Soon Lim

DIGITIMES Asia Exclusive: Micron Technology halts NAND and DRAM quotes after Sandisk price hike, sharper increases looming.... 😱🤖💡 #Memory #manufacturers are swiftly following #SanDisk's announcement of a 10% price increase for #NAND products, signaling a broader industry move toward higher pricing amid expected supply shortages starting in 2026. Micron has paused #NAND #Flash and #DRAM pricing quotes for a week, while market sources anticipate potential #NANDFlash price rises of up to 30%. Industry insiders indicate that Micron's pricing suspension and rumored sharp price hikes are tied to anticipated growth in CSP's storage needs beginning in 2026. Though consumer demand remains weak, the anticipated surge in data center capacity—especially for AI and enterprise storage—is expected to tighten NAND Flash supplies, initiating a new price increase cycle. Price suspensions and hikes extend beyond NAND to DRAM products as well. Taiwanese #memory companies report verbal notifications from #Micron that DRAM pricing—including #DDR4, #DDR5, #LPDDR4, and #LPDDR5 — will be suspended for around a week, canceling previously agreed prices. Analysts expect DRAM price hikes of at least 10% based on historical trends, with certain segments such as #automotive #electronics potentially facing increases as high as 70%. Thanks again to Siu Han, Jingyueh H. and DIGITIMES Asia for the full article with more background and insights via the link below 💡🙏👇 https://lnkd.in/e-RHf_Nb #semiconductorindustry #semiconductor #semiconductors #technology #ai #tech #chip #chips #geopolitics #server #datacenter #computer #it MEMPHIS Electronic 💡💚 Intelligent Memory 💡❤️ - Neumonda - 💡💙 Nick Florous, Ph.D. Alistair Jones Charles Chen 💡🤖

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Malaysia’s Semiconductor Edge: Don’t Waste the Lead We’ve built a strong position in OSAT, test, and packaging — housing global names like ASE Global, Amkor Technology, Inc., Infineon Technologies, and Intel Corporation. But the real question is: can we move up the value chain before others catch up? The semiconductor industry isn’t just about “making chips” — it’s a finely tuned global relay race, with each player specialising in a critical stage: 🔹 Fabless designers (AMD, NVIDIA, Qualcomm) — brains behind the chips. 🔹 Foundries (TSMC, Samsung Semiconductor, GlobalFoundries) — world-class manufacturing powerhouses. 🔹 OSAT / Testing & Packaging (ASE Global, JCET Group, Amkor Technology, Inc.) — ensuring reliability before products hit the market. 🔹 Suppliers & Equipment Makers (ASML, Applied Materials, Tokyo Electron, Lam Research) — enabling the cutting edge of chip production. 🔹 Integrated Device Manufacturers (IDMs) (Intel Corporation, Micron Technology, Texas Instruments) — the “all-in-one” giants. 💡 Why this matters for Malaysia: The next frontier lies in upstream value capture — fabless chip designers, equipment makers, and advanced fab partnerships. Securing that position will require: ✅ Targeted industrial policy to anchor high-value nodes of the chain. ✅ Talent pipelines for wafer fabs, compound semiconductors, photonics, and chip design. ✅ Global integration to be a trusted, innovation-driven hub. The world won’t wait. The moves we make today will define Malaysia’s role in the semiconductor industry for decades. 📌 Follow me 👉 Andrew Chan Yik Hong for actionable perspectives on policy, strategy & industry shifts. 🔔 Ring the bell to get notified when I post.

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The Fab Whisperer: The Most Misleading Metric in Fabs Every fab runs on metrics: OEE, cycle time, line yield, on-time delivery, cost per wafer/layer. But there’s one metric that, more often than not, misleads fabs into thinking they’re winning when in reality they’re falling behind: “Utilization”. Why it matters? On the surface, utilization feels like the right goal: keep tools busy, maximize output. But fabs are not simple factories — they’re complex, interconnected systems with bottlenecks and long cycle times. When fabs chase utilization too hard, it usually leads to: WIP bloats — tools run wafers just to look “busy,” flooding the downstream line with lots. Cycle time explosion — bottlenecks starve while non-bottlenecks overproduce. False sense of efficiency — high utilization ≠ high throughput. Technician overload — more setups, more firefighting. The paradox is that the harder a fab pushes utilization, the slower and more expensive it often gets. From the field: I once worked with a fab proudly reporting 95% utilization on bottleneck tools. Management celebrated. But wafer cycle times were climbing, and customers were missing deliveries. Tracing WIP revealed that the implant area was flooding the downstream Litho bottlenecks. Lots piled up in front of scanners, miss-managing critical recipes' priorities and inflating cycle time by weeks. Litho Utilization looked world-class. Actual fab delivery performance was collapsing. When we shifted the focus to throughput at the bottleneck and WIP turns at non-bottlenecks, cycle time improved 18% in just three months, and on-time delivery jumped from 70% to 93%. The fix: Stop chasing utilization as a headline fab metric. Focus on throughput at the bottleneck — the true limiter of output. Use metrics for bottleneck tools such as % Idle with WIP, throughput/tool/day or per shift. Focus on Dynamic Cycle Time (DCT) and WIP turns on non-bottlenecks — they reveal the hidden cost of overproduction. Align fab scheduling with pull principles wherever possible. Focus on FLOW. Teach fab leaders the difference between “busy” and “productive.” The most misleading metric isn’t the one you ignore. It’s the one you celebrate — while it quietly erodes flow. So… drop a comment if in your fab the focus on keeping tools busy trumps delivering wafers on time. What's your most misleading metric? #TheFabWhisperer #Semiconductor #FabOperations #Metrics #Utilization #CycleTime #ManufacturingExcellence

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Ever wonder what solar panels could do if they had brains? That’s basically what HTEC and Infineon Technologies pulled off. Their AI-powered system, running on Infineon’s PSOC™ Edge platform, uses real-time voltage, current, and temperature data to tweak power output on the fly—no fancy irradiance sensors needed. ⚡ 23× faster response 🔋 42× less energy used 🔧 Built-in predictive maintenance Smarter energy. Less waste. More uptime. This is the kind of tech that moves us forward. Curious how it works? 🔗 Check out the whitepaper: https://lnkd.in/gKqhM_F4

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