Approved Memory

04/03/2024

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-04-03/tsmc-evacuates-production-lines-after-major-taiwan-quake

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. halted some chipmaking and evacuated plants after the biggest earthquake to hit its home island in 25 years, raising concerns about disruptions to the global tech supply chain.

05/25/2023

We honor those who serve

During National Military Appreciation Month in May, we take time out to honor our veteran and military communities for their service to our country. Our service members always strive to protect our American way of life, and their dedication has allowed us to remain the home of the free.

To all veterans, current service members, and their families - thank you.

01/11/2022

We would like to congratulate BJ Doucett Approved Memory sponsored Professional golfer for Qualifying for the PGA Tour Sony open yesterday. BJ shot a -9 (63) to lead all players in the qualifier. Please join us in congratulating BJ and follow his play this week in the event.

01/08/2020

https://en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20191231007200315

SEOUL, Dec. 31 (Yonhap) -- A power failure at a Samsung Electronics factory disrupted prod...

08/08/2019

Trade Wars and the Shifting Supply Chain Landscape

The dispute between Japan and South Korea is the latest in a series of worldwide trade feuds. As the U.S.-China trade dispute continues to unfold, tensions between these two East Asian countries are now rising to the surface.

On July 1, Japan announced that it would place extended export restrictions on specialty materials crucial to South Korea’s technology sector. Effective July 4, Japanese companies must receive permission to export these materials to South Korean businesses, which will now take about 90 days to complete.

The materials in question – fluorinated polyamides, photoresists, and hydrogen fluoride – are required to produce semiconductors. Essentially, these new requirements make it very difficult and prolong the process for South Korean companies to receive the special materials they need for memory chip and LCD production.

There is no doubt that these restrictions will affect the global memory chip market. Especially since Japan produces around 90% of the world’s supply of fluorinated polyimide and resists and roughly 70% of its hydrogen fluoride. On top of that, South Korean memory manufacturers Samsung and SK Hynix together control over 63% of the global memory market, and both companies rely heavily on these chemicals from Japan in their production processes.

Almost immediately, we have seen memory prices increase across the board in response to supply and market uncertainty. Samsung and SK Hynix have officially raised pricing by 10-30% for all memory products, including DRAM, flash, eMMC, RDIMMs, and PC modules. Both memory manufacturers will also prioritize making and selling server memory over PC and consumer memory.

From our experience, customers should stay vigilant of shifting pricing dynamics on memory products until the current geopolitical climate calms and its conflicts are resolved. We have advised customers to review their bills of materials (BOMs) and determine where risk exposure might be present.

Forecast planning and evaluation of current memory inventory levels are the keys to staying proactive during this time. Due to the uncertainty of memory pricing and supply, customers may have to qualify other manufacturers and expand their AVLs to keep their lines running according to forecast. Having a contingency plan in place with a trusted partner is an essential strategy to navigate this trade dispute.

Only time will tell how long the strife between Japan and South Korea will last. It is clear, though, that these tensions have impacted the memory market and have major U.S. tech giants concerned. Apple, Amazon, Google, and Microsoft have all sent executives to South Korea to gauge supply and market conditions. The companies are specifically concerned about the trade dispute’s impact on Samsung’s DRAM supply.

Before the trade dispute began, Samsung and SK Hynix had about 60-90 days of inventory in production and on-hand. As a result of the ongoing tensions, Samsung has decided to test compounds from other vendors outside Japan.

The politics surrounding the Japan-South Korea trade dispute have the potential to significantly impact memory production and part availability. We have advised customers to monitor the situation closely and work with us to gain full insight into the potential effects that pricing may have on their production lines. Trade Wars and the Shifting Supply Chain Landscape

08/08/2019

DDR5 is Coming

DRAM chips are prevalent as the main memory in many computing devices – home and office computers, servers and mobile devices.

Double Data Rate 5 (DDR5) is the next-generation standard for random-access memory (RAM). The JEDEC DDR5 standard is currently in development with JEDEC's JC-42 Committee for Solid State Memories. However, some companies are planning to bring the first products to market by the end of 2019.

DDR5 will offer improved performance with greater power efficiency as compared to previous generation DRAM technologies. As planned, DDR5 will provide double the bandwidth and density over DDR4, along with delivering improved channel efficiency and lower power draw.

These enhancements, combined with a more user-friendly interface for server and client platforms, should allow for larger memory modules in smaller form-factor systems.

Support for these greater capacities will be dependent on the CPUs and chipsets that can take advantage of it. The data rate increase alone should more than keep up with potential future processors as the number of cores expands. For example, with its upcoming third-generation Ryzen processors, AMD has increased the core count to 16 cores in its high-end product. In response, Intel also has upped the number of cores for its own processors; the Intel Core i9-9900K processor, to cite just one example, packs eight cores.

Initially, DDR5 chips are expected to ship with a bandwidth of 4,800 MT/s, or about 1.9x that of DDR4 RAM. The official upper limit for the DDR5 RAM standard is 6,400 MT/s.

As it stands, perhaps the most important facet of DDR5 is that it requires comparatively less power to operate than previous generations of system memory. As such, DDR5 is expected to be utilized in mobile devices as well as in desktop and laptop PCs. Mainstream adoption is still more than a year away, but analysts expect DDR5 to make up 25 percent of the memory market by 2021 and 44 percent in 2022.
Low-Power DRAM

Earlier this year, JEDEC announced the publication of JESD209-5, “Low Power Double Data Rate 5” (LPDDR5). The LPDDR5 standard is an industry-leading low-power volatile DRAM device memory standard for storage of system code, software applications and user data.

LPDDR5 will eventually operate at an I/O rate of 6,400 MT/s, 50 percent higher than that of the first version of LPDDR4. This will significantly boost memory speed and efficiency for a variety of applications, including mobile computing devices such as smartphones, tablets and thin notebooks.

In addition, LPDDR5 offers new features designed for mission critical applications. To address the need for data reliability in automotive applications, LPDDR5 introduces the support of Error Correcting Code (ECC) on the interface between the SoC and DRAM.

ECC is an established memory technology used in a large array of applications to increase reliability. Through the use of ECC, single-bit errors are detected and corrected automatically providing higher memory reliability. ECC benefits all usage modes and provides better mobile power efficiency.

LPDDR5 features two new operations, Data-Copy and Write-X, focused on improving power consumption. The Data-Copy command instructs the device to copy data transmitted on a single I/O pin to other I/O pins, eliminating the need to transmit data to these pins. Write-X eliminates the need to send data from the SoC to the LPDDR5 device when transferring data. Reducing data transmission with these new commands will help reduce overall system power consumption.

Expect to see LPDDR5 memory chips in phones by next spring.

05/31/2018

http://www.amc-optics.com/

05/30/2018

03/19/2018

Server DRAM Prices Will Continue to Rise as Server Demand from China Boosts in 2Q18, Says TrendForce

Published Mar.19 2018

Server DRAM Prices Will Continue to Rise as Server Demand from China Boosts in 2Q18, Says TrendForce

According to the latest data of DRAMeXchange, a division of TrendForce, the top three Server DRAM suppliers are progressing towards the specification of 32GB RDIMM, and the 1Q18 quotes offered by Server DRAM suppliers will grow by only 4% compared with 4Q17 in order to ensure sales by favorable prices. In 2Q18, as domestic server demand from China rises, the server DRAM prices will continue to rise, says DRAMeXchange.

According to Mark Liu, senior analyst at DRAMeXchange, the annual global server shipment will keep single-digit growth this year. Particularly, the growth in Chinese market in 2Q18 will reach an outstanding 20%. On Server DRAM supply side, suppliers offer favorable contract prices in response to transition into new platform and high-density modules, dampening the price rise.

Top three DRAM suppliers will flexibly adjust their product mixes, and put 16Gb mono die into mass production in 2H18

In addition, Liu also analyzes the conditions of supply chain and points out that cloud computing and cloud storage are the focus of market in recent years. On the one hand, the server industry has benefited from the popularity of smart end-devices; on the other hand, enterprise servers are growing cloud and drive the demand for network services, becoming the key growth momentum of server market.

Due to the increasing demand for Server DRAM and data centers worldwide, the top three DRAM suppliers will increase the proportion of advanced processes in overall output in 2H18, which will improve cost structure and high-density module's adoption rate. At present, the Korean DRAM manufacturers plan to produce high-density 16Gb mono die in the third quarter, with the goal to effectively increase the pe*******on rate of modules with density above 64GB. In 2H18, the mainstream process of Server DRAM will gradually shift to 17nm and 18nm node. The increasing proportion of high-density chips and improvement in cost structure will accelerate the speed of transition into high-density modules.

02/26/2018

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/biz/archives/2018/02/20/2003687894

DRAM prices are to extend a lengthy upward spiral as robust demand for PCs and data centers is expected to propel prices by 3 to 5 percent this quarter, boding well for the global memory industry’s growth this year, market researcher TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said.