Thursday, April 11, 2019

2018 - NAND and DRAM Thanks for the Memories, Now for a Change

3D NAND and Memories – Are we in a minor Blip or a full on Memory Recession?

MONTEREY, Calif., April 10, 2019 – 2018 was banner year for Flash, DRAM and Non Volatile Memory. The large profitability of the segment occluded the disconnect between realistic demand and an overenthusiastic supply until reality struck in Q4 last year. The usual utterances of “Blip”, “confined to the H2” and the like permeated nervous conversations regarding future market conditions. The further that we “slog” into the continuing market malaise the facts of double and triple ordering have surfaced once again. Where did all that “convertible bandwidth” that needed “storage” go? At this point its recommended that a good read to explain our 20/20 hindsight is Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s book “The Black Swan – The Impact of the Highly Improbable”. What was highly improbable 6 months ago is now fact. How did we fail to see this coming? Not to worry as we’ll explain.
During periods of high profitability no one in their right mind shakes the boat is a good way to part company from their employer. Recessionary times bring out the best in travel budgets for new memory device development teams as they’re generally used to scrape together a reason to open the door for customer visits. Getting the customers attention through the promise of the new and the exciting is an age old tactic that seems to work well for marketing and sometimes sales. Key to this tactic is having something to talk about when you get to the customers location.
Usually these meetings go from how the visiting company views market conditions and how they see them improving followed by the new stuff and a high level technology person explaining the details. This is then followed by action items and goodbyes. This usual pro-forma business meeting agenda is quickly dissolving as the market evolution this time around is changing rapidly in context and technology.
Intel has finally introduced their Optane systems that use “their” 3D XPoint PCM memory and are on a roll to release at least one product a week. This is against some sort of rule wherein you don’t attempt to compete with your customers. Intel isn’t competing with their customers they are supplying them with technology that no one else can deliver.
On top of that Intel has kept their future plans secret though over time small planned leaks are published. Webfeet research views this strategy as being a completely new version of Intel’s desire to remain dominant as the lead element within the Server Class community.
Intel’s competitors are still taking notes and haven’t divulged how they intend to respond to what appears to be a well-planned campaign. Yes, everyone complains about the 4 year gestation of Optane but the fact stands that they are shipping a product that they have sole ownership of.
Webfeet detected this plan several years ago realizing that Intel might be going for a market tier above that based on NAND-Flash. One that mimed DDR4 DRAM but at lower speed and durability but would allow the directly addressable memory space to expand into the realms needed to satisfy the demands of the In-Memory Compute server segment. The absurd part of the story is everyone waited patiently for Intel to announce.
We now see companies becoming partners of Intel to take advantage of the Optane environment in which they will also become eligible to use Intel/Altera FPGAs to accelerate application specific In-Memory algorithms to pursue lucrative high margin vertical applications while the rest are waiting for Intel to become involved at JEDEC so they can begin also.
If this is irritating there’s even more to come, so as the French say, get used to it because that’s the way it is.
Even with the Q4 price decline the 2018 Flash memory market performed much better than expected with revenues above $60 billion, an increase of 13.2% from 2017.  The NAND Flash market followed suit at 13.8%, while the NOR market grew sluggishly from 2017 by only 3.1 %. Samsung was again the 2018 revenue market leader for all NV Memories and NAND, Macronix barely maintained itself as the NOR Flash leader closely followed by Winbond and Cypress. STMicro reaffirmed the number one position in EEPROM, Cypress remained the NVRAM market leader, and Winbond held the serial NOR leadership position. This report discusses long term memory cycles including the conditions leading to the current market predicament, are we in a slight correction or a full on memory recession, is the transition from von Neuman computing (Memory and Storage) moving quickly to Persistent Memory-centric computing, and how fast are the emerging NVMs growing including XPoint as well as the emergence of NRAM.
The 2018 Non Volatile Memory Market Shares by Vendor report, CS700MS-2019, includes market shares by vendor for total Non Volatile Memory, NAND Flash, NOR Flash, serial NOR Flash, total EEPROM, serial EEPROM, parallel EEPROM, OTP ROM (EPROM and Mask ROM), and NVRAM (NVSRAM, RTC, MRAM, FeRAM/FeFET, PCM, XPoint, RRAM, NRAM and Others).  Annual revenue forecasts are provided from 2017-2024 for the EEPROM, OTP ROM, and NVRAM markets. In addition, the NVSRAM market shares are broken out by vendor for Real Time Clocks (RTC) and NVSRAM from 2013-2018.  This report, CS700MS-2019, is available for $2.5K and for providers of the market share data they can obtain the report with a $500 discount.  WebFeet Research also has forecast the serial EEPROM (conservative and aggressive) and the NVSRAM (nvSRAM, RTC) from 2015-2024 by density for revenue, units, and ASPs, and for the serial EEPROM by interface type.  Each of these additional forecasts are priced at $500 and come in excel format.  This report is vital for the seasoned memory professional as well as the casual market observer.
About WebFeet Research   
Headquartered in Monterey, California, WebFeet Research provides business consulting and market research services in the memory and storage markets, with a focus on nonvolatile memory, solid state storage technologies and cognitive computing. For further information, please contact:

Alan Niebel
WebFeet Research, Inc
w3.webfeetresearch.com
alan.niebel@web-feetresearch.com
Tel: 831.373.3303