After the Chia hard drive mining fever has decreased, the SSD hard drive prices that rose so much in May have also fallen back to normal levels, with 1TB prices generally within a thousand dollars. However, the good news is not long, SSD hard disk will soon encounter another challenge, this time a shortage of flash memory master chips, 28nm products more nervous, it is possible to drive up the price of SSD.
News from the supply chain said that the shortage of NAND flash memory master chip production capacity will continue until the end of 2022, the gap is expected to be as high as 20-30%, especially the supply of 28nm mature process master chip is the most tight.
SSD flash main control chip does not need too high-end process, there are still a large number of 40nm process main control chip in use, more advanced PCIe 4.0 main control is used on 16nm, the future PCIe 5.0 main control will even use 7nm process, but PCIe 3.0, SATA interface main control chip is still dominated by 28nm, after all, the cost, performance, power consumption is currently the most balanced The.
Global 28nm foundry capacity is mainly concentrated in TSMC, UMC and SMIC three major manufacturers, including TSMC planning to actively expand the mature process of 28nm capacity, is expected to the next 2-3 years, 28nm total capacity is expected to expand 100,000 to 150,000 pieces per month.
UMC announced in May this year a $3.6 billion investment plan that will be used to increase its 28nm process chip production.
SMIC is also actively expanding its 28nm process, having set up several mature process projects in Beijing and Shenzhen with a total investment of 65.3 billion yuan, or about $10 billion.
SK Hynix is also focusing on improving the profitability of NAND flash memory, planning to expand sales of 128-layer-based mobile solution products and enterprise-class SSDs in the third quarter and achieve mass production of 176-layer NAND flash memory in the second half of this year.
Industry analysis, in the past, the 2nd quarter is the traditional off-season of NAND-related industries, but this year the situation is very different, not only the foundry capacity is seriously tight, downstream fears of material shortages and crazy stocking all the way, and then the Samsung Texas Austin plant shutdown incident, resulting in more tight supply of NAND control ICs, deepening the suspicion of industrial chain breakage, resulting in the 2nd quarter downstream order quantity continues to increase, this year Q3, the NAND Flash shipment momentum will continue to rise, and the price will continue to rise.
Post time: Mar-20-2023
