Nand lifts semiconductor market
Semiconductor sales hit $20.3bn in May
The global semiconductor market was up 2.4 per cent in May compared with the same period in 2006, thanks to stronger microprocessors and Nand Flash sales.
The latest report from industry body, the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) noted that sales of semiconductors hit $20.3bn in May, up slightly from $19.8bn reported for May 2006 and 1.2 per cent higher than the $20bn reported for April 2007.
Stronger PC demand and continued demand for Nand Flash-based devices in May helped the market recover from a poor April.
George Scalise, president of the SIA, said: “Worldwide sales of semiconductors rebounded slightly in May, after a sequential decline in April. Sales of microprocessors and Nand Flash memory saw the largest sales increases, indicating continued strength in end markets for PCs and cell phones. Average selling prices for DRam continued to be under competitive pressure, declining by nearly 14 per cent sequentially. Total DRam sales fell eight per cent while unit shipments increased by seven per cent.
“Unit sales of both personal computers and cell phones have increased in line with forecasted growth rates in the 10 per cent range, but the memory content of these products is growing dramatically. According to Micron Technology, the average DRam content of a PC will increase from 772MB last year to 1,180MB this year.”
In related DRam news, Samsung has announced that version four of its Graphics Double Data Rate (GDDR4) memory chip will be used in the 1GB ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT and the 256MB HD 2600 XT graphics cards.
Mueez Deen, director of graphics memory at Samsung, said: “Our GDDR4 memory enables the premium and mainstream cards from the ATI Radeon HD 2000 series to perform at their optimal levels.”
Built on 80nm-process technology, the 512Mb GDDR4-based graphics cards provide 140.8Gb-per-second performance – 25 per cent faster than the 700MHz GDDR3 graphics memory used in most graphics cards.