We’re at an inflection point in the memory industry. For the first time, the bit growth cycle has been broken. It means that growth in memory doesn’t come from shipping more chips with higher densities. That’s another constant in the industry gone.
The 20% growth in memory we have seen over the past year was primarily due to higher prices. The actual bit volume shipped declined. The Yole report we are sharing in this newsletter estimates that the growth of conventional memory remains relatively flat.
It’s only natural that manufacturers are going where the money is, and we are seeing the effect now: Manufacturers abandon legacy technologies at much faster rates than before.
Just remember: DDR3 was discontinued only at the end of 2024, and now, not even a year later, DDR4 is already being phased out by the big manufacturers. This led to the interesting effect that DDR4 module prices are higher than DDR5. With the eMMC discontinuations announced earlier this year, two major legacy technologies are seeing major supply issues.
It's a pace we’ve never seen before, but it’s something we have to live with moving forward. Marco Mezger penned a commentary for eetimes in which he dives deeper into this topic and urges us to break the vicious cycle.
Responding to the market urgency, we are dedicating our next webinar on September 10 to DDR4. We will cover supplier dynamics and outline risk and mitigation strategies. Make sure you sign up!
Only when we are informed, we can break this vicious cycle.
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