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DRAM prices to drop 3-8% due to Ukraine war, inflation

Wait, we’ll explain

Dylan Martin Mon 20 Jun 2022 // 19:48 UTC

As the world continues to grapple with unrelenting inflation for many products and services, the trend of rising prices is expected to have the opposite impact on memory chips for PCs, servers, smartphones, graphics processors, and other devices.
Taiwanese research firm TrendForce said Monday that DRAM pricing for commercial buyers is forecast to drop around three to eight percent across those markets in the third quarter compared to the previous three months. Even prices for DDR5 modules in the PC market could drop as much as five percent from July to September.
This could result in DRAM buyers, such as system vendors and distributors, reducing prices for end users if they hope to stimulate demand in markets like PC and smartphones where sales have waned. We suppose they could try to profit on the decreased memory prices, but with many people tightening their budgets, we hope this won't be the case.

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Chinese startup hires chip godfather and TSMC vet to break into DRAM biz

They're putting a crew together, and Beijing's tossed in $750m to get things started

Laura Dobberstein Thu 23 Jun 2022 // 12:19 UTC

A Chinese state-backed startup has hired legendary Japanese chip exec Yukio Sakamoto as part of a strategy to launch a local DRAM industry.
Chinese press last week reported that Sakamoto has joined an outfit named SwaySure, also known as Shenzhen Sheng Weixu Technology Company or Sheng Weixu for brevity.
Sakamoto's last gig was as senior vice president of Chinese company Tsinghua Unigroup, where he was hired to build up a 100-employee team in Japan with the aim of making DRAM products in Chongqing, China. That effort reportedly faced challenges along the way – some related to US sanctions, others from recruitment.

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Marvell CXL roadmap goes all-in on composable infrastructure

Chip biz bets interconnect tech will cement its cloud claim, one day

Tobias Mann Wed 18 May 2022 // 10:28 UTC

Fresh off the heels of Marvell Technology's Tanzanite acquisition, executives speaking at a JP Morgan event this week offered a glimpse at its compute express link (CXL) roadmap.
"This is the next growth factor, not only for Marvell storage, but Marvell as a whole," Dan Christman, EVP of Marvell's storage products group, said.
Introduced in early 2019, CXL is an open interface that piggybacks on PCIe to provide a common, cache-coherent means of connecting CPUs, memory, accelerators, and other peripherals. The technology is seen by many, including Marvell, as the holy grail of composable infrastructure, as it enables memory to be disaggregated from the processor.

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Samsung unveils 512GB DRAM CXL module in E3.S form factor

PCIe 5.0 device hints at servers with lots of memory, maybe shared

Simon Sharwood, APAC Editor Tue 10 May 2022 // 04:45 UTC

Samsung has unveiled a 512-gigabyte Compute Express Link (CXL) DRAM module, which awaits servers to make it sing.
The device will ship in the EDSFF E3.S form factor – a standard most often employed in high-capacity solid-state disks (SSDs).
E3.S is expected to replace both M2 and 2.5-inch SSDs eventually, but Samsung has acknowledged that it may be some time before servers ready to handle the device appear. That time may well be spent figuring out how to make DRAM work well in E3.S, as DRAM is faster than the flash used in SSDs. The good news is PCIe 5.0 can handle that extra I/O action.

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How CXL may change the datacenter as we know it

Bye-bye bottlenecks. Hello composable infrastructure?

Tobias Mann Mon 16 May 2022 // 11:24 UTC

Interview Compute Express Link (CXL) has the potential to radically change the way systems and datacenters are built and operated. And after years of joint development spanning more than 190 companies, the open standard is nearly ready for prime time.
For those that aren’t familiar, CXL defines a common, cache-coherent interface for connecting CPUs, memory, accelerators, and other peripherals. And its implications for the datacenter are wide ranging, Jim Pappas, CXL chairman and Intel director of technology initiatives, tells The Register.
So with the first CXL-compatible systems expected to launch later this year alongside Intel’s Sapphire Rapids Xeon Scalables and AMD’s Genoa forth-gen Epycs, we ask Pappas how he expects CXL will change the industry in the near term.

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Why Marvell bought interconnect upstart Tanzanite

A little bit of DDR5 in my life, a little bit of storage by my side, a little bit of compute is all I need

Tobias Mann Tue 10 May 2022 // 09:57 UTC

Marvell Technology has announced its intent to acquire compute express link (CXL) startup Tanzanite in an all-cash deal it says will accelerate its composable infrastructure aspirations.
Founded in 2020, Tanzanite was an early player in the emerging CXL marketplace specializing in memory expansion, tiered memory, and memory pooling technologies. At the heart of these developments was Tanzanite's smart-logic interface connector, which enables memory to be pooled across compute servers at low latencies using CXL.
For those unfamiliar with the term, CXL is an open-standard interconnect introduced in 2019 that piggybacks PCIe to provide a consistent interface between host CPU processors, memory, accelerators, and other peripherals. Since its inception, the technology has garnered support from more than 190 vendors, including Intel, AMD, IBM, and Nvidia.

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Semiconductor sales forecast to hit $676b in 2022

Pandemic supply chain and war in Ukraine has potential to disrupt recovery, warns Gartner

Paul Kunert Tue 26 Apr 2022 // 15:30 UTC

The value of semiconductors sold worldwide in 2022 is projected to reach $676 billion, although further revisions by Gartner are a distinct possibility, such is the increased market volatility.
Forecasting chip demand during a pandemic is something of a dark art and the conflict in Ukraine hasn't made things any easier, with two major suppliers of neon used to fabricate chips based in the war-torn country.
Suppliers Incas and Cryoin (based in Mariupol and Odessa respectively) are estimated to produce up to 54 percent of the world's neon and both shut up shop in early March following Russia's invasion. The inert gas is used in the lithography stage.

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Samsung dethrones Intel as chip sector grows 26% in 2021

South Korea the big winner in a year of supply struggles and continued shortages

Brandon Vigliarolo Thu 14 Apr 2022 // 14:32 UTC

Despite (and perhaps because) of ongoing shortages, the semiconductor industry posted $595 billion in revenue in 2021, an increase of 26.3 percent over 2020.
The numbers, from Gartner, also make plain the effects of US sanctions against China, whose market share fell, and which did not have a single manufacturer present in the top 10 list (sorted by total 2021 revenue).
The biggest news of the report was Samsung overtaking Intel in the top spot, albeit barely: Samsung's chip biz grew 28 percent from 2020 to 2021, while Intel lost 0.3 percent over the same period. Now Samsung sits atop the list with $73.2 billion in revenue and a 12.3 percent market share, while Intel nips at its heels with $72.5 billion in revenue and a 12.2 percent share of the spoils. It's a lead, but one that could easily evaporate by the end of 2022.

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PC OEMs are sitting on 10 weeks-plus of DRAM, says Trendforce

Pandemic-induced supply chain imbalance did it

Laura Dobberstein Fri 18 Feb 2022 // 12:04 UTC

PC OEMs are holding 10 weeks or more of DRAM inventory thanks to hesitancy of procurement departments to stock memory chips, says market intelligence firm TrendForce.
Trendforce said this is all attributable to the pandemic: supply chain issues impeded the ability to produce and sell consumer electronics. Since companies couldn't manufacture the devices, the companies didn't stock memory chips to go in them.
As a result, most DRAM fabs underwent an average 5.8 per cent quarter-on-quarter drop in Q4 '21 shipments to around $25bn, leading them to lower prices.

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Thanks for the memory: Samsung says DRAM, NAND profits up Q-on-Q, sales down as global supply chain bites

Expects more stability but warns of potential fab lockdowns on road ahead

Dan Robinson Thu 27 Jan 2022 // 18:37 UTC

Samsung blamed disruptions in the global supply chain for failing to meet its own guidance for DRAM and NAND shipments during final three months of 2021, nevertheless racked up a record quarterly sales at group level.
The South Korean megacorp said Q4 2021 delivered revenue of ₩76.57 trillion ($63.8bn), up 24 per cent year-on-year, and an operating profit of ₩13.87trn ($11.6bn), up almost 5 per cent.
Indicating the volatility in the sector, Semiconductor unit turnover was up 43 per cent year-on-year to ₩26.01trn ($21.6bn) but fell 2 per cent on the prior quarter. Similarly, the Memory division grew 44 per cent year-on-year to ₩19.45trn ($16.16bn), but fell 7 per cent sequentially.

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