A month ago, Kioxia has reportedly submitted its initial public offering (IPO) application to the Tokyo Stock Exchange. However, as the memory market recently seems to be on a roller coaster ride, the latest report by Reuters notes that the Japanese memory chip maker has decided to cancel its plan to be listed in October.

Citing reports by Japanese media, another report by MoneyDJ indicates that Kioxia’s IPO is expected to be delayed until November or later.

Reuters points out that Kioxia has been aiming for a market valuation of JPY 1.5 trillion (roughly USD 10.39 billion). Nevertheless, the recent decline in shares of other listed memory companies, including Samsung, SK hynix and Micron, has made this target difficult to achieve.

According to Reuters, Bain Capital, which holds a 56% stake in Kioxia along with SK hynix, declined to comment. Kioxia, on the other hand, responded by saying that it is preparing to go public when the timing is right.

This is not the first time Kioxia abandoned its IPO plan. The memory giant had previously scheduled to be listed in 2020. However, due to continued market volatility and ongoing concerns about a second wave of COVID-19, the company gave up the plan in September, 2020.

A few days ago, Japan’s Tokyo Metro initiated the processes to launch its IPO next month. According to The Japan Times, Tokyo Metro aims to raise USD 2.25 billion, marking the country’s largest IPO in six years. Should Kioxia stick to its plan to kick off the IPO by 2024, the deal were to become the largest one of the year.

According to TrendForce, in the NAND Flash market, Kioxia ranked third in revenue in the second quarter of 2024, with a 13.8% market share, after Samsung (36.9%) and SK Group (22.1%).

Read more

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(Photo credit: Kioxia)

In 2024, the storage market is experiencing dynamic changes, with many positive developments, including rising contract prices, significant revenue growth for manufacturers, and multiple breakthroughs in technology. Amid this, major storage companies are gearing up for new challenges, especially as the NAND flash memory sector faces an impending shift.

How Far Have Major Companies Progressed with NAND Flash Technology?

This year, major storage manufacturers like Samsung, Micron, and SK Hynix have all made notable advancements in NAND flash technology.

In terms of NAND cell technology, Samsung has become the first in the industry to mass-produce its 9th generation V-NAND with QLC technology. On September 12, Samsung announced it had begun mass production of its 1Tb QLC (Quad-Level Cell) 9th generation vertical NAND (V-NAND), incorporating several groundbreaking technologies.

From a technological innovation perspective, Samsung’s 9th generation QLC V-NAND employs its unique channel hole etching technology to achieve the industry’s highest stack height with a dual-stack structure. Leveraging the expertise of TLC 9th generation V-NAND, the cell area and peripheral circuits are optimized, resulting in an 86% higher bit density than the previous generation.

Compared to earlier versions, the design of Samsung’s 9th generation QLC V-NAND improves data retention performance by about 20%, enhancing product reliability. Writing performance has doubled, and data input/output speeds have increased by 60%. Additionally, its low-power design reduces power consumption for both read and write operations by approximately 30% and 50%, respectively. This is achieved by sensing only the necessary bit lines (BL) to minimize power usage.

In terms of applications, Samsung plans to expand the use of the 9th generation QLC V-NAND from branded consumer products to mobile universal flash storage (UFS), PC, and server SSDs to meet the demands of customers, including cloud service providers.

Sung Hoi Hur, Executive Vice President and Head of Flash Product and Technology at Samsung Electronics, stated that as the enterprise SSD market grows rapidly and demand for AI applications increases, the company will continue to strengthen our leadership in the high-capacity, high-performance NAND flash market through 9th-generation QLC and TLC V-NAND.

However, at present, the mainstream products in the market are still TLC NAND flash memory particles. On August 6, SK Hynix’s Solidigm launched PCIe 5.0 data center SSDs, the D7-PS1010/1030 series, based on SK Hynix’s 176-layer 3D TLC NAND.

On September 11, SK Hynix announced the development of its high-performance SSD “PEB110 E1.S” for data centers, available in 2TB, 4TB, and 8TB versions. Currently undergoing validation with global data center customers, SK Hynix plans to begin mass production in the second quarter of next year.

On the other hand, Micron announced in late July that its SSD products featuring 9th generation (G9) TLC NAND technology had entered mass production, targeting personal devices, edge servers, enterprises, and cloud data centers. Micron’s G9 NAND achieves a data transfer rate 50% faster than current NAND technology used in SSDs. Its per-chip write and read bandwidths are 99% and 88% higher, respectively, than other NAND solutions. The Micron 2650 NVMe SSD, based on G9 NAND, achieves near-PCIe 4.0 performance levels, with a sequential read speed of up to 7,000 MB/s.

Micron also launched its new data center SSD, the 9550 NVMe SSD, featuring 232-layer 3D TLC NAND. It supports various AI workloads, offering a sequential read speed of 14.0 GB/s and a write speed of 10.0 GB/s—67% higher than competitive SSDs. The 9550 SSD’s random read speed reaches 3,300K IOPS, 35% higher than competitors, with random write speeds 33% higher.

The future of QLC SSDs is promising

Industry information indicates that NAND Flash, the core medium for data storage, is vital for SSD performance. Current SSDs use both TLC (Triple-Level Cell) and QLC flash.

In the AI era, there is a growing demand for storage, with SSDs playing a critical role. According to TrendForce, SSDs not only store model parameters during AI model training but also create checkpoints to save progress, making them crucial for high-speed data transfer and durability. As a result, customers primarily opt for 4TB/8TB TLC SSDs to meet the rigorous demands of AI training processes.

QLC SSDs, however, are gaining attention due to their higher storage density, which optimizes server space and reduces energy consumption. They can help large-scale data centers lower their total cost of ownership (TCO) while still meeting high-performance storage needs. Industry experts predict that as more data is generated in the form of videos and images, requiring larger storage capacities, TLC/QLC SSDs of 16TB or more will become the primary products for AI inference applications.

According to TrendForce, AI-related SSD procurement is expected to exceed 45 exabytes (EB) in 2024, with SSD demand in AI servers projected to grow by over 60% annually in the coming years. The share of AI SSDs within the NAND Flash market could rise from 5% in 2024 to 9% in 2025.

The Changing Landscape of the NAND Flash Market

On September 9, TrendForce’s latest research  indicates that in the second quarter of 2024, Samsung maintained its global leadership in the NAND Flash market with a 36.9% market share, up 0.2% from the previous quarter. SK Group followed with a 22.1% share, down 0.1%. Other key players include Kioxia (13.8%), Micron (11.8%), and Western Digital (10.5%).

In terms of revenue, Samsung, SK Group, Kioxia, Micron, and Western Digital all experienced quarter-on-quarter growth in NAND Flash revenues during the second quarter. Overall, NAND Flash revenue increased by 14% in the second quarter.

TrendForce indicates that as the inventory adjustments for server endpoints near completion and AI drives demand for high-capacity storage products, NAND Flash prices continued to rise in Q2 2024. However, due to high inventory levels at PC and smartphone manufacturers, NAND Flash bit shipments decreased by 1% quarter-over-quarter. Despite this, the average selling price increased by 15%, with total revenue reaching USD 16.796 billion, a 14.2% increase from the previous quarter.

Looking ahead to Q3, TrendForce expects that all NAND Flash suppliers have returned to profitability as of Q2 and plan to expand production capacity in Q3 to meet strong demand from AI and servers. However, due to weak market performance in the PC and smartphone sectors in the first half of the year, it is challenging to boost NAND Flash shipments. It is estimated that the average selling price of NAND Flash products will increase by 5% to 10% in Q3, while bit shipments may decrease by at least 5% due to a lack of peak season demand. Industry revenue is expected to remain roughly the same as the previous quarter.

(Photo credit: Samsung)

In 2024, the semiconductor industry has gradually emerged from its downturn and entered a phase of gradual recovery.

Observing the market situation, as downstream demand increases, a number of domestic semiconductor industry projects are accelerating.

Recently, more than 30 semiconductor-related projects have entered the stages of signing contracts, construction, topping-out, and production etc.

These projects span areas such as EDA, AI, advanced packaging, materials, equipment, third-generation semiconductors, chip design, CMOS sensors, and memory, involving companies like Huahong, Semitronix, YASC, Skyverse, Hoshine, Smartsens, Sanan Semiconductor, and CFMEE etc.

Conclusion

The industry has revealed that from this year’s market situation, the revenue of companies in the middle and upper reaches of the integrated circuit industry has generally improved, AI has become an important driving force for revenue growth, and the demand for acceleration chips such as GPU/HBM has increased. Some sub-sectors such as advanced packaging and equipment/materials related to the industrial chain have also benefited.

At the same time, as new energy vehicles drive the popularity of third-generation semiconductor materials, power devices such as silicon carbide are in high demand.

According to TrendForce, SiC is still showing an accelerated penetration trend in application markets such as automobiles and renewable energy where power density and efficiency are extremelyimportant.

The overall market demand will maintain a growth trend in the next few years, and it is estimated that the global SiC Power Device market size is expected to reach US$9.17 billion in 2028.

(Photo credit: Huahong)

According to TrendForce’s latest memory spot price trend report, neither DRAM nor NAND spot prices show much momentum. Regarding DRAM, spot prices are still falling as Samsung is increasing the amount of reball DDR5 (D1Y) chips that come from decommissioned modules. As for NAND flash, the spot market persists in sluggishness this week, where spot traders are continuously lowering their quotations. Details are as follows:

DRAM Spot Price:

In the spot market, prices are still falling as Samsung is increasing the amount of reball DDR5 (D1Y) chips that come from decommissioned modules. Since these reball chips are second-hand and low-cost products, Samsung can achieve profitability. However, this is leading to a continuous decline in spot prices, thereby affecting confidence across the entire DRAM market and buyers’ sentiment. Most buyers are now cautious and unwilling to actively stock up. The average spot price of the mainstream chips (i.e., DDR4 1Gx8 2666MT/s) decreased by 0.10% from US$1.972 last week to US$1.970 this week.

NAND Flash Spot Price:

The spot market for NAND Flash persists in sluggishness this week, where spot traders are continuously lowering their quotations to alleviate their pressure from inventory, though overall transaction dynamics are maintained at a lackluster level without apparent signs of recovery under unimproved end demand. Spot price of 512Gb TLC wafers dropped by 3.45% this week, arriving at US$3.075.

With the advent of the AI era, customer demand for high-performance NAND solutions such as SSDs for data centers, as well as ultra-fast DRAM chips including high bandwidth memory (HBM), is growing. In line with this trend, SK hynix has introduced a new product, PEB110 E1.S (PEB110), with improved data processing speed and power efficiency by applying the fifth-generation (Gen5) PCIe1 specifications.

It is worth noting that the new product builds on the company’s best-in-class 238-high 4D NAND, boasting the most competitive standards in the industry in terms of cost, performance and quality, according to Ahn Hyun, Head of the N-S Committee at SK hynix.

According to its press release, SK hynix is currently in the qualification process with a global data center customer, aiming to start mass production of the product in the second quarter of next year.

In its roadmap, the memory giant expects to meet diverse customer needs with a more robust SSD portfolio. Following the successful mass production of PS10102, it now introduces PEB110 E1.S (PEB110), a high-performance solid-state drive (SSD) for data centers.

According to SK hynix, PCle Gen5, which is applied to the new product, provides twice the bandwidth of the fourth generation (Gen4), enabling PEB110 to achieve data transfer rates of up to 32 gigatransfers per second (GT/s). This enables PEB110 to double the performance of the previous generation and improve power efficiency by more than 30%.

SK hynix has also applied the security protocol and data model technology, or SPDM, to PEB110, for the first time for its data-center SSDs to significantly enhance information security features.

SK hynix notes that the product will be released in three capacity versions—2 terabyte (TB), 4 TB, and 8 TB—and supports the OCP3 version 2.5 specifications for greater compatibility across global data centers.

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(Photo credit: SK hynix)