Difficult to drop prices in 2011 memory/hard disk market outlook

Reduce the cost of 30 nanometers technology age approaching The Spring Festival has slowly gone, from the traditional Chinese lunar calendar, the new year with the first spring snow also kicked off. Although during the Spring Festival, the gates of Zhongguancun were very small, but the businesses that continued to return to Beijing after the two days also brought some popularity to the stores.

As the most important storage device, Memory and Hard Disc (Hard Disc Drive) did make users smile at the end of 2010. Although they do not have any new technology and performance improvements, the price issue that users are most concerned about has been solved. The memory went from DDR2 to DDR3, and the price dropped to the lowest point of 140 yuan. The hard disk capacity was soaring. The 750GB of single discs increased the hard disk capacity to 3TB. In addition, the price of mainstream hard drives also reached the lowest point in history.

So in 2011, how is the price of memory going? Can DDR4 memory affect the current memory market? Can a hard disk, SSD, or hybrid drive be three-way? Waiting for doubts can be found in the 2011 Outlook article.

● Reduced Costs The 30nm process age is imminent. Whether or not it is affected by Intel processors, the memory manufacturing process continues to accelerate. It is expected that by the second half of 2011, most memory chip manufacturers will use 30nm technology-based processes to manufacture memory chip products. In fact, when it comes to the memory production process, many users do not understand it. The following author gives a simple example.

In 2010, Samsung was the first manufacturer to introduce a 40nm process technology. Compared to the 50 or 60nm process at that time, the production efficiency was increased by 60%. Therefore, the cost of memory production costs was also controlled. In today's world, reducing costs can effectively improve profitability.

If all DRAM makers announced that the 30nm process is enabled, the yield of DDR3 memory chips will increase by about 60% compared to the 40nm process, which is about twice the cost efficiency of the 50- and 60nm processes. In addition, the power consumption can save up to 30% of the power consumption, so another feature of the new process is low power consumption, low heat.

Currently, Samsung and Hynix are actively migrating to the 30nm process. Under their leadership, Elpida has also successfully developed 2Gb-capacity DDR3 SDRAM memory chips with a 30nm process, and its core area and power consumption have set new records in the industry. After the conversion is completed, the cost of Elpida memory chip products will be significantly reduced.

● 2011 will be fully popular DDR3 256 * 8 particles talk about memory technology, the following talk about the development of memory particles. Generally speaking, the particles are the chips on the memory PCB board. Each particle has capacity. Basically, the memory is based on the 128Mb*8 specifications. If the memory is composed of 2GB, 16 chips are required. In other words, what kind of chip is used to determine the maximum capacity of a single memory.

So what's the benefit of increasing the capacity of a single chip? As shown in the above figure, if 128*8 particles are used, 16 particles of this kind are needed to produce a 2GB memory, and particles are present on both sides. But with 256*8 particles, only 8 can be used to achieve 2GB of capacity. If there are 8 particles on the back, then it is a single 4GB memory product, so its production cost is relatively reduced.

It can be predicted that in the third quarter of 2011, a single 4GB memory will become the mainstream of the market, and a single 2GB memory will slowly fade, just as a single 2GB replaces a single 1GB memory. Now that the price of a 2GB DDR3-1333 memory is about 145 yuan, then it costs 290 yuan to buy two 2GB DDR3-1333 memories. The price of a single 4GB memory is only about 265 yuan, if you want to buy 4GB of memory, choose which one to believe it at a glance.

● New Generation DDR4 Memory Debuted in 2011 South Korea’s Samsung Corp. officially announced that it has successfully introduced the industry’s first DDR4 memory product using a 30nm process. Dong-Soo Jun, Executive Vice President of Samsung’s Memory Market Division, said: “The new DDR4 DRAM memory will bring more advantages to our advanced green memory, especially when we use the next-generation process for mainstream applications. 4G DDR4 products."

The starting frequency of DDR4 memory reached 2133MHz, the maximum frequency can reach 4266MHz, and the voltage will be further reduced to 1.2V, 1.1V, and there may even be an ultra low voltage energy saving version of 1.05V. The current highest standard frequency of DDR3 memory is 2133MHz, and there are two types of voltage: standard version 1.5V and energy-saving version 1.35V. So it can be foreseen that DDR4 will continue to advance along the path of high frequency and low voltage.

According to sources, the JEDEC organization will complete the development of the DDR4 standard specification in the second half of 2011, and Samsung will also accelerate close cooperation with other DRAM manufacturers and help develop DDR3 standards. So no surprise, at the end of 2011 we will be able to see the real DDR4 memory.

● DDR3 memory price trend analysis in 2011 After the Chinese Lunar New Year baptism, the memory market has been greatly increased compared to previous years, the average price rose from 135 yuan to 150 yuan. The reason for the increase is mainly due to the upstream channel holiday, and the source of supply is relatively tight. It does not seem to be related to the price of the DRAM chip in the upper reaches. However, the current price of memory is already lower than its production cost. How long will this situation remain firm?

In fact, from the end of January, the upstream DRAM makers such as Samsung all said that the contract price reached the bottom. In particular, the spot price of DDR3 1Gb eTT rose by 8.18% on January 27th; the DDR3 2Gb brand rose by 10.81%. Is it a sign before prices rise? The following author will analyze it.

First of all, the contract price at the end of January has already fallen below the manufacturing cost of DDR3 2Gb, and there is not much room for further downward adjustment. It is already difficult to repeat the history of memory price reduction in 2007. The author analyzes that after the Chinese New Year, the memory price will still be around 140-150 yuan. After all, there are still a lot of stocks for channel manufacturers. It takes a while for them to digest, so the market will not have a clear increase for the time being.

Another important factor is the laborious phenomenon of production capacity. Because many DRAM manufacturers with poor manufacturing processes are optimistic about the profits of Mobile DRAM and NAND chips, on the one hand, they feel that the follow-up market of the memory is not optimistic, and the other is that the new process leads to the problem of insufficient yields, etc., and causes the conversion. After all, with the popularity of tablet PCs, the demand for NAND chips continues to increase, indirectly causing DRAM production to shrink. On the demand side, PC makers are willing to increase their memory-carrying capacity after DRAM prices have fallen, and they have begun to consume more. DRAM production capacity, so the future can be predicted DDR3 memory has reached the bottom of the signal.

However, this does not mean that memory will rebound sharply. After all, demand is an important factor affecting memory prices. Therefore, the price of memory in 2011 is mainly based on a small degree of turbulence. It is expected that the range of shocks will be between 140 and 170 yuan. Therefore, in 2011, the memory controller will be more troublesome, and it should be suitable for short-term operations.

●Hybrid HDDs in 2011 will become a watershed in the HDD market. On the one hand, it is a HDD hard disk drive with a large capacity and high cost performance. On the other hand, it is an expensive SSD hard disk with outstanding performance. Each has its own advantages. It's hard to get up and down. But if the user wants to have low prices and enjoy high performance, is there not a product in between?

the answer is negative! In fact, in mid-2010, Seagate released its first hybrid drive, the Momentus XT, which combines the advantages of the two. And Western Digital John Coyne stated: “We are also continuing to evaluate the opportunity to combine magnetic storage and flash memory into a hybrid approach... We are considering how to better integrate the performance of solid-state storage with the capacity of magnetic media... and provide Affordable price, it will be the main force in the future."

For a hybrid drive, its essence is a 2.5-inch 7200rpm hard drive equipped with the largest 32MB cache, plus a 4GB SLC NAND flash memory, and the controller to manage which files are stored in the flash memory. can.

The principle is that this 4GB chip can continuously learn through the Adaptive Memory technology developed by Seagate. It will detect high-frequency data information and store it into flash memory. Once the software requests access to the data, it can directly read out from the flash memory. Continue to access the disk. You know, reading information from flash is much faster than extracting information from rotating discs, so it looks like every Momentus XT drive is tailor-made for owners.

It can be seen from the actual PCMark Vantage benchmark that, in the simulation of daily application software, the data required after running twice has already been loaded into the flash memory, and the third extraction is faster and the cost of test results is also increased. .

In fact, for a product that is between mechanical hard disk and SSD hard disk, it really fills this part of the market, allowing users to enjoy the advantages and disadvantages of mechanical hard disk capacity, as well as the advantages of SSD hard disk. It is said that fish and bear's paws can sometimes be combined. Yes, so it will be a big show in 2011.

● The introduction of 3TB hard disks into platters with 750GB hard drives has become a mainstream. With the introduction of 3TB hard disk products by major manufacturers, it is also marked that 2011 will enter the era of platters with 750GB platters. The resulting 750GB hard drive output of a single disc not only has a better price/performance ratio, but also improves performance. As we all know, the hard disk industry is also a product line that follows Moore's Law. With the continuous improvement of technology, users can purchase larger-capacity products at the same price, which is one of the key factors in the continued decline in hard disk prices.

In addition, single-disc 500GB hard drives will slowly fade out of the market as they currently have on 250GB and 320GB products. Instead, they will be replaced by single-disc 750GB hard drives and dual-disc 1TB hard drives.

● Will become a mix of SSD and HDD in 2011. Intel plans to introduce 25nm process NAND flash memory based on Intel and Micron joint venture IMFT. Due to the improvement of the manufacturing process, the new generation of SSDs will double its storage capacity at a price level similar to that of its predecessor. The full range of capacities will range from 40GB (X25-V) to 600GB.

Compared to us, it is possible to purchase a 60GB SSD with a good master control as a system disk at a lower price, and use a traditional large-capacity mechanical hard disk as a storage disk, in addition to having higher performance, Can also get more storage space, so as the SSD hard disk prices continue to drop, there will be more and more users to adopt this program, so that 2011 will become a mix of the two years.