DRAM Market Forecast

The DRAM revenue forecast for 2000 is $31.1 Billion, up $10 Billion from last year. Semico expects another $15 Billion increase for 2001, but thinks that the market will stagnate in 2002 due to an overcapacity situation. When DRAM manufacturers switch their production lines from 8" wafers to 12" wafers during 2001 the DRAM supply will increase dramatically and flood the market.

As far as the DRAM types are concerned Semico still believes that SDRAM will be the winner in 2002. Apparently over 50 % of all memory shipments are going to be SDRAM components, followed by DDR SDRAM (about 18 %), EDO DRAM (about 2 %) and RDRAM (less than 2 %).

According to Semico Research Rambus DRAM (RDRAM) plays no significant role in the memory market in 2002. This analysis is based on current Rambus designs for high-end PCs, workstations and servers.

Semico based the low numbers for RDRAM on the current cost structure for Rambus memory. The company must lower the prices or come up with a less expensive solution to succeed in the PC market. I think that even though the price is important it is not the main issue here but performance. If RDRAM was indeed superior to SDRAM - which is not the case and has been proven in several benchmark tests by now - people might not mind paying more. But why would anybody buy a memory component that offers less performance for a higher price? In my opinion the Semico forecast is right on target.

Things should definitely continue to be interesting in the memory and chipset market. In mid August Intel holds its' semi-annual developer forum (IDF) in San Jose. I'm curious to see what surprises await us there...