Forecast for Memory Market in 2025

 

The Memory Market in 2025. A Forecast

We looked at Q4 performance, Q1 guidance and some of the market forces. Plugged them into the memory model and came up with some numbers. There are some big trade offs and as a result, the numbers were surprising. This is for 2025 overall.

Caveat: I do not usually believe the “macro” normally affects memory market, but if the US continues to implement trade restrictions with China, That could single handedly put the entire tech market into a holding pattern. I am a free trader because free trade helps the market grow.

*All numbers normalized to 2024

The Guesstimates:

1)        DRAM Bits overall increase high teens percentage

2)        DDR Pricing decreases mid teens percentage

3)        HBM Bit volume increases roughly 90%

4)        HBM Bit pricing is flat

5)        DRAM ASP is roughly flat (HBM offsets DDR)

6)        DRAM Revenue increases mid teens percentage

7)        DRAM Operating Margin dollars increase mid teens percentage

8)        NAND Bits increase mid teens percentage

9)        NAND ASP decreases Mid teens percentage

10    NAND Revenue is flat to slightly down

 

End result: Expect big 3 memory company margins (dollars) to increase Mid teens percentage over the year… growth almost totally dominated by HBM.

The “cycle disrupting” product is HBM. It sucks up capex, sells for 6x bit price of DDR. Costs 3.3x the price of DDR bits. Potentially sucks up excess DRAM capacity. Adds lots of margin for ever bit converted from DDR. We expect supply to catch up by the end of 2025 and we will see what happens next in 2026

We have all the gory details and reasons in excel spreadsheets to look at the tradeoffs and some possible other  scenarios

Mark Webb

www.mkwventures.com

 

Mark Webb/MKW Ventures at IEDM Dec 7-10

 We are at IEDM conference Dec 7-10. Please text or call to set up a meeting 

Topics we have information on:

1) Intel CEO change, reasons, impact, and potential replacements

2) Intel turnaround plans for both product and Foundry group. What does it take for Intel to succeed?

3) What is happening with emerging memories? Have the emerged? what will the revenue be for each.

4) DRAM, HBM, NAND markets. We are seeing VERY different results for the different markets today and some have changed in the last 2 months. 

5) HBM technology and market leaders in 2025? Market is exploding but not all suppliers are equal.

Mark Webb

www.mkwventures.com

Updated Intel External Foundry Sales Forecast

 Intel Foundry Forecast Dec 2024 (Mark Webb, MKW Ventures Consulting,

www.mkwventures.com

Last December, We published a forecast for Intel wafer sales to external customers. Many people thought it was pessimistic since it showed Intel wouldn't be a top 15 wafer foundry until late 2024 and wouldn't be a Top 5 wafer foundry until 2028. We updated based on Intel financial statements

Intel somehow had negative growth in external foundry in 2024. Not sure how this happened but we can expect that this fact led to reorganization at the foundry group. 

Our new graph reflects this reality and they fact that Intel is not expecting any significant sales growth for at least another year. We also adjusted for the delay that happened to Arizona and the delay announced to Ohio.

No growth in 2024. Limited growth in 2025. Fast growth in 2026 and 2027 and then growth based on Intel internal capacity vs external capacity. Note: this is IF Intel executes to current plans as of December 2024. 

We also updated scenarios on how likely Intel Plans are to come true now that Pat has left. 

The Challenges are the same: Intel is technically capable. But Intel has cost issues if they ramp as planned and they have been very slow to add real customers with real wafer start plans. 

We are at IEDM 2023 Dec 7-10 to discuss how we update this model each month. Call or text to set up meeting.

Mark Webb

www.mkwventures.com

Intel Announced Q2 Earnings. What happened?

 

 

Intel Scenarios Update August 2024 Edition (POST EARNINGS)

When Intel announced IDM2.0 and many fabs in 2021, We highlighted a number of issues:

• Intel is not a cost effective manufacturer. They are not agile and the wafer costs are 2x competition (it’s really easy math now that Intel has reported it out). They are focusing on their worst area. This is why the decision was made before Pat to outsource Fab work.
• Intel cannot afford to spend the capital. Revenue is shrinking, market share is shrinking. You cannot build fabs in hope that people buy.
• Intel needs to focus on what they do well. Leading compute architecture standard and products. Hold on to >50% share in DC CPU and PC CPU. Intel is not a good graphics chip, mobile or memory company

Q2 Earning report out:

Intel revenue did not crash. It was flat. Intel has been losing money for some time so that wasn’t different (GAAP earnings). Intel sold a lot of CPUs. What became clear at the earning call was

• Intel is not growing in one of the fastest growth periods in compute. Negative DCAI growth
• Intel has no meaningful foundry business today. $77m in external revenue including packaging. They probably are not a top 20 external wafer foundry today
• Intel loses money on old processes and now when it ramps new processes. Foundry group losses are growing very fast. This despite the risky depreciation timeline that helps short term, hurts long term.
• Intel ship released products and claimed to be on track for 5N4Y. Apparently great nodes . But it doesn’t matter if you don’t sell them cost effectively.

As a result, they will cut costs until they can show a financially stable plan. Where will they cut? Will it work? what about those scenarios for foundry we published Which one is coming true

See our website for more details and Intel wafer capacity through 2030.

We will be at FMS in Santa Clara Aug 5-8. Text or email to set up a meeting

Mark Webb

www.mkwventures.com

HBM Market and Revenue (FMS 2024 Presentation)

 

HBM Memory Market at FMS 2024

Jim Handy and I are presenting at FMS (Future of Memory and Storage) on HBM market, AI datacenters and scenarios on what the future holds.

 

“Is HBM Memory Headed to New Heights, or is it just Hype?”

DRAM-103-1: Influence of AI on Memory Technology, Tues 3:10-3:40

Spoiler alert: There is a lot of hype and it is heading to new heights

We show the impact of AI on the HBM market, Multiple forecasts, and memory scenarios that happen with new and fast growing markets

 

 

Some Recent Data:

• HBM current market revenue estimates are 3B-20B+ per year (see graph)
• HBM revenue growth is forecast at 25% CAGR to 150%+ CAGR  
• NVIDIA revenue is growing at astounding rates. But other companies not so much
• Hyperscalers are spending TONs of money on AI servers AND still buying more traditional servers than 2023
• HBM bit price is ~6x DDR memory.  Bit cost is ~3x DDR Memory.  

Some Forecast Challenges:

HBM is now competitive. Solutions from Micron and Samsung joined Hynix dominance. Hynix recent earnings report shows they still are the largest supplier by far and are not planning to give up share

Competitive memory leads to cyclical shifts. This is due to lead times, factory builds, and inventory

• During hypergrowth, everyone over orders to cover possible growth. 
• Cutting CAGR by half (not even flat) will lead to Inventory going from 4 weeks to 20+ weeks. Then, most orders stop and the price drops. 
• The larger the forecast growth, the larger the problem

Update on Forecasts: 

We pulled recent forecasts from sources and compared them. We will discuss in more detail at FMS

(The identities of the analysts ... Including myself and Jim...  are being protected for now)

We definitely underestimated HBM sales in 2023 and 2024. We increased the forecast based on Q2 results. The forecasts show growth from everyone.

Regardless of growth of 50% or 150%, we would expect some correction sometime. Datacenter digestion, overproduction, pricing causing demand destruction, Price war among producers. We will discuss when, how much, and who might win the battle long term

 

Mark Webb

www.mkwventures.com

Intel Capacity by Fab Through 2030 (MKW VENTURES CONSULTING)

 

UPDATED: Intel Fab Capacity Expansion Scenarios (Option A)

One potential scenario based on our model and changes to capex and timing in last 6 months.

• Fab 52 runs production in 2026, Fab 62 year after
• Ohio starts production in 2028
• After delays, this is aligned to graph shown by technology at Foundry Day
• Assumes EUV tools installed in ~2026 in some 10/7 Fabs to support 4/3 Ramp.
• *We add new issues to monitor given the Intel restructuring 
• *Also what is the plan for 20A and Arrow Lake? Can they ramp another Fab?

• 20A/18A/14A fabs are D1+Fab52+Fab62+OHIO in this model

We have addition scenarios based on TSMC use and whether Intel Foundry starts to ramp. This is especially important to track given Intel's restructuring

Also we can discuss cost and revenue by Fab... including JV SCIP impact

Call or text to discuss.

We will be a Future of Memory and Storage (FMS) in Santa Clara Aug 5-8

Mark Webb

www.mkwventures.com

New and Emerging Memory Technology Status/FMS 2024

 

Status of New and Emerging Memories (Mark Webb, MKW Ventures Consulting LLC)

We have a Future of Memory and Storage/Flash Memory Summit Paper that we are presenting showing how chiplets change the equation on adding different types of memory to products. It allows designers to trade off cost and performance characteristic with more knobs. MRAM, NOR, DRAM, all on the same chip in the desired proportion with different processes.

Our presentation is “Memory Technologies : How Chiplets Change Everything”

FMS OMEM-203-1 Heterogeneous Solutions for Performance Session - Wed Aug 7, 3:00pm - 4:05pm Ballroom C

 

That said, we need to reiterate the opinion, backed by data, that emerging memories will not emerge to any material impact on the DRAM or NAND Market. Unlike some peoples predictions, the emerging memory market will not be $30B or even $3B in the next 5-10 years. It is well below $300M today

 

Emerging memories are possible in 3 areas:

• Niche products (which we will show can be integrated in a chiplet product)

• Embedded In a foundry process from TSMC or Global or Intel

• High volume  IF they require minimal (<10% of steps) changes to a NAND or DRAM flow.

 

Fourth Option:  They stagnate due to technical issues and lack of demand.

Costs for Memory Technologies

Quick Summary:

MRAM (STT): Available today. In embedded, replacement for E-flash if you need advanced process and embedded memory. Niche applications as discrete. Those applications will increase with chiplet use.

RRAM: Available today. May scale differently than MRAM and typically is slower. But has applications depending on cost scaling. Embedded, Chiplets, Niche applications. Some AI weighting use

PCM (1T1R): Available today.This is lower density (<1Gbyte). A technology that 50+ years old …. Typically used by companies who love PCM (ST, IBM, Micron) as they have decades of history of characterization.

Crosspoint technologies (1TnR): Optane fully developed the worlds best and most dense “faster than NAND, cheaper than DRAM” technology. The economics didn’t work and the demand was 10x lower than anticipated. Intel and Micron gave it a huge effort and we all appreciate the attempt. It’s not clear how to get these technologies to high volume IF they worked well.

FeRAM (high density): Was a potential future due to ability to integrate with DRAM flow. However all memory companies worked extensively on Hf based FeRAM products since 2020 and none were productized due to a variety of reasons.

Other New Materials: UltraRAM, New PCM materials, New RRAM materials/companies etc: These are possible but are 10 years from potential production. Unless implemented with 3D DRAM in 2028-2030, these are lower probability at this point. Our presentation on our website of  “Memory technology Product Lifecycle” give detailed timeline of how new memories come to production

 

Summary: There is no universal memory coming. We have SRAM, DRAM, NAND, NOR, MRAM, RRAM, PCM available today. Lets focus on integrating those as embedded or in chiplets.

I will be in Santa Clara Aug 5-8. Call or text to set up meetings at FMS or by Zoom. We will host some Zoom sessions during the conference timeframe. I can address all of the technologies one by one with costs and applications

Lots More info on our website www.mkwventures.com

Mark Webb

MKW Ventures Consulting LLC

www.mkwventures.com