The large demand and the short supply are the main reasons for the increase in memory Recently, Gartner recently estimated that global semiconductor sales in 2017 reached 419.7 billion U.S. dollars, an increase of 22%, and gave 2017 the world's chip company rankings. What is amazing is that the semiconductor market has not only lost the gloom of previous years but has grown brightly; and the memory companies have taken up five seats! Check out Gartner's data for the first two years: *Gartner's global semiconductor revenue in 2016 was US$343.5 billion, an increase of 2.6% compared to US$349.90 billion in 2015[1]. James Hines, research director at Gartner, explained: "Global semiconductor revenue growth is due to increased production in many segments of electronic devices, improved NAND flash memory pricing, and relatively benign currency movements." * Gartner's 2015 global semiconductor output totaled US$334.8 billion, a 2.3% decline from the same period in 2014. The decline was due to slowing demand and drastic exchange rate changes [2]. The author believes that the most important reason for the growth in 2017 is the rise of artificial intelligence and Internet of Things, and the drastic increase in the turnover of memory (especially NAND flash). The two are complementary. As can be seen from the above table, for the first time, Samsung is ranked first in the semiconductor market, replacing Intel’s boss and Western Digital, a memory company. The good momentum of memory emerged in 2016. At that time, several analysts believed that the growth of the semiconductor industry was mainly driven by the growth performance of the memory companies. Then the question came, why did the memory company perform so well? The first is the increase in demand for memory. The memory accounts for 1/3 of the semiconductor, and the volume itself is large. In 2017, the growth of big data, cloud computing, mobile phones, and various Internet of Things (IoT) smart terminals and vehicles that have grown explosively was faster. The new highlight of the memory that is specifically pointed out is that artificial intelligence is in full swing (such as video monitoring, automatic driving and other landing items), and large-capacity memory is required to cooperate. For example, video surveillance, because of the injection of artificial intelligence, video surveillance / face recognition algorithms and applications ushered in a new outbreak phase; again, automotive intelligence, autopilot for high-speed, large-capacity, stable and reliable memory requirements Big. In terms of mobile phones, although the number of mobile phones has slowed down, the storage capacity of each mobile phone has been increasing. Second, memory prices caused by. DRAM ranks first in the memory industry and has the highest market share. For example, according to the forecast of Jibang Technology, DRAM accounted for 46.2% of the memory market in the second quarter of 2017[3], and DARM manufacturers are holding on to ultra-high gross margins that have been rare in previous years. . In 2017, the price of NAND Flash (flash memory) also quickly increased, while NAND Flash accounted for 40% of the entire memory market[4]. According to the introduction of Shenzhen Flash Memory Market Information Company, due to the large flash memory demand in the past two years, resulting in tight supply, prices continued to rise. For example, at the “China Flash Memory Market Summit†in Shenzhen in September 2017, Mr. Wei Wei, general manager of Shenzhen Flash Memory Market Information Co., Ltd., introduced that in the SSD consumer PC market, the current major product capacity requirements are 120GB and 240GB. However, due to the shortage of stock prices, the price of 120GB has also increased from 23 US dollars in 2016 to the current 43 US dollars, 240GB has risen from 43 US dollars to more than 70 US dollars, 120GB products have surpassed the price of 240GB products in 2016 at the highest peak. This will have a relatively large impact on the increase in capacity demand and penetration of the market. Under this premise, the penetration rate of SSD consumption in 2017 will still reach 40%. The joining of local companies will keep the price of memory stable Looking into the future, the demand for memory will be even greater. DRAM is expected to grow only 19.6% in 2018. Without a large-scale production increase plan, supply will continue to be tight [3]. NAND Flash, it is generally believed that with the increase of the production capacity of the NAND Flash factory, the supply shortage will be eased [4]. According to statistics, China's memory consumption accounts for more than 50% of the total global consumption, but domestic manufacturers' storage products are very few [5]. This is also the reason why the Wuhan Yangtze River storage NANDflash and the Jinhua DRAM project in Fujian have been valued by the state and invested heavily in construction. Not only is the memory very important, but the addition of Chinese memory companies to the world can ease supply tension and stabilize market prices. The chip industry consists of a variety of categories, in addition to memory, processors, connections, analog and hybrid chips. Many institutions and companies in the industry also predict that the total amount of transistors in the future chips will be mostly stored (for example, 99.7% is storage [6]), but the winners in the chip industry should not be only memory, and the price of the memory market will be stable. Expect more chip companies to squeeze into the top ten. Feelings: Local Enterprises Should Have Risk Awareness The memory market is large but not fun. A decade or two ago, many institutions and companies predicted that memory accounted for more than 80% of chip transistors, but now it is as high as 99.7%. But people who understand the history of memory know that there are fewer and fewer players in the memory industry, and bankruptcy and mergers are serious. When large-scale memory companies are not doing well, the layoffs are also cruel and they have a high degree of monopoly today. The reason is that the memory market is fluctuating too much; because it is a standardized product, it is a typical scale economy, so the investment is large, and when the trough is low, many companies' capital chain breaks; other followers lack the core technology, making it impossible for the company to have a thin profit cycle. Profit. China is vigorously marching into the memory industry and catching up with a good era of memory development. In this process, we must have sufficient awareness of risk and need to persist. No matter how difficult it is, we must have the determination to adhere to one's teeth; the other is to actively innovate to master the core technology. reference picture: Top Ten Semiconductor Manufacturers in the World in 2015 Revenue (Millions of U.S. Dollars) References: [1]Gartner: Global semiconductor revenues rose 2.6% in 2016 [R/OL]. To top network (2017-5-16). http://server.zhiding.cn/server/2017/0516/3093254.shtml [2] Gartner: 2015 Semiconductor Company Revenue Rankings [R/OL]. HC Electronics (2016-4-7) http://info.ec.hc360.com/2016/04/070843859491.shtml [3]Guo Yurong. The global DRAM industry predicts and predicts in 2018. Electronic products world[J], 2017(11):14,4 [4] Welcome to the ninth. NAND flash memory market continues to rise, will be super DRAM in 2020.. Electronic products world [J], 2017 (10): 6-12 [5] Why localization of memory selection 3DNAND as a breakthrough? [R/OL]. Yunqi community (2017-7-11). https://yq.aliyun.com/articles/148858 [6] Wang Ying. Forecasting the next wave of semiconductors. The world of electronic products [J], 2016 (10): 5 Jiangsu Acrel Electrical Manufacturing Co., LTD. , https://www.acrel.com.pk