If you have actually been thinking about a memory upgrade for your systems, now may be the time to do it. The prolonged decline of memory prices has actually nearly stopped, and while that doesn’t imply prices are going to go up just yet, it’s most likely to occur down the road.DRAM and NAND flash memory makers have had to sustain a serious recession in typical selling prices over the previous 6 months, as part of the typical cyclical nature of memory sales. However a new report by technology market analyst company TrendForce says rate declines for some types of memory have actually slowed to nearly zero.TrendForce credits the downturn in cost decrease to a guarantee made by memory makers Micron, Samsung, and SK Hynix to reduce production due to oversupply. This covers both DDR4 and DDR5 memory, the previous of which is gradually being phased out in favor of the latter. Whenever a new memory format is launched, there is a switchover that happens as old inventories are slowly burnt while the brand-new stock is ramped up.That’s been occurring for the memory makers as they change to DDR5. The report said DDR4 would remain in “oversupply”throughout the year and see price drops of between 3%and 8%. DDR5 is faring a little much better given that it is the new leading-edge memory technology, and TrendForce estimates rates falling between 0%and 5 %.
The majority of the damage is done. In Q1, the 3 memory makers all cut production after consumers stopped purchasing for three successive quarters. This is due to a combination of stalled PC sales on the customer side and a slowing in server sales due to the approaching release of brand-new processors from Intel and AMD.Buyer stocks remain high, and the
transition to brand-new platforms has disappointed expectations, TrendForce states. In spite of the current financial investment by cloud company in AI server devices, there hasn’t been a considerable reduction in server DRAM inventories. Server sales tend to be cyclical: There are typically about 4 to 6 quarters of high sales, typically timed with the
release of new platforms, followed by 4 to 6 quarters of slow sales as the new hardware is deployed. Right now, we’re at the tail end of the 2nd half. Intel has actually been shipping Sapphire Rapids-era Xeons, and AMD has actually been shipping Genoa and Bergamo Epyc processes for a couple of months now, so
they should be in the channel inventory.Ultimately, TrendForce does not see an appreciable healing in memory rates up until a minimum of next year. So, this would be a good time for some deal hunting. Copyright © 2023 IDG Communications, Inc. Source
