Samsung Electronics has lowered its target for NAND wafer output this year to around 4.72 million sheets, about 7% down from the previous year's 5.07 million. Kioxia also adjusted its output from 4.80 million last year to 4.69 million this year.. SK hynix and Micron are likewise keeping output conservatively constrained in a bid to benefit from higher prices. SK hynix's NAND output fell about 10%, from 2.01 million sheets last year to around 1.80 million this year. Micron's situation is similar: it is maintaining production at Fab 7 in Singapore—its largest NAND production base—in the low 300,000-sheet range, keeping a conservative supply posture.
Micron has a new US fab coming online in 2027, which should improve supply.
Enterprise SSDs are not expensive only because they have better flash chips, but they have much more of them.
A top of the line write oriented SSD comes with 4-7x more capacity than what it says on the tin, but that extra capacity is used for cell replacement rather than capacity itself.
Mixed use comes with 2-4x overprovisioning, and read oriented is around 2x IIRC.
During 1998-2000, AOL was ordering so many free trial CDs that it locked up world production, and music CDs faced 8-12 week delays. It was rumored that certain weeks there were no albums getting fabricated at all, worldwide.
I wonder if history isn’t repeating itself. AOL CDs had pretty much jumped the shark by 2000.
I really hope the AI bubble bursts sooner rather than later. Sooner will impact the broad economy less severely (although it'll still be pretty bad) and curtail these supply chain shortages. If the bubble keeps inflating, the storage makers will have already mostly built out excess capacity and the crash will lead to even longer-term supply distortion.
My understanding is that refurbished GPUs from e.g. crypto mining are something people are warned away from, because they've often been run into the ground. Are AI usage practices different?
> My understanding is that refurbished GPUs from e.g. crypto mining are something people are warned away from, because they've often been run into the ground.
No, this wasn't the case. While there were never comprehensive studies various tech media purchased these cards to run testing and found that, other than scammers, they all performed to expectation.
HDD can be written multiple times with random data if data centers really have to protect what their former customers wrote on them. I never looked at those details in standard contracts.
Depends how it goes down, if a company goes into insolvency all security policies are off the table and random hardware can get shifted into lot bidding.
> This is a long term good thing. ... By 2028 or so we'll have a 50% drop in price-per-storage for these components.
Per the op:
> and the ongoing DRAM shortage is proof of this, with memory kits costing more than double what they did just a few months ago.
> While enterprise-grade QLC SSDs would entirely power this pivot, Sandisk has already raised NAND prices by 50%, according to another DigiTimes report, after initially warning of a 10% increase two months ago.
So you're basically saying prices may return to normal in two years, and that's somehow a good thing compared to them not being inflated in the first place?
> By 2028 or so we'll have a 50% drop in price-per-storage for these components.
Do you mean relative to six months ago, or now? Because a lot of the prices have already more than doubled.
(I’m upset because the computer I’ve been planning to build, which three months ago would have come to around ₹90,000, is now up to ₹1,20,000 and climbing week by week, half due to price increases on the same part, half due to forced substitutions on RAM since the cheaper 32GB 6400MT/s DDR5 sticks are completely unavailable. And looking into laptops, for the first time ever I’m seeing manufacturet SODIMM or SSD upgrades being cheaper than aftermarket.)
Depending on the future you predict 10% may be a good ROI - if AI will replace humans and traditional economy will collapse all other investments will loos value even more. In such scenario you cannot save the money you only can loose less if you will make a right investment.
I'm not sure I understand why the economy would collapse if AI replaced humans. Wouldn't the companies just make more profit because they save labor costs and stonks go up?
The economy is a macrosystem. For a company to make profit, someone needs to buy. For someone to buy a service or a product, they need to have the money needed to buy. If AI replaces humans and UBI doesn't happen, costs might drop to near zero but so will revenue as virtually no one will be able to buy anything. So the economy will certainly collapse.
It depends on how many jobs AI replaces and which. It is unlikely that LLMs will replaces plumbers any time soon for example. Many technological inventions have replaced humans in lots of jobs, the economy has only grown since then.
>Many technological inventions have replaced humans in lots of jobs, the economy has only grown since then.
Indeed it has, but many of those it replaced did not necessarily get moved to better positions if they were moved at all. The industrial revolution was great if you were young and had little to no responsibilities. Your average middle aged farmer with a large family to feed faced poverty or near poverty and those who were able to move to the cities faced worse labour conditions. People on here love talking about the winners while conveniently ignoring the loser side.
And that's not even mentioning the skilling up issue to which older workers are more vulnerable. Who will fund the nation wide skill up costs for them?
The funniest thing about this is that, with high GPU prices, rising RAM costs, and now increasing SSD prices, Apple will end up producing the most affordable PCs.
No, Apple has effectively promoted iCloud as the alternative to local storage as part of its product differentiation strategy in the lower price segment.
Apple will almost certainly introduce the same approach for the budget MacBook as well.
They have a magic supply chain that is unaffected by the broader world which is one of the reasons why Tim Apple was chosen by Steve Jobs as his successor.
The problem is not chip supply it's manufacturing. Apple has their own manufacturing suppply. This is not the chip crisis of the last years. Hyper scalers are switching to consumer hardware because there is nothing in storage for Prosumer anymore and the manufacturing pipelines for these are smaller and harder to scale than consumer ones.
The NAND itself seems to come from companies like SK Hynix, which are currently struggling to meet demand.
Apple doesn't make their own NAND, just like they don't make their own screens. They did write their own NAND controller and stuck it into their CPUs, but the flash memory that actually stores data doesn't come directly from their factories.
It's not a fucking nand problem. The producers reduced capacity because of the slow consumer PC market in 2024. With hyperscalers shifting to consumer products the market is strained but everyone is scaling up their production now. This is not the same as the chip shortage we had in the last few years. The production capabilities are there they are just adjusting to new market realities. We will see a whiplash for a few months but we can and will produce enough chips for everyone which we were not able to do in the 20-22 crisis. Stop getting your "insights" from influencers and stop parroting them.
"OMEC" (Organization of Memory Exporting Countries) NAND production quotas?
https://x.com/jukanlosreve/status/1988505115339436423
Micron has a new US fab coming online in 2027, which should improve supply.DRAM price fixing scandal: 1998-2002, 2016-2018, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRAM_price_fixing_scandal
It’s a cartel just like the OPEC oil cartel.
Is there anything that isn't functionally a cartel at this point?
>Picking QLC over TLC allows them to maintain costs while achieving sufficient endurance for cold storage.
How does that work, doesn't QLC have less write endurance?
In short: Aggressive overprovisioning.
Enterprise SSDs are not expensive only because they have better flash chips, but they have much more of them.
A top of the line write oriented SSD comes with 4-7x more capacity than what it says on the tin, but that extra capacity is used for cell replacement rather than capacity itself.
Mixed use comes with 2-4x overprovisioning, and read oriented is around 2x IIRC.
Yes, but QLC has much higher density.
I think it's the higher density that makes it better for cold storage, which generally has infrequent access, and more reads than writes.
Hence the QLC's endurance being "sufficient for cold storage".
Ssd for cold storage seems like an odd choice in itself. If that’s genuinely done due to availability then we really are in for a wild ride
I believe "cold storage" in this parlance is more like "read-oriented" rather than being accessed once in three years.
Cold storage normally doesn't have frequent writes or frequent reads.
During 1998-2000, AOL was ordering so many free trial CDs that it locked up world production, and music CDs faced 8-12 week delays. It was rumored that certain weeks there were no albums getting fabricated at all, worldwide.
I wonder if history isn’t repeating itself. AOL CDs had pretty much jumped the shark by 2000.
I really hope the AI bubble bursts sooner rather than later. Sooner will impact the broad economy less severely (although it'll still be pretty bad) and curtail these supply chain shortages. If the bubble keeps inflating, the storage makers will have already mostly built out excess capacity and the crash will lead to even longer-term supply distortion.
And when the AI bubble bursts, "refurbished" HDDs and GPUs will flood the market. Save your money now and be prepared.
My understanding is that refurbished GPUs from e.g. crypto mining are something people are warned away from, because they've often been run into the ground. Are AI usage practices different?
> My understanding is that refurbished GPUs from e.g. crypto mining are something people are warned away from, because they've often been run into the ground.
No, this wasn't the case. While there were never comprehensive studies various tech media purchased these cards to run testing and found that, other than scammers, they all performed to expectation.
GPUs yes, but there'll be no HDDs making it alive, they'll get destroyed to protect whatever rubbish they had on.
HDD can be written multiple times with random data if data centers really have to protect what their former customers wrote on them. I never looked at those details in standard contracts.
There is also encryption at rest.
They have enough investor money they don't need to recoup it selling used drives. Straight to the shredder.
> HDD can be written multiple times with random data
Which costs more in compute than simply throwing the drive in a shredder
Depends how it goes down, if a company goes into insolvency all security policies are off the table and random hardware can get shifted into lot bidding.
If this bubble pops you might need that money for food when bananas go from $1.50 to $150.00
This is a long term good thing.
It sucks right now and will probably suck through 2027.
By 2028 or so we'll have a 50% drop in price-per-storage for these components.
> This is a long term good thing. ... By 2028 or so we'll have a 50% drop in price-per-storage for these components.
Per the op:
> and the ongoing DRAM shortage is proof of this, with memory kits costing more than double what they did just a few months ago.
> While enterprise-grade QLC SSDs would entirely power this pivot, Sandisk has already raised NAND prices by 50%, according to another DigiTimes report, after initially warning of a 10% increase two months ago.
So you're basically saying prices may return to normal in two years, and that's somehow a good thing compared to them not being inflated in the first place?
> By 2028 or so we'll have a 50% drop in price-per-storage for these components.
Do you mean relative to six months ago, or now? Because a lot of the prices have already more than doubled.
(I’m upset because the computer I’ve been planning to build, which three months ago would have come to around ₹90,000, is now up to ₹1,20,000 and climbing week by week, half due to price increases on the same part, half due to forced substitutions on RAM since the cheaper 32GB 6400MT/s DDR5 sticks are completely unavailable. And looking into laptops, for the first time ever I’m seeing manufacturet SODIMM or SSD upgrades being cheaper than aftermarket.)
> manufacturer SODIMM or SSD upgrades being cheaper than aftermarket.
Temporarily thanks to old stock.
Will the AI bubble last until 2028? I’m still unclear how AI will return even 10% of this investment in profit.
Depending on the future you predict 10% may be a good ROI - if AI will replace humans and traditional economy will collapse all other investments will loos value even more. In such scenario you cannot save the money you only can loose less if you will make a right investment.
I'm not sure I understand why the economy would collapse if AI replaced humans. Wouldn't the companies just make more profit because they save labor costs and stonks go up?
The economy is a macrosystem. For a company to make profit, someone needs to buy. For someone to buy a service or a product, they need to have the money needed to buy. If AI replaces humans and UBI doesn't happen, costs might drop to near zero but so will revenue as virtually no one will be able to buy anything. So the economy will certainly collapse.
It depends on how many jobs AI replaces and which. It is unlikely that LLMs will replaces plumbers any time soon for example. Many technological inventions have replaced humans in lots of jobs, the economy has only grown since then.
>Many technological inventions have replaced humans in lots of jobs, the economy has only grown since then.
Indeed it has, but many of those it replaced did not necessarily get moved to better positions if they were moved at all. The industrial revolution was great if you were young and had little to no responsibilities. Your average middle aged farmer with a large family to feed faced poverty or near poverty and those who were able to move to the cities faced worse labour conditions. People on here love talking about the winners while conveniently ignoring the loser side.
And that's not even mentioning the skilling up issue to which older workers are more vulnerable. Who will fund the nation wide skill up costs for them?
No I'm predicting a 90%+ loss.
> delivery times for enterprise-grade HDDs delayed by two years.
I sleep
> so hyperscalers are now switching to QLC NAND-based SSDs to avoid these backorders … This could lead to SSD prices rising worldwide
Real shit
The funniest thing about this is that, with high GPU prices, rising RAM costs, and now increasing SSD prices, Apple will end up producing the most affordable PCs.
If every other PC is more expensive, they will just increase prices.
No, Apple has effectively promoted iCloud as the alternative to local storage as part of its product differentiation strategy in the lower price segment.
Apple will almost certainly introduce the same approach for the budget MacBook as well.
Apple uses the same RAM, SSD, etc as everyone else does. They don't have a magic supply chain that is unaffected by the broader world.
They have a magic supply chain that is unaffected by the broader world which is one of the reasons why Tim Apple was chosen by Steve Jobs as his successor.
They don't use the same SSDs? They don't use the same RAM? They have their own supply chain in place? Whatcha talking about bud?
They use the same suppliers. The problem is the base chip, and also the wafer itself, all of which will impact apple.
(apple doesn't use hdds so not talking about that here).
Yes, but Apple tends to lock in their supply with long term contracts and prepayments, so they often are protected from supply shocks.
The problem is not chip supply it's manufacturing. Apple has their own manufacturing suppply. This is not the chip crisis of the last years. Hyper scalers are switching to consumer hardware because there is nothing in storage for Prosumer anymore and the manufacturing pipelines for these are smaller and harder to scale than consumer ones.
The NAND itself seems to come from companies like SK Hynix, which are currently struggling to meet demand.
Apple doesn't make their own NAND, just like they don't make their own screens. They did write their own NAND controller and stuck it into their CPUs, but the flash memory that actually stores data doesn't come directly from their factories.
It's not a fucking nand problem. The producers reduced capacity because of the slow consumer PC market in 2024. With hyperscalers shifting to consumer products the market is strained but everyone is scaling up their production now. This is not the same as the chip shortage we had in the last few years. The production capabilities are there they are just adjusting to new market realities. We will see a whiplash for a few months but we can and will produce enough chips for everyone which we were not able to do in the 20-22 crisis. Stop getting your "insights" from influencers and stop parroting them.
Appple uses custom DRAM and NAND chips?