness of buyers to accept further substantial price increases had diminished.

Two months ago, NVIDIA introduced its GeForce RTX 40 SUPER series to the market, bringing a trio of models: RTX 4070 SUPER, RTX 4070 Ti SUPER, and RTX 4080 SUPER. Today, according to the report from ComputerBase, NVIDIA's latest trio has recorded a drop in pricing recently, and it now retails under MSRP in German stores. The RTX 4070 SUPER started with an MSRP of 659 Euros ($599 in the US) and is now available from 589 Euros. Its older brother, the GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER, started with an MSRP listing of 889 Euros ($799 in the US) and is now retailing from 840 Euros. Lastly, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER has been listed at 1,109 Euros ($999 in the US) and is now retailing with a small discount at 1,092 Euros.

Once NVIDIA launched a new GPU generation, it became a custom for these cards to be retailed over their MSRP long before prices were adjusted and settled. However, with the latest SUPER refresh, this seems to be one of the fastest price adjustments. This could be caused by either an improvement in the supply chain or leveled supply and demand, making it so that these cards are finally trading below their launch-level MSRPs.

TrendForce reports a substantial 24.5% QoQ increase in NAND Flash industry revenue, hitting US$11.49 billion in 4Q23. This surge is attributed to a stabilization in end-demand spurred by year-end promotions, along with an expansion in component market orders driven by price chasing, leading to robust bit shipments compared to the same period last year. Additionally, the corporate sector's continued positive outlook for 2024 demand—compared to 2023—and strategic stockpiling have further fueled this growth.

Looking ahead to 1Q24, despite it traditionally being an off-season, the NAND Flash industry is expected to see a continued increase in revenue by another 20%. This anticipation is underpinned by significant improvements in supply chain inventory levels and ongoing price rises, with clients ramping up their orders to sidestep potential supply shortages and escalating costs. The ongoing expansion of order sizes is expected to drive NAND Flash contract prices up by an average of 25%.

The NVIDIA H100 Tensor Core GPU was last year's hot item for HPC and AI industry segments—the largest purchasers were reported to have acquired up to 150,000 units each. Demand grew so much that lead times of 36 to 52 weeks became the norm for H100-based server equipment. The latest rumblings indicate that things have stabilized—so much so that some organizations are "offloading chips" as the supply crunch cools off. Apparently it is more cost-effective to rent AI processing sessions through cloud service providers (CSPs)—the big three being Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure.

According to a mid-February Seeking Alpha report, wait times for the NVIDIA H100 80 GB GPU model have been reduced down to around three to four months. The Information believes that some companies have already reduced their order counts, while others have hardware sitting around, completely unused. Maintenance complexity and costs are reportedly cited as a main factors in "offloading" unneeded equipment, and turning to renting server time from CSPs. Despite improved supply conditions, AI GPU demand is still growing—driven mainly by organizations dealing with LLM models. A prime example being Open AI—as pointed out by The Information—insider murmurings have Sam Altman & Co. seeking out alternative solutions and production avenues.

According to a recent MyDrivers news piece, graphics card models based on AMD's China-exclusive Radeon RX 6750 GRE GPU are "selling like hotcakes" in the region. Team Red's Radeon RX 6750 GRE was released last October, and made available in two memory configurations: 10 GB with a recommended starting price of 2219 RMB (~$312), and 12 GB going for 2379 RMB (~$335). Industry experts were surprised to hear about the mid-range Navi 22 (RDNA 2) GRE card becoming a popular choice in mainstream and budget-conscious gaming circles—as of early January, AMD has taken the unusual step of delaying its Radeon RX 7600 XT launch in China.

Chinese hardware news outlets are reporting that the 12 GB variant is selling for as low as 2239 RMB (~$315) at select retail sites—customers are reported to be snapping these cards up due to an irresistible "price-to-performance ratio," despite onboard technology being almost three years old. AMD is reported to be implementing a "strict" price control policy to prevent unbalanced supply conditions—Wccftech suggests that adjustment "instructions" have been sent out to AIB partners. The MyDrivers article points out that the policy adjustments will take time to stabilize Radeon RX 6750 GRE prices—the aforementioned 2239 RMB shop offers were still live late last week (report is dated January 26).

OpenAI CEO, Sam Altman, had a turbulent winter 2023 career moment, but appears to be going all in with his company's future interests. A Bloomberg report suggests that the tech visionary has initiated a major fundraising initiative for the construction of OpenAI-specific semiconductor production plants. The AI evangelist reckons that his industry will become prevalent enough to demand a dedicated network of manufacturing facilities—the U.S. based artificial intelligence (AI) research organization is (reportedly) exploring custom artificial intelligence chip designs. Proprietary AI-focused GPUs and accelerators are not novelties at this stage in time—many top tech companies rely on NVIDIA solutions, but are keen to deploy custom-built hardware in the near future.

OpenAI's popular ChatGPT system is reliant on NVIDIA H100 and A100 GPUs, but tailor-made alternatives seem to be the desired route for Altman & Co. The "on their own terms" pathway seemingly skips an expected/traditional chip manufacturing process—the big foundries could struggle to keep up with demand for AI-oriented silicon. G42 (an Abu Dhabi-based AI development holding company) and SoftBank Group are mentioned as prime investment partners in OpenAI's fledgling scheme—Bloomberg proposes that Altman's team is negotiating a $8 to 10 billion deal with top brass at G42. OpenAI's planned creation of its own foundry network is certainly a lofty and costly goal—the report does not specify whether existing facilities will be purchased and overhauled, or new plants being constructed entirely from scratch.

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.

TSMC Chairman Mark Liu was asked to comment on all things artificial intelligence-related at the SEMICON Taiwan 2023 industry event. According to a Nikkei Asia report, he foresees supply constraints lasting until the tail end of 2024: "It's not the shortage of AI chips. It's the shortage of our chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (COWOS) capacity...Currently, we can't fulfill 100% of our customers' needs, but we try to support about 80%. We think this is a temporary phenomenon. After our expansion of advanced chip packaging capacity, it should be alleviated in one and a half years." He cites a recent and very "sudden" spike in demand for COWOS, with numbers tripling within the span of a year. Market leader NVIDIA relies on TSMC's advanced packaging system—most notably with the production of highly-prized A100 and H100 series Tensor Core compute GPUs.

These issues are deemed a "temporary" problem—it could take around 18 months to eliminate production output "bottlenecks." TSMC is racing to bolster its native activities with new facilities—plans for a new $2.9 billion advanced chip packaging plant (in Miaoli County) were disclosed during summer time. Liu reckons that industry-wide innovation is necessary to meet growing demand through new methods to "connect, package and stack chips." Liu elaborated: "We are now putting together many chips into a tightly integrated massive interconnect system. This is a paradigm shift in semiconductor technology integration." The TSMC boss reckons that processing units fielding over one trillion transistors are viable within the next decade: "it's through packaging with multiple chips that this could be possible.".

NVIDIA could be adjusting its enterprise-grade GPU production strategies for the Chinese market, according to an article published by MyDriver—despite major sanctions placed on semiconductor imports, Team Green is doing plenty of business with tech firms operating in the region thanks to an uptick in AI-related activities. NVIDIA offers two market specific accelerator models that have been cut down to conform to rules and regulations—the more powerful and expensive (250K RMB/~$35K) H800 is an adaptation of the western H100 GPU, while the A800 is a legal market alternative to the older A100.

The report proposes that NVIDIA is considering plans to reduce factory output of the A800 (sold for 100K RMB/~$14K per unit), so clients will be semi-forced into purchasing the higher-end H800 model instead (if they require a significant number of GPUs). The A800 seems to be the more popular choice for the majority of companies at the moment, with the heavy hitters—Alibaba, Baidu, Tencent, Jitwei and ByteDance—flexing their spending muscles and splurging on mixed shipments of the two accelerators. By limiting supplies of the lesser A800, Team Green could be generating more profit by prioritizing the more expensive (and readily available) model.

TrendForce reports that OEMs have continued making concerted efforts to scale back production. However, given that the trajectory of market demand is still unclear, it's expected that the NAND Flash market will continue to be in a state of oversupply in 3Q23. Cautious inventory management by buyers is preventing a stabilization in NAND Flash prices even with an anticipated seasonal surge in demand for 2H23. TrendForce predicts that NAND Flash wafers will be the first to see a price hike in 3Q23 as prices for module products such as SSDs, eMMCs, and UFS will likely continue to fall due to tepid downstream demand. Consequently, the overall ASP of NAND Flash is forecast to continue dropping by about 3~8% in 3Q23, though a possibility exists prices may recover in 4Q23.

Client SSD: Although notebook shipments are expected to gradually recover in 3Q23, reversing an oversupply of SSD will continue to be challenging. Furthermore, a portion of suppliers have implemented aggressive promotions to secure customer orders and hit shipping targets in light of weakened demand and less-than-satisfactory order volumes from major clients, putting pressure on other suppliers. TrendForce estimates that the ASP of client SSDs will fall by 8~13% in the third quarter.

The top technology companies in China have been ordering a lot of NVIDIA enterprise-grade GPUs, even though U.S. sanctions have prevented the shipment of A100 and H100 models (plus AMD's MI250 Instinct accelerator) to the nation in recent times. ByteDance - best known for developing TikTok - managed to grab plenty of Ampere enterprise units prior to last Autumn's cutoff period, and has continued to purchase Team Green's H800 GPU, which is a cut-down version of the H100 flagship. Smaller outfits are relying on less direct sources to acquire HBC GPUs—according to a Reuters investigative article, international trade restrictions have created a thriving black market for "top-end NVIDIA AI chips."

Their reporters carried out some on-site sleuthing: "Visiting the famed Huaqiangbei electronics area in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen is a good bet - in particular, the SEG Plaza skyscraper whose first 10 floors are crammed with shops selling everything from camera parts to drones. The chips are not advertised but asking discreetly works...They don't come cheap. Two vendors there, who spoke with Reuters in person on condition of anonymity, said they could provide small numbers of A100 artificial intelligence chips made by the U.S. chip designer, pricing them at $20,000 a piece - double the usual price."

The price of GDDR6 memory has continued to fall sharply - over recent financial quarters - due to an apparent decrease in demand for graphics cards. Supply shortages are also a thing of the past—industry experts think that manufacturers have been having an easier time acquiring components since late 2021, but that also means that the likes of NVIDIA and AMD have been paying less for VRAM packages. Graphics card enthusiasts will be questioning why these savings have not been passed on swiftly to the customer, as technology news outlets (this week) have been picking up on interesting data—it demonstrates that spot prices of GDDR6 have decreased to less than a quarter of their value from a year and a half ago. 3DCenter.org has presented a case example of 8 GB GDDR6 now costing $27 via the spot market (through DRAMeXchange's tracking system), although manufacturers will be paying less than that due to direct contract agreements with their favored memory chip maker/supplier.

A 3DCenter.org staffer had difficulty sourcing the price of 16 Gb GDDR6 VRAM ICs on the spot market, so it is tricky to paint a comparative picture of how much more expensive it is to equip a "budget friendly" graphics card with a larger allocation of video memory, when the bill-of-materials (BoM) and limits presented by narrow bus widths are taken into account. NVIDIA is releasing a GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 16 GB variant in July, but the latest batch of low to mid-range models (GeForce RTX 4060-series and Radeon RX 7600) are still 8 GB affairs. Tom's Hardware points to GPU makers sticking with traditional specification hierarchy for the most part going forward: "(models) with double the VRAM (two 16 Gb chips per channel on both sides of the PCB) are usually reserved for the more lucrative professional GPU market."

TSMC is quickly reacting to a surge in demand for NVIDIA hardware following an AI industry boom - the Taiwanese semiconductor contract manufacturer is reportedly planning to further expand its advanced packaging capabilities, due to current production lines hitting maximum capacity. News outlets have also cited the growth of 5G technology and Internet of Things (IoT) device markets as contributing factors. DigiTimes Asia reports that clients are snapping up chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) at an increased and unprecedented rate. TSMC has decided to provide NVIDIA - an extremely high profile customer - with an extra 10,000 CoWoS wafers. The article sourced information from a recent company shareholder meeting, where chairman Mark Liu discussed these expansions plans. He outlined improved factory facilities that will result in an additional output of 1,000 to 2,000 wafers per month. TSMC is set to upgrade equipment at its existing facilities in order to meet increasing demand.

Trendforce has also published its evaluation from the same TSMC shareholding meeting: "Due to the generative AI trend initiated by ChatGPT, the demand for advanced packaging orders for TSMC has increased, forcing an increase in advanced packaging capacity. TSMC also pointed out that the demand for TSMC's advanced packaging capacity far exceeds the existing capacity, and it is forced to increase production as quickly as possible. Chairman Mark Liu stated that the current investment in R&D focuses on two legs, namely 3D IC (chip stacking) and advanced packaging...At present, three-quarters of TSMC's R&D expenditure is used for advanced processes, and one quarter for mature and special processes, with advanced packaging falling under mature and special processes."

Russian business news outlet Kommersant has learned from industry figures that prices of natively-designed computer processors have been on the rise since the beginning of 2023. Domestic manufacturers of PC, server and storage systems are requiring greater supplies of CPUs designed by Baikal Electronics and MCST - the publication posits that growing demand and logistical issues have become the root cause of recent climbs in cost - individuals involved in the computer hardware supply chain have suggested that some processor models have doubled in price. Sergey Ovchinnikov, the chief executive of Norsi-Trans (a server and data storage firm) provided comment: "Production of Russian chips at foreign fabs has become more complex, leading to extended logistics chains and, consequently, an increase in the cost of the final component." International trade sanctions have not prevented the arrival of fresh silicon into the region - Ovchinnikov claims that an unnamed foundry is able to supply (likely via proxy) Russian developers with computer processors.

Kommersant's investigation found out that Baikal's BE-T1000 CPU is now sold for roughly $110 (8900 Rubles) at a popular computer hardware e-tailer (ChipDip) in the region. The very basic dual core MIPS32r5 (28 nm) processor was readily available for $50 (3990 rubles) back in 2018, so its price has risen by 220% in recent times. TSMC was contracted as the manufacturer of Baikal's BE-T1000 CPU, and the Taiwanese foundry started producing these SoCs in 2016. A Baikal Electronics representative has denied any involvement in driving up MSRP, and states that it is up to distributors and retail outfits to determine prices. The company suspects that very old stock is being sold at inflated rates - Kommersant was unable to contact anyone at ChipDip for a statement.

NVIDIA's fresh faced GeForce RTX 4070 graphic card range has not been flying off shelves around the world, and Team Green could be pivoting their approach somewhat after receiving lower than expected sales figures via company reports. Their component suppliers have already mentioned that the entire GeForce RTX 40 family is on a comfortably steady production schedule - with no instructions received from HQ to up the ante. In the latest development this week, individuals with insider knowledge of factory schedules in China have claimed that NVIDIA has informed board partners (AICs) that output for the GeForce RTX 4070 line is getting paused for a month. The temporary cutoff in factory output will allow, they hope, for the currently sitting stock to get cleared out. A substantial surplus of GeForce RTX 4070 cards could disrupt distribution networks and overstock warehouses.

Industry watchdogs have theorized that NVIDIA's board partners are having a difficult time offloading their premium tier RTX 4070 custom cards onto paying customers. The Founders Edition and closer-to-reference models have sold quite respectable numbers according to early analyses, but more expensive options are considered to be too expensive by the customer base. There is apparent crossover in pricing with the fancier GeForce RTX 4070 Ti range, and a savvy buyer will tend toward superior silicon rather than a shiny cooling solution combined with a factory-issued overclock. A computer hardware retailer in the UK, Novatech, has chosen to cut the price of a Palit RTX 4070 Dual model by £40/$50, as reported yesterday. The asking price has since returned closer to RRP - at the time of writing it stands at £579.98.

Two of NVIDIA's providers of Outsourced Semiconductor Assembly and Test (OSAT) services are of the opinion that Team Green is happy to stay the course with its Ada Lovelace GPU production schedule. The backend providers Siliconware Precision Industries (SPIL) and King Yuan Electronics (KYEC) have not been given any new instructions with regard to shifts (up or down) in component assembly output. It is theorized that NVIDIA is aiming to clear any stock backlogs of graphics card models featuring previous generation architecture - namely the second gen GeForce RTX 30-series, built on Ampere.

The retail demand for the newly released GeForce RTX 4070 cards has been mild, to say the least - with plenty of inventory remaining on the shelves in the States. Critical reception of the midweight GeForce RTX GPU has also been middling - many have advised that budget conscience buyers should potentially look elsewhere. The market for discrete graphics card is in a fairly healthy state at the moment, with major production issues and fractured supply chains becoming lesser concerns for electronics manufacturers. NVIDIA has the advantage of being a market leader, and seems to be quite content with proceedings - but their analysts are very likely keeping an eye on the RTX 4070 sales figures. Its products are out and readily available - no need to change direction too sharply.

Nintendo ceased selling products and wound down its operations in Russia last March, soon after the invasion of Ukraine by Russian military forces. Other notable games software and hardware companies also announced their withdrawal at a similar time. Microsoft/Xbox, Sony/PlayStation, Activision Blizzard, Electronic Arts, CD Projekt, Sega, Ubisoft and Take-Two Interactive are among a group that discontinued the sale and distribution of games products in Russian territory markets. Lawmakers within Russia have taken a fairly lax stance on the import of consumer and industrial goods - it is legal to do so, even minus a rightsholder's approval. It seems that a couple of Nintendo of Russia employees have taken advantage of loose import regulations in the past few months.

According to a news piece published online by Kommersant (a Russian politics and business newspaper) a relatively new operation registered under the company name "Achivka LLC" is involved in the sale and distribution of Nintendo games in Russian territories. Nintendo Russia CEO Yasha Haddaji is reported to be the leader and majority owner of Achivka LLC, and former corporate events manager Ksenia Kachalova is listed as being a minority stakeholder in the company. The operation's premises appear to match the exact address for Nintendo of Russia. The firm is involved in the importing (from an unknown source) and selling of Nintendo games - the Kommersant article includes photographic evidence - a physical copy of Metroid Prime Remastered is demonstrated as bearing an Achivka stick-on label. The English translation of the company name is Achievement, which is an appropriate word association in the world of high score driven computer games.

Update Apr 18th: Nintendo has confirmed that Yasha Haddazhi, CEO of the Russian Office, remains as a current employee of the international company - but only on a temporary basis. Nintendo continues to distance itself from Achivka LLC and the selling of rebadged products in Russian territories. See below for more details.