Samsung, Apple in DRAM, NAND, SSD Marketplace

Samsung benefits a lot in its relationships with Apple from the consolidation of  DRAM memory fabs. The consolidation keeps DRAM prices high, while limiting the choice of Apple of vendors for its products. While Samsung and Apple compete on cell phones, Apple still needs Samsung for its processors and memory chips.

The article below discusses Samsung's semiconductor production investments and it shows the preference of investing more in DRAM than NAND -

"we invested around ..$9.36 billion in memory...We have set DRAM and NAND production ratio to 7 to 3"

The article also shows the path Samsung is taking this year in its transition from 2D to 3D on SSD, while mobile will use 2D NAND this year.

More about the consolidation of DRAM in February 2015 Samsung, Apple's iPhone, and Fabs Consolidation and in February 2014 IBM Selling Foundry Fabs and other blog posting from 2013 and 2012.

More about 3D semiconductors in February 2015 3D Flash NAND, SSD Challenges and in May 2014 3D NAND Race is On

Ron
Insightful, timely, and accurate semiconductor consulting.

Semiconductor information and news at - http://www.maltiel-consulting.com/

Samsung to inject $10 billion into semiconductor businessin 2015

Summary: Samsung plans to pump up to $10 billion into its semiconductor business, which drives the South Korean tech giant's best-performing business division.

By Cho Mu-hyun | April 30, 2015 -- 00:08 GMT (17:08 PDT)

Samsung plans to inject as much as $10 billion during 2015 into its semiconductor business, as unprecedented demand continues to fuel growth in the company's best-performing division.

"Last year, we invested around 10 trillion won [$9.36 billion] in memory semiconductors," said Jeeho Baek, senior vice president of Samsung's semiconductor division, during a conference call with analysts. "We plan to maintain similar volume this year. We have set DRAM and NAND production ratio to 7 to 3, but will manage this flexibly depending on demand, going forward."

Samsung is increasing its production capacity for memory chips. An additional line that will produce DRAMs is being built at Hwaseong, its main hub for memory chip production in South Korea, which will be completed by the end of the year.

The South Korean tech giant is planning to start construction of a new plant in Pyeongtaek, South Korea, next month. It plans to invest 15.6 trillion won in the new factory by 2017, the same year that it is tentatively set to start production.

The world's second-largest semiconductor vendor also plans to increase offerings that use 3D V-NAND. Only Samsung and Japan's Toshiba have commercialised 3D V-NAND, which stacks cells vertically within a chip to increase storage capacity in the same space.

Baek said the company will offer new 3D V-NAND solid state drives (SSDs) aimed at consumers by the second half of the year, as well as next-generation offers for enterprise-aimed goods.

Samsung cemented its leadership in SSDs last year. According to market research firm IHS, Samsung Electronics held 34 percent market share for 2014, with revenues of $3.996 billion -- double that of runner-up Intel, which posted $1.99 billion in the segment.

Last year, Samsung launched a variety of 3D V-NAND SSDs for the enterprise. The senior vice president said talks with clients were going smoothly, and he expected a surge in orders in the second half of the year.

Samsung insiders said the firm has clinched supply deals with Google and Amazon to supply SSDs for the latter's datacentres. Samsung SDS, the IT service arm of Samsung Group, will also use Samsung-made NANDs when building servers for clients.

Rival makers Toshiba, SK Hynix, and Micron have just begun ramping up efforts to commercialise 3D V-NANDs, but are yet to join the fray, which will likely contribute to prices being stable, allowing Samsung to continue to reap high margins in the area.

For mobile clients, however, supply will still be 2D NANDs. Samsung believes 2D NANDs are still more appropriate for mobile set products, said Lee Myung-jin, head of IR, during the conference call.

"For high-integration, high-reliability NAND flashes, we will use V-NANDs, and for mobile and consumer products, we will use 2D NANDs and secure competence in both product lines,” said Lee.

According to Gartner, the worldwide semiconductor market grew 7.9 percent last year to $339.811 billion. Memory segment grew 16.9 percent and led the growth, it said.

Samsung's contract chip business, called System LSI, will likely enjoy a surge in profit as well. Its migration to 14-nanometer FinFet process ahead of rivals has helped it clinch new clients.

Samsung will produce chips for Apple, Qualcomm, and Nvidia, both in 14-nanometer and 20-nanometer processes, for the latter's next-generation chips, insiders have said.

TSMC, MediaTek and Hynix,Sales >20% in 2014

IC Insights report on top 20 Semiconductor sale leaders below. TSMC is benefiting from manufacturing A7 for Apple iPhone.

MediaTek from low price smart phones and its merge with MStar. More about MediaTek in January 2013 blog Apples' Cook in China (MediaTek Impact) .

Hynix maybe is benefiting from it recovery from last year Fab fire.

As usually SanDisk is not included in this IC Insights which already had $5.66B sales in 2011. More about SanDisk in earlier blog Top 25 2011 Semiconductor Sales Ranking




Ron
Insightful, timely, and accurate semiconductor consulting.
Semiconductor information and news at - http://www.maltiel-consulting.com

Nine of the Top 20 Semiconductor Suppliers are Forecast to Register Double-Digit Growth in 2014!

TSMC, MediaTek, and SK Hynix’s sales are each expected to jump by >20% this year.

Later this month, IC Insights’ November Update to The 2014 McClean Report will show a forecast ranking of the 2014 top 25 semiconductor suppliers with the companies’ sales broken down on a quarterly basis.  A preview of the forecast for the top 20 companies’ total 2014 sales results is presented in Figure 1.  The top 20 worldwide semiconductor (IC and O S D—optoelectronic, sensor, and discrete) sales ranking for 2014 includes eight suppliers headquartered in the U.S., three in Japan, three in Europe, three in Taiwan, two in South Korea, and one in Singapore, a relatively broad representation of geographic regions.

This year’s top-20 ranking includes two pure-play foundries (TSMC and UMC) and six fabless companies.  Pure-play IC foundry GlobalFoundries is forecast to be replaced in this year’s top 20 ranking by fabless IC supplier Nvidia.  It is interesting to note that the top four semiconductor suppliers all have different business models.  Intel is essentially a pure-play IDM, Samsung a vertically integrated IC supplier, TSMC a pure-play foundry, and Qualcomm a fabless company.

IC foundries are included in the top 20 ranking because IC Insights has always viewed the ranking as a top supplier list, not as a marketshare ranking, and realizes that in some cases semiconductor sales are double counted.  With many of our clients being vendors to the semiconductor industry (supplying equipment, chemicals, gases, etc.), excluding large IC manufacturers like the foundries would leave significant “holes” in the list of top semiconductor suppliers.  Foundries and fabless companies are clearly identified in Figure 1.  In the April Update to The McClean Report, marketshare rankings of IC suppliers by product type were presented and foundries were excluded from these listings.

As shown, it is expected to require total semiconductor sales of over $4.2 billion to make the 2014 top 20 ranking. In total, the top 20 semiconductor companies’ sales are forecast to increase by 9% this year as compared to 2013. However, when excluding the two pure-play foundries (TSMC and UMC) from the ranking, the top “18” semiconductor companies’ sales are forecast to increase by 8% this year, the same rate as IC Insights’ current forecast for total 2014 worldwide semiconductor market growth.

Figure 1

Outside of the top six spots, there are numerous changes expected within the 2014 top-20 semiconductor supplier ranking.  In fact, of the 14 companies ranked 7th through 20th, 10 of them are forecast to change positions in 2014 as compared with 2013 (with NXP expected to jump up two spots).

IBM Selling Foundry Fabs

The article below discuss IBM announcement that it is selling its manufacturing operations. It will impact SOI (Silicon on Insulator), a process  that IBM specialized in.

It is not likely that Intel will buy an existing fab. Intel always duplicates an existing process in a current fab when they build a new fab 

It is just another example of consolidation chip manufacturing see in March 2012 Moore's Law End? (Next semiconductors gen. cost $10 billion

" chip industry without IBM will be a diminished industry."

IBM has been number 10 in foundry ranking for several years ( Top Semiconductor Ranking 2012 (Sales, Growth) 

More recent IBM dropped to number 11 in ranking (Top 13 Foundries Account for 91% of Total Foundry Sales in 2013)

Ron
Insightful, timely, and accurate semiconductor consulting.
Semiconductor information and news at - http://www.maltiel-consulting.com/

IBM fabs for sale – the semiconductor shockwave

 

david manners

 

10th February 2014

Following the semiconductor shock of IBM pulling out of chip manufacturing, David Manners considers who could buy and run the IBM fabs, whose processes include SOI and SiGe, and which supply manufacturing process technology to half the world’s major companies: Samsung, GloFo, UMC, ST, Renesas, NEC, Freescale, Toshiba and Infineon.

The biggest shockwave the semiconductor industry has had for years is the IBM announcement that it is pulling out of chip manufacturing.

IBM CEO Ginni Rometty has decided that IBM’s future is in software and services and chip manufacturing clearly doesn’t fall in either of these categories .

Moreover IBM’s chip manufacturing business lost $130 million last year and is slated to lose another $130 million this year while the capital costs to stay in the game are $5 billion a factory and rising.

That’s one way of looking at it.

The other way of looking at it is that IBM has been a stalwart of the world semiconductor industry, inventing the DRAM, mastering SiGe, SOI and much more besides and supplies manufacturing process technology to half the world’s major companies: Samsung, GloFo, UMC, ST, Renesas, NEC, Freescale, Toshiba and Infineon.

It is shocking to think IBM’s legendary R&D operation may be curtailed but, without the justification of a business outlet for its innovations, it may be.

One rather assumes that the obvious candidates for buying IBM’s fabs have already been tapped and that the announcement that Goldman Sachs has been appointed to look for a buyer for the fabs is to find an unobvious candidate.

The obvious candidates are Intel, TSMC, GloFo and Samsung.

However, Intel has net cash of only $7 billion and makes only CMOS chips, while IBM’s capacity includes processes like SOI and SiGe which Intel won’t need and the IBM fabs are not as advanced as Intel’s.

TSMC says it doesn’t want to operate foreign fabs; GloFo’s owners are said to be getting fed up with their capital-greedy chip investment and may not want to expose themselves further to the chip industry; Samsung already has as much operational and planned capacity in the USA as it needs.

So how about the non-obvious candidates?

Suggestions have been that Apple could enter into a jv with IBM to run the fabs. This would involve Apple putting a lot of money in to upgrade the fabs to the latest processes, but Apple has lots of money and IBM has the latest processes.

TowerJazz is another suggestion. The company has just formed a jv with Panasonic in which TowerJazz has a 51% share and which will own three Panasonic fabs in Japan.

The Panasonic deal gives TowerJazz’s already impressive array of specialty processes the addition of Panasonic’s specialty flows such as High Definition FSI for sensors and high voltage SOI power management technologies.

If TowerJazz now added IBM’s specialty processes like SiGe and SOI to its stable, it would become the world’s No.1 specialty fab.

Another suggestion is China. China has been trying, unsuccessfully, to build an indigenous chip industry for 30 years. Following the successful integration of IBM’s PC business into Lenovo, followed by the recent sale of IBM’s x86 server business to Lenovo, it would seem quite logical that a sale of IBM’s chip manufacturing would be to China.

Of course the European authorities, wedded to the idea of gaining 20% world market share in IC manufacturing, may see the opportunity to acquire IBM’s world-class process development capabilities as a sufficient reason to buy the fabs. IBM’s proficiency in SOI would give a boost to the European-developed FD-SOI process.

Then, of course, there are other emerging national tech players like Brazil and India who could see this as a once in a lifetime opportunity to acquire the basis for a chip industry.

Whatever the outcome of this, a chip industry without IBM will be a diminished industry.

SSD and NAND Shortage in 2013

Considering the increased cost of manufacturing of each new generation of memory and other type of chips and the consolidation of the industry, it is not surprising that we are having a shortage of flash NAND chips as is documented in the article below.



See earlier reports for the last few years Semiconductor Moore's Law Running out of Money and Nvidia: TSMC 20nm Essentially Worthless.


Ron
Insightful, timely, and accurate semiconductor consulting.
Semiconductor information and news at - http://www.maltiel-consulting.com/

The Great SSD Flash Shortage of 2013 - EOL 25nm, the pain and the future

http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/5571/the-great-ssd-flash-shortage-of-2013-eol-25nm-the-pain-and-the-future/index.html


By: Chris Ramseye

Introduction

 

 

Within hours of visiting Crucial at CES, my phone was ringing off the hook. The people that I consult for wanted to know the inside scoop, 960GB in a $600 SSD with better than acceptable performance for their needs, companies wanted to know why and where - they were ready to place orders. Fast forward six months and they've placed orders, as has everyone else. Micron needed 20nm flash and it needed it fast. One of the biggest buyers, the government and over the past few weeks we found what they need all of this high performance storage for.

 

This story doesn't start with Micron or in 2013 for that matter. In a move to increase prices, last July Toshiba announced plans to cut NAND flash production by 30%. By September, OCZ Technology warned investors of a lower forecast citing a shortage of NAND chips used to build storage devices. In March 2013, Peter K. Hazen, Director of SSD Marketing, NVM Solutions Group sent a letter to customers with the excerpt below.

 

Intel remains very committed to our SSD business. As a leading NAND flash memory manufacturer with our IM Flash Technologies partner Micron, our NAND supply continues to grow every quarter and as a result we expect to have twice the SSD output in 2013 as we did in 2012. Through internal and industry forecasts, we originally felt this would be sufficient to meet our customers' demand.

 

Unfortunately, even 2x supply growth is not sufficient. Even in the first half of this year, we expect to ship more than 2x the units in Q1 and Q2 than the same quarters last year, but it is not enough to meet our aggregate customer demand. We recognize that this can be disruptive to your business and we are working with our customers worldwide to minimize the impact and maximize the output. This will also mean we will not necessarily be doubling output on every product line, but will focus output on the datacenter and professional client product lines to help satisfy demand on products that our customers have designed in, and will reduce the volume on products for segments that are more transactional in nature.

 

Intel has and will continue to launch new SSD products in 2013 that utilize the smallest, most cost-effective NAND available (20nm), and these products are the key to increasing capacity as we are able to ship more SSDs per wafer than prior generations. Please support the migrations to these new products as well as take advantage of their greater performance and new features, while still maintaining industry-leading quality and endurance.

 

From that point, things must have gone horribly wrong or amazingly well depending on what side of the fence you're on. Let's take a look at what the NAND flash shortage of 2013 means for manufacturers of consumer SSDs and what it means to you as well.

IMFT Customers Look to Flash Forward

  

The image above is from a review published by Hot Hardware on June 21, 2013. It shows an ADATA XPG SX900 256GB SSD with SanDisk 19nm Toggle Mode flash. On the surface, nothing in this image should surprise anyone. The SX900 is one of ADATA's high-performance products designed for gamers and power users. Seeing an LSI SandForce SF-2281 controller with the new B02 stepping paired with SanDisk flash is a good combination.

 

When the SX900 first launched a year ago it shipped with Micron NAND flash. The drive was later revised with Micron NAND purchased at the wafer level and packaged by ADATA. Packaging flash is a good way to reduce costs and ADATA has done it for their own and other companies' products for quite some time now. For ADATA to go back to using 'off-the-shelf' flash and invest in a radical change to the BOM, ONFi to Toggle, tells us a lot about the current state of 20nm flash from IMFT.

 

I receive emails nearly daily from shoppers trying to purchase Crucial M500 960GB SSDs. Newegg doesn't have stock at the time of writing and given the extremely low user reviews posted for this product, I'd say they've never had a steady flow of M500 in either 960GB or 480GB drives. Even Crucial.com, Crucial's own web store is 960GB-less. When you try to purchase this product SKU shoppers are met with the following message.

 

We are sorry, but the product you selected is temporarily out of stock. However, we are constantly replenishing our inventory and there's a good chance that this product will become available soon. Check back often to see when the product you selected is available, or make your purchase today�by returning to the previous page�and selecting a comparable product.

 

 

... and Hynix

 

Last month we talked about Corsair moving the base Neutron from 25nm IMFT flash to new Hynix 22nm flash. We rarely see SKHynix NAND in consumer SSDs. I can count the number of SSDs I've held with Hynix flash on one hand and I test more than my fair share. I would estimate TweakTown reviews roughly 80% of the consumer SSD SKUs released worldwide, around 80 products in 2012 published and many more in private tests.

 

The evidence leads us to believe that IMFT has yield issues with the new 20nm process or that the demand is so high, existing partners who once purchased in bulk simply can't get enough flash from the company to support demand.

Pain at the Manufacturing Level

 

Any flash shortage will increase prices for consumers; we went through the cycles in the DRAM market for years. Until recently though, consumer SSD prices were going in one direction. The transition from $1 per GB to 50c per GB was rapid, but just as fast, prices shot back up. Finding quality SSDs for less than a dollar per GB is still possible, but some products designed to sell closer to the 50 cents per GB are closer to $1 per GB mark.

 

One company we think is feeling the pain is OCZ Technology. OCZ hasn't released a consumer SSD with Toshiba Toggle flash since the Vertex 3 Max IOPS. Every product since then has shipped with IMFT flash, either 25nm or 20nm. The new OCZ Vertex 3.20 released as a low-cost SSD. OCZ has a long history of kicking every other companies' asses in the low-cost market. Not only did OCZ own that market, they drove other companies to lower flagship product prices just to compete. The new OCZ Vertex 3.20 uses IMFT 20nm flash and as you can see above, the price is much higher than the MSRP of $219.99 at this time.

 

We think that the 20nm flash shortage is hurting OCZ more than anyone else still in the consumer SSD game at this point. Patriot Memory, G.Skill and Monster Digital have already pulled out of the consumer SSD business and there are rumors of more companies to follow. The combined efforts of Patriot, G.Skill and Monster Digital don't equate to the volume of products shipped by OCZ Technology, but less competition in the consumer space hurts consumers.

 

 

... and for your Wallet

 

We don't expect consumer SSD prices to return to late 2012 prices anytime soon. This should worry anyone looking to purchase an SSD. Products designed for the mainstream performance market will hover just under $1 per GB, but high performance parts could surge when demand picks up in three to four months.

 

In our OCZ Technology Vertex 450 review we stated that OCZ plans to release a Vector 150 product and that production of the existing Vector product with 25nm flash was ending soon. Vector 150 could bring a new price premium that we haven't seen in many years.

Final Thoughts

 

 

The consumer SSD market will feel the pain from IMFT's flash cross over from 25nm to 20nm for at least a few more months. When IMFT gets their flash together, consumer SSD prices should return to 2012 levels - at least we hope so.

 

There are three bright lights at the end of the tunnel. The first is the obvious, IMFT increases yields on 20nm flash. The second comes from a report at SeekingAlpha. They speculate that Micron is converting a fab in Singapore from DRAM to NAND. This would decrease worldwide DRAM wafer production by six percent, but have a positive impact on the flash market.

 

The third light at the end of the tunnel is SanDisk and Toshiba's announcements of a transition to new 19nm 1y flash. Current Flash Forward 19nm flash is 19mm by 26mm cells. The new 1y flash moves to 19mm by 19.5mm. This will allow more flash per wafer and increase global supply.

 

Moving forward, the fabs have the rest of the SSD industry by the you know what's. SanDisk, Intel, Toshiba, Samsung, Micron and SK Hynix control the world's supply of flash. We have to wonder how long the SSD fab-less companies have left and what it will take to survive moving forward.

   

Semiconductor Moore's Law Running out of Money

New 14nm process technology and design IP development costs more than $1.5 billion, while new fabs cost several billions. Only very few companies will be able to continue developing and building new fabs. A recent forecast at Common Platform Technology Forum see  +44% growth for foundries.

More stories in March 2012 Moore's Law End? (Next semiconductors gen. cost $10 billion) and Moore's Law Slowwwing .


Ron
Insightful, timely, and accurate semiconductor consulting.
Semiconductor information and news at - http://www.maltiel-consulting.com/

IBM: Fab Future Beyond FinFETs

The Common Technology Platform and other vendors have been lagging Intel in process development and  integration for several years. In a recent Common Platform Technology Forum, IBM presented their latest effort to catch up - vision of Fab future.
"IBM spotlights double patterning tricks with immersion lithography, showed advances in fully depleted silicon-on-insulator".

 "IBM, GloFo and Samsung now claim they have the lion's share of today's 32/28 nm, high-K metal gate capacity."
While they are claiming to have the fab capacity lead for 28nm HKMG process, Intel, TSMC, and other foundries would feel differently.

Ron
Insightful, timely, and accurate semiconductor consulting.
Semiconductor information and news at - http://www.maltiel-consulting.com/