01. AI chip market is growing at an annual rate of over 20%
August 23, 2023, According to Gartner's latest report, the market for chips used to execute artificial intelligence (AI) workloads is growing at a rate of more than 20% per year.
Gartner predicts that the AI chip market will reach US$53.4 billion in 2023, an increase of 20.9% over 2022, and will increase by 25.6% to US$67.1 billion in 2024. By 2027, AI chip revenue is expected to more than double the size of the market in 2023, reaching $119.4 billion.
02. China's memory module factory expects NAND prices to increase by 8~10%
August 21, 2023, According to industry insiders, Chinese memory module makers have stopped quoting and accepting new orders because they estimate that memory chip suppliers will raise prices soon.
According to earlier reports, the continued weakness in the consumer electronics market has forced memory chip suppliers to reduce capital investment and losses by reducing production and increasing product prices.
The source said that the module maker plans to increase product quotations by 8-10%.
03. Q2 DRAM Industry Revenue Rebounds with a 20.4% Quarterly Increase
TrendForce reports that rising demand for AI servers has driven growth in HBM shipments. Combined with the wave of inventory buildup for DDR5 on the client side, the second quarter saw all three major DRAM suppliers experience shipment growth. Q2 revenue for the DRAM industry reached approximately US$11.43 billion, marking a 20.4% QoQ increase and halting a decline that persisted for three consecutive quarters.
Among suppliers, SK hynix saw a significant quarterly growth of over 35% in shipments. The company’s shipments of DDR5 and HBM, both of which have higher ASP, increased significantly. As a result, SK hynix’s ASP grew counter-cyclically by 7–9%, driving its Q2 revenue to increase by nearly 50%. With revenue reaching US$3.44 billion, SK hynix claimed the second spot in the industry, leading growth in the sector.
04. Global semiconductor equipment investment is expected to down 16% in 2023
August 23, 2023, According to Nikkei Asia, it is expected that the investment in equipment in semiconductor factories will decrease by 16% annually to US$122 billion in 2023, the first decline in four years, and the decline will be the largest in the past 10 years.
According to reports, various semiconductor factories are cautious about investment due to the slowdown in demand in mainland China. In 2023, the top 10 semiconductor factories will reduce their investment in memory chips by 44% annually, and their investment in logic semiconductors for computing will also decrease by 14%.
05. SK hynix Begins Sampling HBM3e, Volume Production Planned For H1 2024
SK hynix on Monday announced that it had completed initial development of its first HBM3E memory stacks, and has begun sampling the memory to a customer. The updated ("extended") version of the high bandwidth memory technology is scheduled to begin shipping in volume in the first half of next year, with hardware vendors such as NVIDIA already lining up to incorporate the memory into their HPC-grade compute products.
06. Lenovo AI server orders lined up
Chen Zhenkuan, vice president of Lenovo Group and general manager of Lenovo's Infrastructure Business Server Division in China, revealed that AI servers are currently in short supply. Lenovo's two newest AI servers, which were just introduced at the recent Computing Power Conference in China, have received many orders, with some of them even lined up until 2024.
07. Notebook component suppliers land more short lead-time orders
Notebook component suppliers have observed a trend in which their customers increasingly opt for short lead-time orders as opposed to regular ones, according to industry sources. This shift may indicate a prevailing level of uncertainty in the end-market.