The memory crunch looks like it is hitting the PlayStation 6 harder than expected. Hardware leaker KeplerL2 claims on NeoGAF that the RAM and NAND flash storage in Sony's next console alone cost over $680. He posted it as a reply to a forum member who floated $680 as a possible subsidized retail price, which pretty much puts that idea to rest. Keep in mind that figure covers only memory and storage, before the APU, cooling, power supply, and the rest of the hardware are counted. This is not the first time Kepler has updated his estimate. Back in March, he put the console's bill of materials at around $760, and by July, that had climbed to roughly $960.

Current leaks suggest the PS6 uses GDDR7 memory on a 160-bit bus with support for up to 40 GB, with 30 GB considered the more likely configuration. There have also been reports that Sony looked into cutting memory capacity to keep costs down, and the culprit is the same as everywhere else: AI data centers are soaking up DRAM and NAND supply, which pushes prices up for everyone. Sony has said nothing official about PS6 pricing, so it's reasonable to treat all of this with some caution. That said, if memory prices stay where they are, a PS6 that costs significantly more than the PS5 Pro seems likely, and a $1,000 price tag now looks quite possible.

Chinese NAND flash maker YMTC apparently expects the global memory shortage to last another three years. The claim comes from a profile of the company published by The Wire China, in which a YMTC employee, speaking anonymously, shared the outlook. The same employee said YMTC has raised prices for its chips and shifted capacity toward higher-margin products. The excerpt was shared on X by @jukan05, who read it as a NAND forecast, although the employee's wording covers memory in general. Three more years would put the end of the shortage somewhere around late 2029. This is one unnamed employee's words, of course, and not public guidance from YMTC.

That 2029 prediction is well past TrendForce's estimate, which has NAND flash supply loosening in the second half of 2027 as new capacity comes online. It sits closer to Micron's view, with CEO Sanjay Mehrotra saying last week that supply will be much tighter in 2027 and 2028. The shift in capacity matters too, especially for regular PC builders. Counterpoint Research ranked YMTC fourth in NAND bit shipments in Q2 with a 14% share, yet only fifth in revenue, since its product mix leans toward consumer applications. Moving capacity to higher-margin chips could leave less for consumer SSDs, even as YMTC works to double its wafer output with new fabs. Nevertheless, readers planning a storage upgrade shouldn't count on prices dropping anytime soon.

Acer Chairman and CEO Jason Chen says PC prices could rise by another 5% to 20% in the fourth quarter of 2026, according to Taiwan's Economic Daily News. Chen reportedly said that DDR4 and DDR5 memory are no longer in short supply and that CPU supply is mostly fine, with only some low-end and mid-range chips still tight. Prices haven't followed this change, though. Memory and SSD costs are still high, so systems with more RAM or storage will probably see bigger increases. Chen expects the average selling price of PCs to peak around mid-2027, with a possible drop in the second half of that year.

Even if component costs fall earlier, it takes several months for cheaper parts to reach finished PCs. Chen also reportedly said suppliers keep pushing through price increases, some of which he considers hard to justify. He also pointed to expanding Chinese memory production, and by the sound of it, he doesn't think the shortage can run until 2030, as many in the industry have claimed. That capacity is still ramping up, though. Chinese giant CXMT is reportedly preparing to enter the NAND flash market with an R&D line, and YMTC is expanding with new fabs.

CXMT, China's largest DRAM maker, is reportedly getting ready to enter the NAND flash market. According to a Reuters report citing people familiar with the matter, the company plans to set up a NAND R&D production line at its new plant in Beijing. CXMT has also set up a research institute in the capital, and NAND development is apparently among its projects there. That would put it up against Samsung and other global players, and against domestic rival YMTC, which already ranks third in NAND shipments. One of the sources says CXMT has already discussed its plans with customers, including a newly established startup that wants to buy the chips for AI and supercomputer storage products.

We also don't know when the R&D line will start running, or whether CXMT intends to go past R&D and trial production into large-scale manufacturing. CXMT and YMTC are often called the "twin stars" of China's memory industry, and they have mostly stayed in separate lanes. That seems to be changing, since Reuters reported in April that YMTC had sent low-power DRAM samples to customers. Both still trail the bigger foreign rivals, but the shortage has given them some pricing power, and CXMT was reportedly charging more than Samsung for 64 GB DDR5 server modules in July. TrendForce expects NAND supply tightness to ease only in the second half of next year, and I doubt one R&D line would change that.

Global semiconductor revenue surpassed $425bn in 2Q26 reaching another all-time high as the market grew a record 31.4% quarter-over-quarter (QoQ), according to new research from Omdia. AI demand and strong memory prices continued to be the leading market dynamics, taking total semiconductor revenue for the first half of 2026 to $752 billion. The 31.4% QoQ increase surpassed the previous sequential growth record of 29.2% in 1Q26. Since Omdia began tracking the semiconductor market in 1Q02, only 10 out of 97 quarters have recorded sequential revenue growth above 10%. The last four quarters beginning in 3Q25, have all recorded double-digit sequential growth, with 3Q26 expected to follow the same trend.

Memory continues to be the primary driver of growth, while other semiconductor components are growing above seasonal patterns and contributing to the robust market.

Kioxia Corporation, a subsidiary of Kioxia Holdings Corporation (TOKYO: 285A) and Sandisk Corporation (NASDAQ: SNDK) today announced anticipated significant investments in Japan, totaling over $31 billion (approximately 5 trillion yen) contingent upon government support. The investments through 2032 will continue to strengthen the Kioxia and Sandisk partnership, one of the most successful joint ventures across any industry. The partnership has helped drive decades of NAND flash memory innovation and invested over $50 billion (approximately 9 trillion yen) in Japan over the past 25 years. Kioxia and Sandisk will continue to deliver leading technology to support the growing demands of an AI and a data-driven world.

Aligned with market trends, these investments will support the ongoing buildout of infrastructure at the Yokkaichi Plant and the Kitakami Plant, along with related infrastructure, technology. Kioxia and Sandisk each has committed to drive meaningful, multi-year bit growth and ensuring stable supply to address the strong demand for their innovative flash memory technology. In line with these commitments, the announced investments are intended to fuel the joint venture's long-term success and ability to deliver leading-edge flash memory innovations at scale and with stability.

Silicon Motion Technology Corporation (NasdaqGS: SIMO), a global leader in designing and marketing NAND flash controllers for solid-state storage devices, today unveiled its new MonTitan SSD Reference Design Kit (RDK), featuring the company's next-generation patented PerformaShape technology. Designed for Agentic AI infrastructure, the platform enables enterprise SSDs to serve as a persistent memory layer supporting KV cache offload and autonomous AI agents, while delivering predictable QoS, sustained performance, and optimized endurance for dynamic, always-on Agentic AI workloads.

Agentic AI Redefines Enterprise Storage Requirements
Unlike conventional AI applications, AI agents continuously reason, act, retain context, and interact with external tools, generating diverse data types and rapidly changing access patterns. As AI data centers support continuous, multistep inference and increasingly large KV caches, enterprise SSDs must deliver high throughput, consistent latency, predictable QoS, and the endurance required for sustained, write-intensive operations.

Silicon Motion Technology Corporation ("Silicon Motion"), a global leader in designing and marketing NAND flash controllers for solid-state storage devices, today announced it will showcase its latest storage innovations for AI Factory, Edge AI, and Physical AI applications at Future of Memory and Storage (FMS) 2026, taking place August 4 to 6 in Santa Clara, California, at Booth #315.

As AI evolves beyond large language model training toward Agentic AI, real-time inference has become increasingly dependent on fast, predictable data access. Emerging storage requirements for KV cache and Agentic AI applications demand storage solutions that maximize acceleration while maintaining low latency and consistent performance. Silicon Motion will showcase five major product lines addressing the evolving storage requirements across the three AI segments, supporting enterprise infrastructure, edge computing, embedded devices, and automotive platforms:

As PCIe Gen 6 storage becomes increasingly important for AI infrastructure, cloud platforms, enterprise databases, and hyperscale data centers, SSD controllers must deliver significantly more than raw bandwidth. They need intelligent flash management, enterprise-grade security, advanced error correction and scalable architecture.

The Marvell Bravera SC6 SSD Controller (MV-SF1410) addresses these challenges by combining PCIe Gen 6 connectivity, NVMe 2.2 compliance, support for high-speed NAND flash, powerful multicore processing, integrated security and advanced reliability technologies into a single enterprise-ready platform. The Marvell Bravera SC6 SSD Controller (MV-SF1410) is engineered to meet the demanding requirements of modern data centers and enterprise storage environments. Designed to support PCIe Gen 6 NVMe SSDs, this advanced controller combines exceptional performance, scalability, robust security and intelligent flash management.

Nextorage Japan announced the NX-F2AE series of SDXC UHS-II memory cards for professional video creators and high-res, high-bitrate recording. The new memory cards meet Video Speed Class V90 specifications, offering a minimum sustained write speed of 90 MB/s and sequential read and write speeds of up to 300 MB/s. The Nextorage NX-F2AE memory cards use 3D TLC NAND flash memory and a UHS-II interface. The series is also rated UHS Speed Class U3, Class 10 and Application Performance Class A1, making it suitable for 4K, 6K and 8K video capture.

Nextorage says that the new NX-F2AE memory cards are designed to offer stable long-term high-bitrate video recording while operating in temperatures ranging from -25°C to 85°C and have passed seven types of durability tests. The series is launching in Japan from August 5th with 256 GB, 512 GB, and 1 TB models priced at ¥46,480 (~$295), ¥89,980 (~$570), and ¥169,980 (~$1,076), respectively. The Nextorage NX-F2AE series comes with a five-year warranty.

Silicon Motion Technology Corporation (NasdaqGS: SIMO) ("Silicon Motion," the "Company," "we" or similar terms) today announced its financial results for the quarter ended June 30, 2026. For the second quarter of 2026, net sales (GAAP) increased sequentially to $451.0 million from $342.1 million in the first quarter of 2026. Net income (GAAP) also increased sequentially to $136.1 million, or $3.99 per diluted American depositary share ("ADS") (GAAP), from net income (GAAP) of $66.8 million, or $1.97 per diluted ADS (GAAP), in the first quarter of 2026

For the second quarter of 2026, net income (non-GAAP) increased sequentially to $83.1 million, or $2.43 per diluted ADS (non-GAAP), from net income (non-GAAP) of $53.8 million, or $1.58 per diluted ADS (non-GAAP), in the first quarter of 2026. All financial numbers are in U.S. dollars unless otherwise noted.

Compact embedded systems are becoming smaller, while storage requirements continue to grow. Applications such as embedded computing, medical computers, self-service kiosks, and service robots need reliable local storage for operating systems, data, logs, updates, and system files.

However, when system space is limited, adding storage is often not as simple as installing another SSD. Designers may face limited PCB space, low-profile enclosures, and a lack of available M-Key storage slots.

Samsung on July 14 formally launched the 990, its value-segment M.2 NVMe SSD. Not to be confused with the 990 EVO, another DRAMless SSD from the company that uses TLC NAND flash, the new 990 implements QLC NAND flash, and relies on controller-level optimization to shore up performance. Built in the M.2-2280 form-factor, the Samsung 990 features an M.2 NVMe Gen 4 (PCI-Express 4.0 x4) host interface, and is driven by a Samsung Piccolo-Q DRAMless controller. It uses the company's in-house V9 series 280-layer 3D QLC NAND flash memory.

The Samsung 990 comes in two capacity variants, 1 TB and 2 TB, priced at $270 and $530, respectively. The 1 TB variant offers sequential reads of up to 7150 MB/s with up to 6450 MB/s sequential writes, with up to 700,000 IOPS 4K random reads and up to 1.1 million IOPS 4K random writes; while the 2 TB variant offers slightly higher performance, with up to 7250 MB/s sequential reads, up to 6450 MB/s sequential writes, up to 850,000 IOPS 4K random reads, and up to 1.2 million IOPS 4K random writes. Where the 990 differs significantly from the TLC-based 990 EVO Plus, is write-endurance. The 2 TB variant offers 800 TBW, while the 1 TB variant offers a paltry 400 TBW. For reference, the 2 TB 990 EVO Plus offers 1200 TBW, and 1 TB 990 EVO Plus offers 600 TBW. Both variants are backed by 3-year warranties.

Sandisk Corporation (Nasdaq: SNDK) today announced it is sampling its BiCS10 1 Tb TLC, its 10th-generation 3D NAND flash memory technology. BiCS10 applies advanced lateral scaling techniques to achieve industry-leading 1 Tb TLC memory density greater than 29 Gb/mm², improving bit density by 59 percent while delivering up to 4.8 Gb/s interface speed, a 33 percent improvement compared with 8th generation 3D flash memory currently in mass production.

Built on Sandisk's proven Bit-Cost Scalable (BiCS) 3D NAND architecture and CMOS directly Bonded to Array (CBA) technology, BiCS10 TLC also enhances data input/output power efficiency, reducing power consumption by 10 percent for input and 34 percent for output compared to the previous BiCS8 generation.

Longsys announced the establishment of a stable monthly production and delivery capacity of one million mSSD (Micro SSD) units, marking a major milestone for its high speed mSSD storage solutions. The new production capacity is designed to meet growing market demand while providing room for future expansion.

The first mSSD samples rolled off the production line at Longsys' Suzhou packaging and testing manufacturing base in October 2025. Following production line optimization, process refinement and manufacturing ramp-up, Longsys established a stable monthly production capacity of one million units in June 2026. Leveraging SiP (System-in-Package) integration and packaging technology to innovate and evolve traditional storage form factors, the product's performance, quality and functionality have been validated through real-world customer applications, and the company is now working with leading industry customers, including Lenovo and ASUS.

Global leader in storage and embedded solutions, Transcend Information, Inc. (Transcend), today announced its new generation of industrial SSD and memory card solutions powered by advanced 218-layer 3D NAND flash technology. Featuring optimized architecture and increased storage density, the new product lineup unlocks the full potential of next-generation flash memory performance to address the growing demands of AIoT edge computing and smart manufacturing. Designed for data-intensive environments, these solutions empower a wide range of applications across industrial automation, data centers, and intelligent surveillance systems.

High-Performance SSDs for AI and Data-Intensive Workloads
Transcend's latest family of 218-layer SSDs is engineered to meet the stringent requirements of AI-driven applications. Leading the lineup is the flagship MTE740A, featuring a high-speed PCIe Gen 5 x4 interface and NVMe 2.0 compliance. Delivering sequential read speeds of up to 14,000 MB/s and random read performance of up to 2.1 million IOPS, the MTE740A enables rapid processing of massive AI datasets and real-time analytics. To address a broad range of embedded computing needs, Transcend also introduces the MTE770A PCIe Gen 4 x4 M.2 2280 SSD, the compact MTE490A PCIe Gen 4 x4 M.2 2242 SSD for space-constrained embedded systems, and the SATA III-based 2.5-inch SSD490K.

Following a record-setting year for the semiconductor industry, the start of the new year has continued the momentum, as semiconductor revenue grew 27% in 1Q26 from 4Q25 to reach $319bn, according to new research form Omdia. Memory revenue drove the increase, rising over 80% sequentially in 1Q26 from 4Q25.

Since Omdia began tracking the semiconductor market at a quarterly level in1Q02, this 27% quarter-over-quarter (QoQ) growth is the highest observed. The market has now experienced three consecutive quarters of double-digit revenue growth, with 2Q26 expected to continue this pattern. This puts semiconductor revenue on track to surpass $700bn in 1H26. AI-related demand remains strong, while memory supply/demand imbalances continue to be among the leading trends in the semiconductor market.

Silicon Motion Inc (SMI) showcased their latest SSD controller portfolio at Computex 2026. We begin our tour with the consumer-segment SM2524XT, a new DRAMless PCIe Gen 5 SSD controller, with support for the NVMe 2.1 protocol. This controller features 4 flash channels and 16 CEs for up to 4800 MT/s per channel, and is designed for mid-range Gen 5 NVMe SSDs. SMI built the controllers on the TSMC 6 nm foundry node. Drives based on this controller can offer sequential read speeds of up to 14 GB/s, with up to 12 GB/s sequential writes, with up to 2.2 million IOPS random access. The controller's own TDP is rated at 2.5 W in active mode, and as low as 1 mW in PS4 standby. The controller supports all popular 3D TLC and QLC NAND flash memory types.

SMI also showed us their first PCI-Express Gen 6 SSD controller for next-generation enterprise SSDs, the SM8466. This controller is designed to offer "near GPU storage performance," augmenting GPU memory, and giving you the ability to run larger parameter LLMs. The controller features a PCI-Express 6.0 x4 host interface (256 Gbps per direction, or bandwidth comparable to PCI-Express 4.0 x16). It features 16 channels with 8 CEs, each channel runs at 4800 MT/s. While not mentioned, SM8466 is likely to support NVMe 2.3, which lays the foundation for computational storage. It supports all relevant enterprise features for this role. The controller will drive SSDs with capacity of up to 512 TB, supporting 3D TLC and QLC NAND flash. As for performance, the controller is being prepared to offer sequential transfers of up to 28 GB/s, and random access performance of up to 7 million IOPS.

The shift in AI development from large-scale model training toward inference-centric Agentic AI applications is driving a structural expansion in memory demand, according to TrendForce's latest findings on the memory industry. With the resulting supply deficit unlikely to be resolved in the short term, prices are set to rise further.

TrendForce has therefore significantly raised its global memory market forecasts, increasing its 2026 estimate from US$551.6 billion in the previous report to $889.3 billion. Meanwhile, the 2027 forecast has been revised upward from $842.7 billion to more than $1.28 trillion, representing annual growth of approximately 44%.

Die-shots of the Samsung Exynos 2600 application processor for smartphones, tablets, and ultraportable notebooks surfaced, and were annotated by Kurnal Salts. It showcases a massive logic complex with large amounts of on-die memory and compute muscle. Samsung buids the Exynos 2600 on Samsung SF2, the company's in-house 2 nm GAAFET foundry node, which offers comparable transistor densities and electrical specs to TSMC N2. It is a monolithic chip, with all logic components on die.

We begin our tour with the CPU. Samsung designed the Exynos 2600 with a 3-tiered heterogenous multicore design, and a 1X+3P+6E core configuration. Leading it is one C1-Ultra extreme core that ticks at up to 3.80 GHz, offers the highest IPC, and comes with 3 MB of dedicated L2 cache. Next to it are three C1-Pro performance cores, which run at up to 3.25 GHz, and handle most performance-heavy workloads. Each C1-Pro core has 1 MB of dedicated L2 cache. Trailing these are six other C1-Pro cores, which are purposed to serve as efficiency cores. Their clock speed only runs up to 2.75 GHz, and have a more aggressive power-management scheme. The "P-cores" and "E-cores" on this chip are functionally identical, and have the same transistor count, but are simply configured differently. The CPU complex is held together by 16 MB of shared L3 cache that all 10 cores have equal access to.

Silicon Motion Technology Corporation (NasdaqGS: SIMO), a global leader in NAND flash controllers for solid-state storage devices, today announced the SM2524XT, a next-generation PCIe Gen 5 DRAMless SSD controller purpose-built for AI inference and KV Cache-intensive workloads. The SM2524XT leverages a new four-processor-core architecture with PCIe Gen 5 x4 and NAND interface speeds up to 4,800 MT/s to achieve sequential read speeds up to 14 GB/s and industry-leading random performance of up to 2.5 million IOPS.

Built on TSMC's advanced 6 nm process technology, the SM2524XT delivers up to 25 percent higher performance per watt compared to the previous generation controller, sustaining peak random I/O throughput even under the most demanding thermal and power constrained conditions. Against the previous generation controller, the SM2524XT improves random performance by up to 25 percent, slashing latency and accelerating response times for the highly fragmented data access patterns that define KV Cache and AI inference workloads.

Hard Disk Drives (HDDs) and Solid State Drives (SSDs) are among the most sought-after commodities in computing today, as the expansion of AI data centers consumes everything in its path. According to Seagate, Sandisk, and Western Digital, demand is so high that customers are signing long-term supply agreements lasting up to five years. This duration is significant because customers are now planning their contracts around demand expansion, which is not only substantial but will also bring better balance to the supply chain. With customers driving steady demand, HDD and SSD manufacturers know exactly how much spinning rust or NAND Flash to produce to meet this demand. Over time, this is a positive development for a supply chain that will adapt with expanding production capacity. However, it poses a short-term challenge for PC gamers.

For example, at the start of this year, we reported that HDD prices have soared by an average of 46% since mid-September. These changes have made spinning rust an expensive commodity, but this is minor compared to NAND Flash prices, which have increased 500% in just a few months. The expansion of AI data centers has depleted any remaining inventory of HDDs and SSDs, leaving the consumer PC market to compete for the few remaining units available for gaming PCs. Interestingly, HDDs contain almost no silicon for storage purposes, so their significant price increases are a supply chain issue unrelated to the semiconductor industry. Apart from the controllers that use silicon, HDD platters are made from materials that are not currently in short supply. However, high demand keeps their prices elevated.

SK hynix Inc. (or "the company", www.skhynix.com) announced today that it has recorded 52.5763 trillion won in revenues, 37.6103 trillion won in operating profit (with an operating margin of 72%), and 40.3459 trillion won in net profit (with a net margin of 77%) in the first quarter.

Revenue surpassed 50 trillion won for the first time on a quarterly basis, while operating profit and operating margin reached record highs at 37.6 trillion won and 72%, respectively. Operating profit has nearly doubled compared to the previous quarter, clearly demonstrating an improving profitability.

YMTC (Yangtze Memory Technologies Corp) is planning to significantly expand its manufacturing capacity, with Reuters reporting the Chinese NAND flash maker intends to build two additional factories on top of one already nearing completion. When all three are running at full capacity, YMTC's total output would more than double from its current 200,000 wafers per month to 400,000 wafers per month (each new plant is designed for 100,000 wafers monthly). The third fab, located in Wuhan alongside the existing two plants, has already been built and is currently being equipped. The fab is expected to start operations later this year and reach 50,000 wafers per month by 2027. Notably, over half of the equipment has been sourced domestically, including tooling for vertical layer stacking, a sign of how much YMTC has leaned into local suppliers since the US added it to the Entity List in December 2022. However, recently, the U.S. Government's Bureau of Industry and Security reportedly removed YMTC from the list of restricted Chinese companies.

The two planned factories don't yet have confirmed locations or target dates, but all three new plants will reportedly allocate some capacity to DRAM production alongside NAND. YMTC has already sent LPDDR samples to clients and expects feedback by year-end, which will shape how aggressively it pursues DRAM going forward. On the NAND side, YMTC already holds 11.8% of the global market, on par with Sandisk and not far behind SK Hynix (16%), Kioxia (15.9%), and Micron (13.3%), while Samsung leads at 30.4%. UBS expects the YMTC shares to pass 14% by early 2027. The company is pushing its Xtacking 4.0 architecture, which is considered competitive with what the industry leaders are shipping.

SK hynix has started shipping its PQC21 cSSD, the first product built on its 321-layer QLC NAND flash technology. The product is available in 1 TB and 2 TB capacities, with Dell as the first customer starting this month. QLC (Quad-Level Cell) stores four bits per cell, which maximizes storage density per unit area but has historically come with a write performance penalty compared to TLC (Triple-Level Cell). SK hynix addresses that with SLC caching, frequently accessed data is written to faster SLC-mode regions first before being transferred to the QLC cells, smoothing out the performance gap for typical workloads.

According to market research from IDC (International Data Corporation), the QLC NAND is expected to go from 22% of the global cSSD market in 2025 to 61% by 2027, so the timing of this launch makes sense. SK hynix says it will expand beyond Dell to other major customers as production scales up.