In the second half of 2023, memory quotations represented by DRAM and NAND Flash will gradually stop falling, and prices will begin to recover. Recently, NOR Flash has also shown a significant recovery trend. Supply chain sources revealed that in January 2024, NOR Flash prices are expected to increase by 5% and maintain an upward trend. By the second quarter, the increase will reach 10%
In the past few years, with the changes in the entire semiconductor market, the supply, demand and price of NOR Flash have also risen and fallen.
In 2018, NOR Flash market demand was relatively weak, but suppliers' production capacity continued to increase, causing prices to enter a downward cycle that year. After a year of downturn, NOR Flash prices began to recover in the third quarter of 2019
At that time, the main growth drivers were AMOLED and TDDI for smartphones, as well as the growth of Internet of Things-related applications. On the supply side, major manufacturers such as Micron have gradually phased out NOR Flash and limited production expansion, resulting in a continued widening of the gap between supply and demand and a sharp rise in NOR Flash prices. At that time, the production capacity of major manufacturers such as Cypress (already acquired by Infineon) was ordered out, and the delivery time was greatly extended.
The hot market will continue in 2020 and 2021, but in 2022, especially in the second half of the year, the global electronic semiconductor market has entered a downward cycle. Most chip components are oversupplied. NOR Flash has not been spared and has entered a downturn again. Expect
In 2022, the revenue of various flash memory manufacturers will see a significant decline, and this sluggish market situation will continue until the second half of 2023.
This time, with the recovery of the global market, NOR Flash has also ushered in a new round of growth, especially the growing demand for emerging AI edge-side devices, opening up new growth space for NOR Flash
Small and exquisite NOR Flash
NOR Flash is a flash memory based on NOR gate structure. NOR is a "NOR" gate in a logic gate circuit. NOR Flash has a parallel access structure, which means that each memory unit has an address and can directly access any memory unit. This gives NOR Flash fast random access capabilities and is suitable for executing code and reading critical data.
Compared with NAND Flash, NOR Flash has lower storage density and higher cost, but has the advantages of fast read speed, on-chip execution (XIP), etc., and is suitable for executing code and storage that require low latency and high reliability. key data applications. NOR Flash has a wide range of applications, including mobile phones, PCs, wearable electronic devices, automobiles, security, industrial control, base stations, Internet of Things equipment, etc.
Stock application market
According to the capacity, NOR Flash can be divided into three categories: small capacity below 32Mb, which can realize simple code execution functions and is mainly used for PC motherboards, set-top boxes, routers, ordinary Bluetooth headsets, AMOLED, TDDI, wearable devices and security Monitoring and other products
32Mb-128Mb is a medium capacity, which can realize more complex program execution functions, such as noise reduction and other advanced functions in TWS headsets.
128Mb or above is a large capacity, suitable for scenarios with complex functions, fast startup, and high reliability requirements, such as 5G base stations, industrial control, and automotive electronics.
Judging from the development situation in recent years, small-capacity and medium-capacity NOR Falsh are mainly used in the stock market, while large-capacity products are mainly used in the incremental market.
Judging from the application situation in the past few years, especially from 2015 to 2021, NOR Flash has achieved substantial growth in the AMOLED, TWS Bluetooth headset and TDDI application markets
In the past few years, the NOR Flash market has maintained steady growth, with the market size reaching US$2.884 billion in 2021, a year-on-year increase of 15.36%
Due to process reasons, AMOLED has two major problems: brightness uniformity and afterimage, which require compensation. The compensation methods are divided into internal compensation and external compensation.
The effect of internal compensation is not good and it is difficult to solve the afterimage problem; external compensation has the advantages of simple pixel structure, fast driving speed and large compensation range, and is the first choice in practical applications. When performing external compensation, an external NOR Flash is required to avoid the problem that the blue light of the AMOLED panel fades over time.
In the past few years, AMOLED has become more and more widely used in smartphones, which has driven the growth in demand for NOR Flash, with a compound growth rate of 24%.
Compared with traditional headsets, TWS Bluetooth headsets have more functions and need to store more firmware and code programs, and require an external serial NOR Flash. Taking TWS headsets for Android phones as an example, they generally use 8Mb or 16Mb NOR Flash. As functions increase, 32Mb, 64Mb, 128Mb, or even 256Mb are needed.
According to Counterpoint research statistics, global TWS headset sales will be 300 million units in 2021, a year-on-year increase of 24%, bringing market demand for more than 600 million NOR Flash chips. Counterpoint research predicts the CAGR of TWS headset shipments from 2020 to 2025 up to 21%. At the same time, the capacity of NOR Flash used continues to increase. For example, TWS headsets based on the Qualcomm platform in 2019 mainly use 32Mb NOR Flash, and the maximum usage capacity in 2021 has reached 128Mb. Along with the capacity upgrade, the ASP of the chip also keeps growing.
TDDI is the abbreviation of touch and display driver integration, which integrates the originally separate mobile phone touch IC and display IC into an SoC. Since TDDI touch function encoding requires a large capacity, an external NOR Flash needs to be plugged in for storage and to assist TDDI in parameter adjustment.
Incremental application market
According to statistics, the global NOR Flash market will be approximately US$3.3 billion in 2022. In order to maintain growth in the future, in addition to maintaining stable growth in the above-mentioned stock markets, it also requires accelerated promotion of incremental markets, especially 5G base stations, automotive electronics and Smart wearable devices
5G base station:
Due to the special operating environment of 5G base stations (operating temperature range -40°C ~ 105°C, at least guaranteed life span of more than 10 years), the corresponding NOR Flash needs to meet the industrial-grade standards of high capacity + high performance + high reliability
In a 5G base station, the FPGA and SoC need to be configured every time the system is started. Unlike NAND Flash and SD cards, NOR Flash can provide higher reliability and lower-latency startup configuration support during the initial response and startup of 5G devices. NOR Flash is responsible for storing FPGA configuration process control, serial peripheral interface communication and other information. Under normal circumstances, the base station AAU/BBU needs to be equipped with 6-10 512Mb-2Gb NOR Flash
As global 5G construction continues to advance, the demand for large-capacity NOR Flash will also show rapid growth. However, there are not many manufacturers in the world that can produce NOR Flash for 5G base stations. Currently, about 80% of the global manufacturers that produce 5G base stations have placed orders with Macronix. In this case, there is a lot of room for growth in this field, both for the market and for manufacturers.
The rapid growth of automotive electronics will drive the demand for automotive memory to follow. The memories used in automobiles mainly include DRAM, NAND Flash and NOR Flash. Among them, NOR Flash’s share in automotive applications is gradually increasing, currently about 15%.
Due to the better reliability of NOR Flash, high-capacity NOR Flash is widely used in automotive electronics. From the initial low-end NOR Flash requiring 1Mb for automotive broadcasting, it has developed to products equipped with 128Mb~256Mb for central control systems. As more and more sensors and MCUs are integrated into automotive systems, higher-performance flash memory is required for data and program storage of each functional unit.
The main control electronic system will be shut down immediately after the car is turned off and parked, and the ADAS system interface needs to be quickly activated every time it is started. The quick startup of the vehicle system requires the ability to quickly read codes, which is what NOR Flash is good at and has inherent advantages.
As the level of automobile intelligence increases, ADAS, vehicle instrument panels, and other automotive electronic functional blocks have an increasing demand for NOR Flash. In the ADAS system, each camera requires one or more NOR Flash chips, and the average storage capacity of each camera is between 32-128Mb. The driving records, navigation, imaging, lane departure warning and other functions in the ADAS system, It is generally necessary to use 512Mb NOR Flash. High-end ADAS systems require 1Gb or even higher capacity NOR Flash
Automotive-grade chips have high requirements for stability and reliability, and the same is true for NOR Flash. Automotive applications require NOR Flash to have an operating temperature range of at least -40°C to 105°C and meet automotive regulatory certifications such as AEC-Q100. The reliability of automotive NOR Flash must reach 0dppm, which is much higher than the 100-200dppm of consumer applications. Therefore, more and more manufacturers are moving to high-end NOR Flash product lines. One of the important reasons is that they see the huge market for future automotive applications.
Smart wearable devices will maintain strong growth in the future, with shipments expected to reach 800 million in 2025, with a compound growth rate of more than 10%. Smart wearable devices will also create a large demand for NOR Flash. Typically, these devices need to collect a variety of user data, such as location, heart rate information, etc. In addition, external data needs to be transmitted to users, such as music, videos, calls, etc., all of which are inseparable from the support of NOR Flash.
Take smart bracelets as an example. Usually, high-end smart watches have a larger SoC area and can support built-in NOR Flash functions. Relatively speaking, the performance of the main control chip of smart bracelets is weak, and the SoC area is small, which is not enough to support the built-in NOR Flash function and requires external NOR Flash.
AR/VR is also a major growth point. AR/VR has very high computing requirements, equivalent to a small PC. Higher-performance AR/VR devices usually need to be equipped with a NOR Flash with a capacity of 64Mb-128Mb to store the AR/VR startup system code. For example, the VR device Oculus Rift CV1 is equipped with Winbond's 64Mb NOR Flash in the head-mounted display motherboard, and the AR device Magic Leap One host Lightpack is equipped with Cypress's 128Mb product.
In the future, the Internet of Things (IoT) and related devices will be everywhere, and the continued growth in the number of IoT devices will help the NOR Flash market maintain stable growth. Most IoT devices need to have fast response and low power consumption, and most application scenarios do not require large amounts of storage content, which matches the characteristics of NOR Flash. In the future, NOR Flash is expected to replace NAND Flash in IoT devices.
After rapid growth in the past few years, the NOR Flash market entered a cold winter in 2022. Major manufacturers began to gradually reduce production in the second half of 2022. It was not until the second half of 2023 that inventories were significantly reduced. Some time ago, the average inventory level in the industry was 3~ 4 weeks. Recently, with the rebound in demand from various terminals, the NOR Flash inventory of OEMs and system manufacturers has further dropped to about two weeks. In this case, starting from January 2024, manufacturers are bound to increase inventory, which will push up the quotation of NOR Flash.
After entering 2024, whether in existing markets such as smartphones, AMOLED panels, TWS Bluetooth headsets, or incremental markets such as automotive electronics and AR/VR, demand will begin to pick up or increase. In addition, popular AI systems and applications will continue to be popular in 2024, especially edge-side and terminal AI devices. The demand for NOR Flash will increase. Such applications will drive an upgrade in the NOR Flash usage of each device, such as Increased from existing 64Mb to 256Mb.
Driven by the growth of overall market demand, while the absolute quantity of the NOR Flash market is growing, its relative share will also increase, especially in the automotive field. It is expected to divide the share of DRAM and NAND Flash, based on the original 15%. further improve
