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."

Micron Technology, Inc. (Nasdaq: MU) today announced results for its third quarter of fiscal 2022, which ended June 2, 2022. "Micron delivered record revenue in the fiscal third quarter driven by our team's excellent execution across technology, products and manufacturing," said Micron Technology President and CEO Sanjay Mehrotra. "Recently, the industry demand environment has weakened, and we are taking action to moderate our supply growth in fiscal 2023. We are confident about the long-term secular demand for memory and storage and are well positioned to deliver strong cross-cycle financial performance."

This week Embedded World 2022 is taking place in Nuremberg in Germany and Micron decided to launch its new i400-series of microSD cards at the show. Normally microSD cards aren't worth a writeup, but in this case there are at least two noticeable features that makes Micron's i400-series of cards stand out. First is the fact that the i400 cards come in sizes from 64 MB to 1.5 TB, which is the largest size microSD card in the market to date.This is according to Micron, enough storage space for up to four months of continuously recorded video from a security camera, albeit at unknown resolution.

This brings us to the second noteworthy feature of the i400-series, the endurance rating. Micron claims that the cards will last five years in a 24/7 write scenario, or 2 million hours mean time to failure. The cards are also said to be optimised for sustained performance, even during concurrent 4K video streams being recorded to the cards. That said, Micron doesn't provide any actual performance numbers beyond the fact that all the cards are Class 10, U3 and A2 rated, except possibly the 64 and 128 GB models that are seemingly also U1 rated. All cards are rated to operate from minus 25 degrees to plus 85 degrees celsius. No word on pricing, as the cards aren't intended for retail customers.

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%

Just under a month ago, ASUS posted a teaser for its first internal SSD, the ROG Strix SQ7 and now the company has finally released the full specs. It is indeed based around the 12 nm Phison E18 controller, as predicted by our Editor-In-Chief, something he spotted from the sneak peek picture. Although ASUS didn't specifically mention what kind of flash the drive is using, they kindly left the flash model number visible in one of its pictures of the drive. Although the full model name isn't visible, enough of it is visible to identify it as Micron's 176-layer TLC flash. The ROG Strix SQ7 also sports a DDR4 cache, as expected, although ASUS doesn't mention clock speeds.

ASUS claims the drive will deliver sequential read speeds of up to 7000 MB/s and write speeds of up to 6000 MB/s, which places the ROG Strix SQ7 in direct competition with several other Phison E18 based high-end drives from the likes of Kingston, MSI, Sabrent and others. Unfortunately, ASUS doesn't mention IOPS or random performance, although an unspecified "large" SLC cache is mentioned. Other features include TGC Opal and AES 256-bit encryption. ASUS also provides its own SSD dashboard, which of course is ROG branded, but looks like a skinned version of Phison's standard SSD dashboard, rather than something custom made. ASUS also provides a copy of NTI Backup Now EZ software and the drives appear to have a five year warranty. ASUS mentions PS5 compatibility outside of the PC space. No word on pricing or retail availability was provided and so far ASUS has only listed a 1 TB model.

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.

According to TrendForce research, North American data centers saw an improvement in components supply after February, driving a recovery in purchase order volume. As Server brands returned to normal in-office work following the pandemic, the increase in capital expenditures on related information equipment has also boosted order growth. The addition of Kioxia's raw material contamination incident led to an increase in the pricing of certain rush orders, pushing up overall Enterprise SSD revenue in 1Q22 to US$5.58 billion, or 14.1% growth QoQ.

According to TrendForce, Samsung and SK hynix (including Solidigm) were the top two players in 1Q22. At the beginning of the year, demand from hyperscale data centers resulted in high inventory levels due to component mismatches, leading Samsung's order growth missing expectations. However, as repercussions from the WDC and Kioxia contamination incident hit NAND Flash production capacity in 1Q22, server customers quickly turned to Samsung for additional orders, driving the company's 1Q22 revenue to US$2.77 billion, up 14.8% QoQ.

According to TrendForce research, as manufacturers actively shifted production capacity to 128 layer products, the market turned to oversupply, resulting in a drop in contract prices in 1Q22, among which the decline in consumer-grade products was more pronounced. Although enterprise SSD purchase order volume has grown, demand for smart phone bits has weakened due to the Russian-Ukrainian war, the traditional off-season, and rising inflation. Client inventories have increased significantly, so it remains challenging for overall bit shipment volume to offset potential decline. In 1Q22, NAND Flash bit shipments and average selling prices fell by 0.5% and 2.3%, respectively, resulting in a 3.0% quarterly decrease in overall industry revenue to US$17.92 billion.

Although China's smartphone stocking momentum was marginally weak considering the off-season, due to sluggish supply on the part of Kioxia and WDC, Samsung's 1Q22 client SSD shipment bit growth was driven up by an influx of rush orders and North American enterprise SSD client orders also recovered significantly in March. Overall bit shipments increased by 9% QoQ and ASP decreased by 2% QoQ. In 1Q22, the NAND Flash portion of Samsung's electronics business posted revenue of US$6.32 billion, up 3.4% QoQ.

Micron Technology, Inc., today announced the upcoming availability of two new consumer storage products, the Crucial P3 Plus Gen4 NVMe and Crucial P3 NVMe solid state drives (SSDs), as an expansion of its award-winning Crucial NVMe SSD product portfolio. The all new Crucial P3 Plus SSD product line will deliver attractive price-performance metrics with sequential read/write speeds up to 5000/4200 MB/s, while next-generation Crucial P3 SSDs will provide read/write speeds up to 3500/3000 MB/s. Both drives will be available in capacities up to 4 TB, making them the ideal scalable storage solutions that professionals, creatives, gamers and other high-performance users need.

"For users that have been waiting to upgrade their PCs to Gen4 SSDs, the wait is over. With the forthcoming availability of the new Crucial P3 Plus SSD, anyone seeking high-performance SSDs can upgrade to NVMe Gen4 storage and affordably futureproof their PC," said Teresa Kelley, vice president and general manager of Micron's Commercial Products Group. "Both the Crucial P3 Plus and P3 SSD products will strengthen our overall SSD portfolio and NVMe product category by offering competitive choices for high-performance storage that enables users to get more done in less time."

AMD has historically thrown brute memory bus width at solving memory-management problems in its graphics architectures, but the Infinity Cache technology launched with RDNA2 proved to be a game changer, as GPUs with narrow 256-bit memory interfaces could compete with NVIDIA's offerings that have 384-bit wide memory interfaces and faster GDDR6X memory types. It looks like the competition between NVIDIA "Ada" and AMD RDNA3 graphics architectures is about to heat up, as rumors are emerging of AMD giving its biggest next-gen ASIC, the "Navi 31," a 384-bit wide memory interface.

This 50 percent increase in memory bus width, runs in concert with two associated rumors—one, that the company will use faster 20 Gbps GDDR6 memory chips; and two, that AMD may increase the size of the on-die Infinity Cache memory. Samsung is already mass-producing 20 Gbps and 24 Gbps GDDR6 memory chips. These are regular GDDR6 memory chips with JEDEC-standard signaling, and not GDDR6X, an exclusive memory type innovated by NVIDIA and Micron Technology, which leverages PAM4 signaling to increase data-rates. A theoretical "Navi 31" with 20 Gbps GDDR6 memory speeds would enjoy 960 GB/s of memory bandwidth, a massive 87.5 percent bandwidth increase over the RX 6900 XT. The on-die Infinity Cache operates at speeds measured in several TB/s. The increased bus width could also signal an increase in memory sizes, with the RX 6950 XT successor featuring at least 24 GB of memory.

During its investors day yesterday, Micron revealed its 232-layer NAND Flash, which for now is the most advanced of its kind. Micron is using what the company calls CMOS Under Array or CuA as the platform to build a pair of TLC stacks on top of, for a total of 232-layers. Each stacked NAND Flash chip is said to have a capacity of 1 Terabit, or 128 GB, so we're not seeing any new capacity increases at this point, compared to the competition, but Micron is promising increased bandwidth node-over-node, so we might end up seeing better performance compared to its competitors. The new NAND Flash is supposed to be optimised for SSDs and other "managed" NAND, such as eMMC and UFS.

Micron also revealed an updated NAND Flash roadmap, with the company planning even more 200 plus layer products before moving to 300 and 400-layer stacks of NAND in the future. The 300-layer stacks are already under structural development, whereas the 400-layer products are still in the very early stages of research. The new 232-layer products are said to go into mass production towards the end of this year, so we shouldn't expect to see products based on Micron's 232-layer NAND until sometime in 2023.

Micron Technology, Inc., today announced new client solid-state drives (SSDs) that bring NVMe performance to client computing applications, freeing laptops, workstations and other portables from legacy architectures that can rob devices of battery power, performance and productivity. The Micron 2300 SSD combines the power and density needed to drive compute-heavy applications in a compact form factor with the reduced power consumption modern mobile users demand. For the first time, Micron brings together NVMe performance and low-cost quad-level-cell (QLC) NAND in the Micron 2210 QLC SSD. It combines fast NVMe throughput and Micron's leadership in QLC technology to offer flash capabilities at hard disk drive-like price points while reducing power consumption by 15 times when compared to hard drives.

"Ninety percent of client platforms will ship NVMe SSDs within the next year, and the market is fast bifurcating into mainstream and value market segments," said Roger Peene, vice president of marketing, Storage Business Unit, Micron. "Our two new client SSDs, the 2300 and 2210, are optimized for each segment. The 2300 offers outstanding power performance, while the 2210 delivers compelling price performance by using Micron's industry-leading QLC NAND." Both SSDs introduced today are built on Micron's innovative 96-layer 3D NAND technology to deliver power savings, right-sized capacity and compact form factors that enable flexible designs. They also deliver enhanced client security features and capabilities for protecting data, with TCG Opal 2.0 and TCG Pyrite 2.0 support.

Micron Technology, Inc., today announced the volume production of its new 16Gb GDDR6X memory, which is now shipping in the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Ti graphics card. The latest GDDR6X memory, available only from Micron, features twice the capacity and up to 15% higher performance over the previous 8Gb version. These additional capabilities mean end users can experience razor-sharp visuals, higher frame rates and outstanding performance in memory-intensive applications like gaming and content creation. Today Micron extends its performance leadership by providing a new graphics memory with 16Gb capacity and running at an industry-best 21 Gb/s in the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti. With a performance roadmap up to 24 Gb/s, GDDR6X is ready for data-hungry applications of the future. Additionally, Micron's innovative use of PAM4 signal techniques in GDDR6X make it more power efficient than any of the GDDR6 products publicly available.

"The industry-leading capabilities of Micron's GDDR6X memory help bring new levels of realism and performance to the most demanding applications," said Mark Montierth, vice president and general manager of High-Performance Memory and Networking at Micron. "Micron is once again at the forefront of the memory innovation powering today's highest bandwidth solutions and built with the advanced process and interface technology to enable continued graphics performance leadership."

Intel, Micron, Analog Devices, and MITRE Engenuity announced they have an agreement of principles to accelerate semiconductor research, development, and prototyping to build a more robust U.S. semiconductor industry, foster advanced manufacturing in the United States, and protect intellectual property amid increased global competition. This engagement signifies a commitment to collaborate on ensuring the resiliency of the industry. It establishes the Semiconductor Alliance to propose the foundation for a whole-of-nation approach for a more innovation-focused U.S. semiconductor industry and supply chain, one that ensures American innovation truly leads to American growth.

The Semiconductor Alliance, led by MITRE Engenuity, was developed from working groups in 2021, and its principles were published in a white paper on American Innovation for American Growth summarizing the Alliance's whole-of-nation call to action for a fair and objective National Semiconductor Technology Center (NSTC). The leading U.S. semiconductor manufacturers—Intel, Micron, and Analog Devices—and MITRE Engenuity seek engagement from industry and experts from all facets of the U.S. semiconductor ecosystem, including integrated device manufacturers; fabless chip companies; providers of infrastructure, design, and manufacturing tools; and technology innovators from industry and academia. MITRE Engenuity is built on MITRE's 60+ year history of serving as an independent, objective bridge and convener of government, industry, and academia, bringing together the whole of nation to tackle some of the biggest challenges to our national security.

According to TrendForce forecasts, average overall DRAM pricing in 2Q22 will drop by approximately 0~5%, due to marginally higher buyer and seller inventories coupled with the demand for products such as PCs, laptops, and smart phones being influenced in the short-term by the Russian-Ukrainian war and high inflation weakening consumer purchasing power. At present, the only remaining source of demand is on the server side, so overall DRAM stocks will remain oversupplied in 2Q22.

In terms of PC DRAM, PC OEMs are adopting a conservative stocking strategy for orders in 2Q22 due to the Russian-Ukrainian war, which may continue affecting orders during peak season in 2H22, and revising 2022 shipment targets downwards. Additionally, the overall supply of bits is still growing, so the PC DRAM price slump in 2Q22 will further expand to 3~8% and may continue to deteriorate.

Intel and AMD will be releasing new CPUs that support DDR5 DRAM solutions for PCs and servers this year. In response, the DRAM industry led by South Korean suppliers is developing solutions to complement the arrival of the new CPUs. In the midst of the gradual shift to DDR5, DRAM suppliers will also scale back the supply of DDR3 solutions, according to TrendForce's latest investigations. With Korean suppliers accelerating their withdrawal from DDR3 production, Taiwanese suppliers yet to kick off mass production using newly installed capacities, and Chinese suppliers falling short of their expected yield rate, the global supply of DDR3 solutions will undergo an impending decline. With respect to the demand side, however, not only has the supply of networking chips been ramping up, but material shortage issues are also gradually easing. As such, buyers are now procuring DDR3 solutions ahead of time, resulting in a tight supply and demand situation in the DDR3 market. TrendForce therefore expects DDR3 DRAM prices to recover from a bearish first quarter and undergo a 0-5% QoQ increase in 2Q22.

The next-generation "Ada Lovelace" graphics architecture powering NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 40-series graphics cards, could see a significant increase in on-die cache memory, according to leaked source-code related to drivers or firmware, seen by XinoAssassin on Twitter. The source-code leak emanates from the recent large-scale cyber-attack on NVIDIA. When comparing source files related to Ampere and Ada architectures, XinoAssassin noticed lines that reference large cache slices.

From this, it was analyzed that the top-of-the-line AD102 silicon will have 96 MB of last-level cache on the silicon; the AD103 and AD104 chips have 64 MB; the AD106 has 48 MB, and the smallest AD107 has 32 MB. Compare this to the 6 MB on the GA102, puny 4 MB on the GA103 and GA104; 3 MB on the GA106, and 2 MB on the GA107. NVIDIA is known to make innovations in generational memory bandwidth increase and memory management, with each new architecture. The company could tap into even faster versions of GDDR6X memory it co-developed with Micron (GDDR6 with PAM4 signaling).

Micron, today announced it is sampling the world's first vertically-integrated 176-layer NAND solid-state drive (SSD) for the data center. The Micron 7450 SSD with NVMe delivers quality-of-service (QoS) latency at or below 2 milliseconds (ms), a wide capacity range and the broadest set of form factors available to meet the needs of the most demanding data center workloads.

This new data center SSD includes Micron's industry-leading NAND, which contains 176 layers of storage cells and proven CMOS-under-the-array technology, to deliver an ultraefficient design. Integrated with Micron's own DRAM, internally developed SoC and associated firmware, this vertically integrated SSD enables the company to rapidly respond to customer needs in the market and support strengthened device security.

Much of the globalized world's logistics is still in disarray from the COVID-19 pandemic, and now, Russia has thrown its weight on the matter through its invasion of Ukraine. As the initial offensive played out in the early hours of February 24th, semiconductor industry analysts turned to the situation with a prying eye - how exactly could this deadlock, and the following political and economical sanctions towards Russia, impact the semiconductor industry? The consensus seems to be a favorable one: not that much.

"The semiconductor industry has a diverse set of suppliers of key materials and gases, so we do not believe there are immediate supply disruption risks related to Russia and Ukraine," said John Neuffer, chief executive and president of the Semiconductor Industry Association. That sentiment was echoed by Intel; a company representative told Bloomberg that the company does not anticipate "(...) any impact on our supply chain. Our strategy of having a diverse, global supply chain minimizes our risk of potential local interruptions."

In 4Q21, NAND Flash bit shipments grew by only 3.3% QoQ, a significant decrease from the nearly 10% in 3Q21, according to TrendForce's investigations. ASP fell by nearly 5% and the overall industry posted revenue of US$18.5 billion, a QoQ decrease of 2.1%. This was primarily due to a decline in the purchase demand of various products and a market shift to oversupply causing a drop in contract prices. In 4Q21, with the exception of enterprise SSD, the supply of which was limited by insufficient upstream components, the prices of other NAND Flash products such as eMMC, UFS, and client SSD, all fell.

TrendForce's summary of NAND Flash market sales performance in 2021 is as follows: although there have been signs of weakening since 2H21, thanks to remote services and cloud demand driven by the pandemic, revenue performance still grew significantly compared to 2020. Revenue reached US$68.6 billion, up 21.1% YoY, the second-biggest increase since 2018.

Out of nowhere, Micron has announced that it will end production of its Ballistix RAM products that are the high-performance and gamer focused RAM products from its Crucial brand. The details available so far doesn't state a reason for the discontinuation of these products. That said, Crucial has launched a wide range of DDR5 products, but so far none under the Ballistix brand and that is obviously a permanent move now. The company said it would focus on "the development of Micron's DDR5 client and server product roadmap, along with the expansion of the Crucial memory and storage product portfolio."

Furthermore the press release mentioned that "the company will continue to support the performance compute and gaming communities with its award-winning SSD products, such as the Crucial P5 Plus Gen 4 PCIe NVMe SSD, Crucial P2 Gen 3 NVMe SSD, and the popular Crucial X6 and Crucial X8 portable SSDs." It seems like Micron has decided to change the focus of it's consumer focused Crucial brand yet again, as the company has done several times in the past, but it's going to remove a major player in the consumer DRAM market, which isn't a good thing, especially as Micron was one of few DRAM manufacturers to offer high-end RAM modules, since neither Samsung or SK-Hynix is in this market. That said, it looks like Crucial will at least continue to offer its standard RAM modules, but they tend to follow JEDEC spec and aren't particularly exciting.

Despite its technical advantages over NAND flash, Intel's Optane memory technology never really took off in the consumer space, largely due to its much higher costs. Based on details from Intel's SEC filings, it would appear that its corporate customers haven't been overly impressed either, as Intel filed a US$576 million loss in 2020 with regards to its Optane business.

As to if this trend continued in 2021, we're going to have to wait and see, but it looks like the losses are set to continue based on its revenue figures, according to Blocks and Files. With this in mind, it seems like Micron's exit from 3D XPoint memory isn't so hard to understand, as the technology is clearly too costly to make up for the benefits on offer, for most of its potential customer base. Transitions to higher-density 3D XPoint memory has also been slow, which might be yet another reason customers have shied away from using it, even as a caching solution in storage servers. It wouldn't surprise us if Intel moves on from Optane/3D XPoint memory in the near future, as the company seems to have shifted its focus firmly away from storage solutions.

JEDEC Solid State Technology Association, the global leader in the development of standards for the microelectronics industry, today announced the publication of the next version of its High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) DRAM standard: JESD238 HBM3, available for download from the JEDEC website. HBM3 is an innovative approach to raising the data processing rate used in applications where higher bandwidth, lower power consumption and capacity per area are essential to a solution's market success, including graphics processing and high-performance computing and servers.

NAND Flash prices for 1Q22 are expected to decline by 8-13% QoQ, compared to TrendForce's previous forecast of 10-15% QoQ, primarily due to PC OEMs' increased orders for PCIe 3.0 products and the impact of the lockdown in Xi'an on PC OEMs' price negotiation approaches. To mitigate potential risks in logistics, NAND Flash buyers are now more willing to accept a narrower decline in contract prices in order to obtain their products sooner. However, as the Xi'an lockdown has not noticeably affected the local fabs' manufacturing operations, the movement of NAND Flash contract prices going forward will likely remain relatively unaffected by the lockdown.

In addition, TrendForce finds that the daily number of new COVID-19 cases in Xi'an has recently undergone a noticeable drop, and the local government has also announced that that the emergency level has been downgraded. As such, Samsung's and Micron's local production facilities are returning to normal with respect to workforce and operational capacity. Samsung's local production base manufactures NAND Flash products, whereas Micron's local production base is responsible for the testing and packaging of DRAM chips as well as the assembly of DRAM modules. The impacts of the lockdown mainly relate to delays in the deliveries of memory products to customers. On the other hand, the event has not caused a tangible loss in memory production.

Despite having sold its fab in Lehi, Utah to TI back in October last year, it looks like Micron is ready to build a new, most likely more advanced fab and rumours are now circulating that it might end up in Austin, Texas. Micron currently has two fabs in Virginia and one in Idaho, plus four in Singapore, four in Taiwan, one in the PRC and one in Japan. It should be noted that Micron used to have a fab outside of Dallas, so Texas isn't entirely unfamiliar ground for Micron. Initially Micron is said to have been eyeing North Carolina for its new fab, but that apparently fell through recently.

Micron announced last year that it's looking to invest some US$150 million in expanding and improving upon its current fabs, plus potentially building additional ones. In addition to Texas, California and Arizona are apparently still in the running, although it's unclear when Micron will make a final decision. The fab will obviously be producing either DRAM or flash memory, but it's not clear what markets Micron is looking to expand its production in, but DRAM seems more likely based on current market conditions. The company is said to be looking for a location that has not only the suitable staff required, but is also looking for the right cost and reliability when it comes to utilities, as well as regulatory friendliness.