Thanks Mule for a excellent article! I have worked in storage industry for 10+ years designing NAND and various SSD based products. It was delightful to read a industry level article here.
My 2 cents, on comments below. I would not worry about Optane too much ( have spend many years on it). To me it is a great science project, but when it comes to TCO or Dollar cost it is just going to be a solution for any hyperscalers.
One area to watch is CXL, this interface will enable companies like Micron to designer a cheaper DRAM and put it on a PCIe interface (sorry if this sounds too nerdy). And this will be a nail on coffin to some projects like Optane in long run. Plus, I have no hopes on Intel doing anything right given their sell of memory business to SK and merging Optane to their DataCenter. For a second, one can imagine if I am the VP of the datacenter group, where would I put Optane in the things of problem I need to fix.....geez I guess would be pretty last for me given all the other woes :).
Noob questions,
1. In the excel snapshots of companies, what does Weight % mean?
2. Any key non-USA tech companies you like other than Lam Research there? Specially looking to the ones who will be supplying to China?
I don't worry about Optane at all - I just write about it from time to time just so I can make myself not sound like I hate Intel too much. It is a great science project, and maybe some extremely tail use cases will use it... but not 99% of all use cases.
I really like and have been focused on CXL - and versus CCIX.
and 1) % Weight is Market Cap weight - I made this into an imaginary portfolio to add all the stocks up and then sum it at the bottom. This helps make weighted average metrics that I can compare stocks to which flows into the Ranker
2) ASM is something I look over and over at. ASML of course but the stock is kind of hitting bubble levels unless you think EUV WPM capacity will be like 2x today's w/o any kind of increase in thruput. ASM is the second player in ALD that is EU based, which of course really helps. Tokyo Electron is the Japan based player. I also like Israeli semicap (CAMT) as they are ofc non-US.
Always happy to chat - and thank you! Please make sure to call out anything in storage that looks meh. I am still learning.
What do you think of HSMC failing and Tsinghua defaulting (YMTC parent)? Also another memory question; we've started seeing stuff like Optane actually go into racks. It populates channels where DIMMs would be but serves a function between memory ranks - do you think it materially cannibalizes DRAM this cycle?
I’ve been following YMTC parent but I don’t really know what the end state game is there. Their 128 NAND is legit, and despite their financial woes China will prop it up.
Optane as a hybrid technology is more a replacement for even faster NAND than DRAM in my opinion. DRAM at EOD is most important for limiter many of the fastest applications, and that would scale terribly onto Optane. I think it would be a larger impact on NAND than the other way around
If you have any good evidence of the 128L being legit that would be awesome but no big deal if not... tough to get transparency without visiting Shanghai I guess.
I have never seen a teardown of 128Layer YMTC NAND in the wild - but I have taken everything they have said at face value. It is really hard to know if it's real or not but for now I am not going to say "hey this is clearly a fraud" for something I have no reason to believe is.
I would love to see it out in the wild that is for sure.
Thanks Mule for a excellent article! I have worked in storage industry for 10+ years designing NAND and various SSD based products. It was delightful to read a industry level article here.
My 2 cents, on comments below. I would not worry about Optane too much ( have spend many years on it). To me it is a great science project, but when it comes to TCO or Dollar cost it is just going to be a solution for any hyperscalers.
One area to watch is CXL, this interface will enable companies like Micron to designer a cheaper DRAM and put it on a PCIe interface (sorry if this sounds too nerdy). And this will be a nail on coffin to some projects like Optane in long run. Plus, I have no hopes on Intel doing anything right given their sell of memory business to SK and merging Optane to their DataCenter. For a second, one can imagine if I am the VP of the datacenter group, where would I put Optane in the things of problem I need to fix.....geez I guess would be pretty last for me given all the other woes :).
Noob questions,
1. In the excel snapshots of companies, what does Weight % mean?
2. Any key non-USA tech companies you like other than Lam Research there? Specially looking to the ones who will be supplying to China?
I don't worry about Optane at all - I just write about it from time to time just so I can make myself not sound like I hate Intel too much. It is a great science project, and maybe some extremely tail use cases will use it... but not 99% of all use cases.
I really like and have been focused on CXL - and versus CCIX.
and 1) % Weight is Market Cap weight - I made this into an imaginary portfolio to add all the stocks up and then sum it at the bottom. This helps make weighted average metrics that I can compare stocks to which flows into the Ranker
2) ASM is something I look over and over at. ASML of course but the stock is kind of hitting bubble levels unless you think EUV WPM capacity will be like 2x today's w/o any kind of increase in thruput. ASM is the second player in ALD that is EU based, which of course really helps. Tokyo Electron is the Japan based player. I also like Israeli semicap (CAMT) as they are ofc non-US.
Always happy to chat - and thank you! Please make sure to call out anything in storage that looks meh. I am still learning.
Yeah CXL is winning the race here.
Thank you so much for responding! I will watch out for any storage related stuff :)
What do you think of HSMC failing and Tsinghua defaulting (YMTC parent)? Also another memory question; we've started seeing stuff like Optane actually go into racks. It populates channels where DIMMs would be but serves a function between memory ranks - do you think it materially cannibalizes DRAM this cycle?
I’ve been following YMTC parent but I don’t really know what the end state game is there. Their 128 NAND is legit, and despite their financial woes China will prop it up.
Optane as a hybrid technology is more a replacement for even faster NAND than DRAM in my opinion. DRAM at EOD is most important for limiter many of the fastest applications, and that would scale terribly onto Optane. I think it would be a larger impact on NAND than the other way around
Awesome thanks!
If you have any good evidence of the 128L being legit that would be awesome but no big deal if not... tough to get transparency without visiting Shanghai I guess.
I have never seen a teardown of 128Layer YMTC NAND in the wild - but I have taken everything they have said at face value. It is really hard to know if it's real or not but for now I am not going to say "hey this is clearly a fraud" for something I have no reason to believe is.
I would love to see it out in the wild that is for sure.
Thanks for the insight!