Text/Di Lin Review/Zi Yang Proofreader/Zhi Qiu
Since the sudden outbreak of the global core shortage wave in the second half of 2020, the semiconductor industry has been in a situation where all kinds of chips are in short supply.
Moreover, the chip shortage has gradually spread from the automobile industry to other industries, and many smartphone and personal computer manufacturers have been affected to varying degrees.
The high-end version of the iPhone 13 series and many laptops are basically out of stock. It should be noted that the industry needs not only core processors, but also flash memory chips.
Global flash memory chip market reshuffle
Since the beginning of 2021, the global flash memory chip market has been unbalanced between supply and demand, and many flash memory chip suppliers have increased prices.
However, the market demand is very strong, so the price increase of the major flash memory giants has not affected product shipments, but has promoted the growth of the NAND market.
According to the data released by Omdia, in the third quarter of 2021, the global NAND market reached nearly $18.7 billion, an increase of 13.8% month-on-month.
In addition, Omdia, a well-known market research organization, also announced the global NAND flash memory market share ranking in the third quarter.
Looking at the list, the pattern of "one super and many strong" has been formed, but the South Korean giant still occupies an absolute dominant position.
Samsung is firmly at the top of the list
According to public data, Samsung Electronics' share of the flash memory market in the third quarter was as high as 34.5%, and the Japanese armored man, which accounted for 19.5% of the supermarket and ranked second, once again won the first place in the world.
It can be seen that even if Samsung Electronics loses its dominant position in the Chinese smartphone market, it can still rely on the strong strength of the flash memory business, allowing a number of Chinese companies to form a dependence on its high-level flash memory products.
Although due to the impact of the current epidemic in Xi'an, Samsung has temporarily shut down two large flash memory chip manufacturing plants located in the local area.
But in my opinion, this will not have a great impact on Samsung Electronics. On the one hand, if there is a problem on the supply side, it must be the demand side that suffers; on the other hand, the domestic epidemic will soon be controlled, and the suspension of Samsung's Xi'an factory will not be too long.
However, it should be noted that flash memory is, after all, one of the largest market segments in the field of integrated circuits, and the most important core components in various electronic devices.
In recent years, many Chinese companies have been willing to be the vanguard, breaking the monopoly of US and South Korean companies on flash memory chips to a certain extent.
Domestic leaders accelerate the breakthrough
For example, Yangtze River Storage, which is in the first echelon of the domestic flash memory chip industry. The company used far less time than the international giants needed to use the self-developed Xtacking architecture to increase the number of flash memory chip layers from 32 layers to 192 layers.
What is even more surprising is that during this period, yangtze river storage also ventured directly past the 96th layer stage.
On December 30, Fast Technology news, Yangtze River Storage launched a new generation of flagship SSD hard disks, TiPro7000 series.
This series of memory chips uses a 12nm process, a larger heat dissipation area, can cool down up to 30 degrees Celsius, and is also compatible with PS5.
At this new product launch, Yangtze River Storage also announced a good news, that is, in the company's independently developed Xtacking architecture, the yield rate of important process steps of wafer bonding has been increased to 99.999%.
This will make the Xtacking architecture of Yangtze River Storage more stable and powerful, which will undoubtedly help Yangtze River Storage achieve greater breakthroughs in the progression of the number of flash memory chip layers.
Of course, the significant progress made by the Yangtze River in the flash memory chip process does not mean that the domestic memory chip can be 100% realized in the localization of replacement.
After all, overseas giants such as Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix still have the most advanced and mature flash memory technology. Moreover, from the perspective of market share, there is also a big gap between Chinese flash memory companies and international giants.
Write at the end
Therefore, if domestic flash memory chips want to completely break the overseas monopoly, they still need to work harder and overcome more difficulties and challenges.