Industry considers cutting production of 3D NAND amid dropping prices

SK Hynix
(Image credit: SK Hynix)

As 3D NAND memory prices are falling due to weaker-than-expected demand in the IT sector, major flash makers are mulling adjusting their output and reducing investments in non-volatile memory, reports DigiTimes, citing South Korean media. Instead, they could invest more in DRAM production as demand for HBM memory from the AI industry is setting records.

Right now, all major makers of 3D NAND—Kioxia, Micron, Samsung, and SK Hynix—are considering reducing the output of non-volatile memory and reducing investments in building out additional flash capacities. If they do it, this will stabilize the pricing of 3D NAND and may somewhat reduce the pricing of DRAM, at least in the short and mid-terms.

Anton Shilov
Contributing Writer

Anton Shilov is a contributing writer at Tom’s Hardware. Over the past couple of decades, he has covered everything from CPUs and GPUs to supercomputers and from modern process technologies and latest fab tools to high-tech industry trends.

  • usertests
    See you for the next class action lawsuit.
    Reply
  • Armbrust11
    I wish products simply came with more storage. It seems like the average user only uses 1 or 2 TB of local storage as capacities have stagnated at that level for nearly a decade.

    Then again it was also the decade where storage transitioned from HDD to SSD so perhaps data storage demands will resume gradually increasing soon.
    Reply
  • Notton
    The vast majority of users don't need more than 2TB. Even if you're a heavy user, most things fit inside of 1TB, and for any capacity/data safety issues, there is cloud storage.

    Even on a gaming PC, 2TB is usually enough if you uninstall games you haven't touched in over a month.

    >8TB is for power users doing photo/video editing and need both speed and capacity. 4TB SSDs are the poor person's 8TB.

    With that said, I'd still like SSDs to hit lower prices. Like 4TB for $100US would be fantastic.
    Reply
  • thestryker
    usertests said:
    See you for the next class action lawsuit.
    They've already done this multiple times and it has yet to happen.
    Notton said:
    The vast majority of users don't need more than 2TB. Even if you're a heavy user, most things fit inside of 1TB, and for any capacity/data safety issues, there is cloud storage.

    Even on a gaming PC, 2TB is usually enough if you uninstall games you haven't touched in over a month.
    I've had an OS drive and two 1TB storage drives for over 8 years now and have never run into an issue. I did switch from my original ~250GB SATA OS drive to 1TB NVMe, but still have never really had any issues. I have a few drives I bought when they were super cheap waiting for my next build, but even then will just be doubling sizes. Outside of specific workloads that might benefit from real time high performance like uncompressed video work storage is still best left to the realm of HDDs.
    Reply
  • subspruce
    Armbrust11 said:
    I wish products simply came with more storage. It seems like the average user only uses 1 or 2 TB of local storage as capacities have stagnated at that level for nearly a decade.

    Then again it was also the decade where storage transitioned from HDD to SSD so perhaps data storage demands will resume gradually increasing soon.
    It was more like capacities regressed with the shift to SSDs and then they got back to the 1TB or 2TB common before SSDs became mainstream
    Reply