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
