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They can trade capacity, but they generally aren't. The huge storage-only fabs owned by Samsung and Micron do runs that go for 9 months to 12 months. Flash chi

They can trade capacity, but they generally aren't. The huge storage-only fabs owned by Samsung and Micron do runs that go for 9 months to 12 months. Flash chips haven't been speculated on nearly as hard, and are suffering from the same sort of weird lack-of-nuance. Samsung, for example, isn't reassigning capacity to meet some sort of phantom datacenter demand that isn't already there, generically, across all datacenters, AI or not. A lot of SSD price skyrocketing is largely "SSDs have RAM on them for cache", not "SSDs have flash chips, and they're both made at the same fabs"... which oddly effects low end SSDs that don't have external cache. To make it worse, for the speculators who do understand this, because it isn't some universal homogeneous group, the flash chips that go into enterprise SSDs aren't the same that go into consumer SSDs. The Big Three still aren't doing some major re-tasking of capacity, as the actual global demand isn't outstripping supply any more than normal. There is no short term problem to fix, speculators are just gonna have to stop hoarding toilet paper like its the start of Covid. Edit: Oh, and if you want to ask how AMD/TSMC or Intel solve this? They can't, same reason why making their own in-house HBM isn't happening.

davrosthedalek 7mo ago
Both Western Digital and Kioxia have reported their 2026 Flash/Hard drive production capacity is sold out. Micron killed Crucial to focus on AI.
- BobbyJo 7mo ago
  Samsung and SK Hynix have moved all of their capacity over as well IIRC.
- DiabloD3 7mo ago
  I'm glad Kioxia (formerly Toshiba) have been able to do that. However, I also know they've been having problems meeting demand for quite some time, and haven't been able to scale up nearly as fast as the big three have. There was an incident in 2019 and another in 2022 that killed entire runs of chips and screwed them during the Covid datacenter rush. Micron killed Crucial because Crucial was a weird offering that competed with their own partners. This was always a weird problem, and it just didn't make financial sense to continue with it. One of the analyses I read was Crucial was less than 12% of sales. Like, don't get me wrong, I've liked many Crucial products over the years, and even recommended some of them, but it was always weird they were trying to out-compete companies like Adata and other major ODMs. The counterexample of this is Nvidia absolutely trying to kill their partners, and going to first party assembly and sales of products. Nvidia isn't even going to PNY anymore for ODM needs, but going directly to Foxconn. Micron execs claiming its because of AI is a bit weird and revisionist, because they've been working on exiting the Crucial brand since long before they publicly announced it. The public didn't learn of any such plans until right before the Ballistix brand sunsetting was announced in 2021, but started years before that. Like, I know they're just playing to their shareholders, but its still a bit weird.
  - Tsiklon 7mo ago
    When did nvidia drop PNY as ODM for their reference cards? I recall my A5000 (now 2 Gen old) was made by PNY.
    - DiabloD3 7mo ago
      As far as I know, the current lineup is PNY still makes the workstation cards, possibly also the x16 server cards, but Foxconn is doing the Blackwell SBCs and MXMs, and those SBCs are a pretty big chunk of Nvidia's income right now. I also believe they have moved to Foxconn for the Founders Edition consumer cards. Also, with the FEs, their partners are disallowed from making their own FEs, even if they make their own PCB from scratch and not based on any existing Nvidia design. Doesn't matter who makes the FE, it immediately puts partners at a great disadvantage if they can't make one too.

davrosthedalek 7mo ago

Both Western Digital and Kioxia have reported their 2026 Flash/Hard drive production capacity is sold out. Micron killed Crucial to focus on AI.

BobbyJo 7mo ago
Samsung and SK Hynix have moved all of their capacity over as well IIRC.
DiabloD3 7mo ago
I'm glad Kioxia (formerly Toshiba) have been able to do that. However, I also know they've been having problems meeting demand for quite some time, and haven't been able to scale up nearly as fast as the big three have. There was an incident in 2019 and another in 2022 that killed entire runs of chips and screwed them during the Covid datacenter rush. Micron killed Crucial because Crucial was a weird offering that competed with their own partners. This was always a weird problem, and it just didn't make financial sense to continue with it. One of the analyses I read was Crucial was less than 12% of sales. Like, don't get me wrong, I've liked many Crucial products over the years, and even recommended some of them, but it was always weird they were trying to out-compete companies like Adata and other major ODMs. The counterexample of this is Nvidia absolutely trying to kill their partners, and going to first party assembly and sales of products. Nvidia isn't even going to PNY anymore for ODM needs, but going directly to Foxconn. Micron execs claiming its because of AI is a bit weird and revisionist, because they've been working on exiting the Crucial brand since long before they publicly announced it. The public didn't learn of any such plans until right before the Ballistix brand sunsetting was announced in 2021, but started years before that. Like, I know they're just playing to their shareholders, but its still a bit weird.
- Tsiklon 7mo ago
  When did nvidia drop PNY as ODM for their reference cards? I recall my A5000 (now 2 Gen old) was made by PNY.
  - DiabloD3 7mo ago
    As far as I know, the current lineup is PNY still makes the workstation cards, possibly also the x16 server cards, but Foxconn is doing the Blackwell SBCs and MXMs, and those SBCs are a pretty big chunk of Nvidia's income right now. I also believe they have moved to Foxconn for the Founders Edition consumer cards. Also, with the FEs, their partners are disallowed from making their own FEs, even if they make their own PCB from scratch and not based on any existing Nvidia design. Doesn't matter who makes the FE, it immediately puts partners at a great disadvantage if they can't make one too.