Western Digital's FMS 2024 demonstrations included a preview of their upcoming PCIe 5.0 x4 M.2 2280 NVMe SSDs for mobile workstations and consumer desktops. The Gen 5 client SSD market has been dominated by solutions based on Phison's E26 controller. The first generation products launched with slower NAND flash, while the more recent ones have exceeded the 14 GBps barrier by utilizing Micron's 2400 MT/s 232L 3D TLC. Western Digital has been conservative over the last year or so by focusing more on the mainstream / mid-range market in terms of new product introductions (such as the WD Blue SN5000, WD_BLACK SN770M, and the WD Blue SN580). Their SSD lineup is due for an update with Gen 5 drives being sorely missed. The SSDs being demonstrated at FMS 2024 will end up doing just that.
Western Digital's technology demonstrations in this segment involved two different M.2 2280 SSDs - one for the performance segment, and another for the mainstream market. They both utilize in-house controllers - while the performance segment drive uses a 8-channel controller with DRAM for the flash translation layer, the mainstream one utilizes a 4-channel DRAM-less controller. Both drives being benchmarked live were equipped with BiCS8 218-layer 3D TLC.
Western Digital is touting the power efficiency of their platform as a key differentiator, promising south of 7W (performance drive) and 5W (mainstream DRAM-less drive) for the complete SSD under stressful traffic. This makes it suitable for use in mobile workstations, but a good fit for desktops as well.
Demonstrated performance numbers indicate almost 15 GBps sequential reads and 2M+ random read IOPS for the performance drive, and 10.7 GBps sequential reads for the mainstream version. Western Digital might have missed the Gen 5 bus as it started out slowly. However, the technology demonstrations with the in-house controller and NAND indicate that WD has caught up just as the Gen 5 market is about to take off.|
StorageDemand for high-performance processors for AI training is skyrocketing, and consequently so is the demand for the components that go into these processors. So much so that SK hynix this week is very publicly announcing that the company's high-bandwidth memory (HBM) production capacity has already sold out for the rest of 2024, and even most of 2025 has already sold out as well.
SK hynix currently produces various types of HBM memory for customers like Amazon, AMD, Facebook, Google (Broadcom), Intel, Microsoft, and, of course, NVIDIA. The latter is an especially prolific consumer of HBM3 and HBM3E memory for its H100/H200/GH200 accelerators, as NVIDIA is also working to fill what remains an insatiable (and unmet) demand for its accelerators.
As a result, HBM memory orders, which are already placed months in advance, are now backlogging well into 2025 as chip vendors look to secure supplies of the memory stacks critical to their success.
This has made SK hynix the secnd HBM memory vendor in recent months to announce that they've sold out into 2025, following an earlier announcement from Micron regarding its HBM3E production. But of the two announcements, SK hynix's is arguably the most significant yet, as the South Korean firm's HBM production capacity is far greater than Micron's. So while things were merely "interesting" with the smallest of the Big Three memory manufacturers being sold out into 2025, things are taking a more concerning (and constrained) outlook now that SK hynix is as well.
SK hynix currently controls roughly 46% - 49% of HBM market, and its share is not expected to drop significantly in 2025, according to market tracking firm TrendForce. By contrast, Micron's share on HBM memory market is between 4% and 6%. Since HBM supply of both companies is sold out through the most of 2025, we're likely looking at a scenario where over 50% of the industry's total HBM3/HBM3E supply for the coming quarters is already sold out.
This leaves Samsung as the only member of the group not to comment on HBM demand so far. Though with memory being a highly fungible commodity product, it would be surprising if Samsung wasn't facing similar demand. And, ultimately, all of this is pointing towards the indusry entering an HBM3 memory shortage.
Separately, SK hynix said that it is sampling 12-Hi 36GB HBM3E stacks with customers and will begin volume shipments in the third quarter.
MemoryDemand for high-performance processors for AI training is skyrocketing, and consequently so is the demand for the components that go into these processors. So much so that SK hynix this week is very publicly announcing that the company's high-bandwidth memory (HBM) production capacity has already sold out for the rest of 2024, and even most of 2025 has already sold out as well.
SK hynix currently produces various types of HBM memory for customers like Amazon, AMD, Facebook, Google (Broadcom), Intel, Microsoft, and, of course, NVIDIA. The latter is an especially prolific consumer of HBM3 and HBM3E memory for its H100/H200/GH200 accelerators, as NVIDIA is also working to fill what remains an insatiable (and unmet) demand for its accelerators.
As a result, HBM memory orders, which are already placed months in advance, are now backlogging well into 2025 as chip vendors look to secure supplies of the memory stacks critical to their success.
This has made SK hynix the secnd HBM memory vendor in recent months to announce that they've sold out into 2025, following an earlier announcement from Micron regarding its HBM3E production. But of the two announcements, SK hynix's is arguably the most significant yet, as the South Korean firm's HBM production capacity is far greater than Micron's. So while things were merely "interesting" with the smallest of the Big Three memory manufacturers being sold out into 2025, things are taking a more concerning (and constrained) outlook now that SK hynix is as well.
SK hynix currently controls roughly 46% - 49% of HBM market, and its share is not expected to drop significantly in 2025, according to market tracking firm TrendForce. By contrast, Micron's share on HBM memory market is between 4% and 6%. Since HBM supply of both companies is sold out through the most of 2025, we're likely looking at a scenario where over 50% of the industry's total HBM3/HBM3E supply for the coming quarters is already sold out.
This leaves Samsung as the only member of the group not to comment on HBM demand so far. Though with memory being a highly fungible commodity product, it would be surprising if Samsung wasn't facing similar demand. And, ultimately, all of this is pointing towards the indusry entering an HBM3 memory shortage.
Separately, SK hynix said that it is sampling 12-Hi 36GB HBM3E stacks with customers and will begin volume shipments in the third quarter.
MemoryDemand for high-performance processors for AI training is skyrocketing, and consequently so is the demand for the components that go into these processors. So much so that SK hynix this week is very publicly announcing that the company's high-bandwidth memory (HBM) production capacity has already sold out for the rest of 2024, and even most of 2025 has already sold out as well.
SK hynix currently produces various types of HBM memory for customers like Amazon, AMD, Facebook, Google (Broadcom), Intel, Microsoft, and, of course, NVIDIA. The latter is an especially prolific consumer of HBM3 and HBM3E memory for its H100/H200/GH200 accelerators, as NVIDIA is also working to fill what remains an insatiable (and unmet) demand for its accelerators.
As a result, HBM memory orders, which are already placed months in advance, are now backlogging well into 2025 as chip vendors look to secure supplies of the memory stacks critical to their success.
This has made SK hynix the secnd HBM memory vendor in recent months to announce that they've sold out into 2025, following an earlier announcement from Micron regarding its HBM3E production. But of the two announcements, SK hynix's is arguably the most significant yet, as the South Korean firm's HBM production capacity is far greater than Micron's. So while things were merely "interesting" with the smallest of the Big Three memory manufacturers being sold out into 2025, things are taking a more concerning (and constrained) outlook now that SK hynix is as well.
SK hynix currently controls roughly 46% - 49% of HBM market, and its share is not expected to drop significantly in 2025, according to market tracking firm TrendForce. By contrast, Micron's share on HBM memory market is between 4% and 6%. Since HBM supply of both companies is sold out through the most of 2025, we're likely looking at a scenario where over 50% of the industry's total HBM3/HBM3E supply for the coming quarters is already sold out.
This leaves Samsung as the only member of the group not to comment on HBM demand so far. Though with memory being a highly fungible commodity product, it would be surprising if Samsung wasn't facing similar demand. And, ultimately, all of this is pointing towards the indusry entering an HBM3 memory shortage.
Separately, SK hynix said that it is sampling 12-Hi 36GB HBM3E stacks with customers and will begin volume shipments in the third quarter.
Memory
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