tora

According to Bloomberg, the top executive of Kioxia Holdings denied the possibility of establishing closer cooperation with competitors and shareholder SK Hynix, stating that they will control the rapid rise in storage chip prices to avoid impacting long-term demand in the artificial intelligence sector.Currently, storage chip manufacturers are expanding production capacity to meet the surge in orders from artificial intelligence service providers, leading to a significant increase in related chip prices. Some investors believe that forming manufacturing partnerships may help reduce the risk of large-scale capital expenditures.

According to the Chosun Ilbo, China's largest DRAM manufacturer Changxin Memory Technologies (CXMT) has launched trial production of the fourth-generation high bandwidth memory HBM3, with initial yield stagnating at 25%, about one-third of the golden mass production yield of 80%. SK Hynix has been mass producing similar products since 2022, with a yield exceeding 90%.The front-end yield of Changxin Memory's HBM3 8-layer stacked products is about 30%, while the back-end yield is approximately 70%, resulting in final good products. The company supplies a small number of samples to Chinese companies such as Alibaba's Pingtouge and Cambricon, and continues to improve yields. Its G4 (17-nanometer) process ordinary DRAM has no major issues, but the DRAM chips used for HBM have larger areas and stricter electrical specifications.The industry attributes the reasons to the insufficient maturity of Through-Silicon Via (TSV) technology. Nomad Semi's analysis shows that Samsung's HBM2 has over 5,000 TSVs per chip, SK Hynix's HBM3 has over 8,000, while Changxin Memory has about 3,000. There is a gap of 4 to 5 years compared to Samsung and SK Hynix.

Future Asset Securities analyst Kim Young-gun stated that the expansion of Samsung Electronics' HBM shipments for AI applications is expected to offset the impact of the slowdown in growth of general-purpose memory chips next year. It is anticipated that Samsung Electronics' HBM shipment capacity and average selling price will soar by 57% and 49% respectively by 2027, expected to surpass the projected growth rates of 16% and 20% for general-purpose memory chips.Future Asset expects Samsung's earnings to be weighed down by the strengthening of the Korean won against the US dollar, but overall, it will remain robust. The agency has lowered its operating profit forecast for Samsung in 2026 by 5.7% to 370.057 trillion won and reduced it by 4.2% to 535.682 trillion won for 2027.

Researcher Schulz_Research stated that China's storage advancement is no longer a story of a single company, but rather a division of labor among three companies: CXMT is responsible for DRAM wafers, YMTC is responsible for NAND and has added DRAM in its latest factory, and the foundry controlled by YMTC, XMC, is responsible for stacking products from both. This division corresponds to the rules set by Beijing since late December last year, which state that new factory approvals must show that at least half of the equipment is domestically sourced, with exemptions only granted when there are no domestic options available. YMTC's Wuhan Phase III is the first advanced storage project to pass this rule and is set to begin production later this year.CXMT operates three 300mm DRAM factories, each producing about 100,000 wafers per month; models indicate it will reach 350,000 wafers by the end of 2026, and if all announced projects are completed, the total will exceed 600,000 wafers. YMTC's first two factories in Wuhan have a combined capacity of 200,000 wafers, with Phase III expected to reach 50,000 wafers by 2027 and full production of 100,000 wafers, along with plans to build two more factories of similar scale. XMC has two 12-inch factories, each with about 30,000 wafers, and an HBM packaging line producing about 3,000 wafers per month. China supplies about 10% of the global DRAM bits, with YMTC accounting for 14% of NAND bit shipments in the second quarter, and China consumes about 30% of global storage.CXMT has begun mass production of DDR5 and LPDDR5 and plans to start mass production of HBM3 this year, having already sent samples to domestic AI hardware developers. XMC has spent two years building HBM packaging based on hybrid bonding and YMTC's stacking IP, and is still advancing TSV technology.

Serenity posted a reminder that the fundamentals of storage shortages have not changed and may even become more acute. The market will shift from one bottleneck sector to another, but the companies themselves remain unchanged; what changes are the valuations and narratives. Serenity added several pieces of evidence suggesting that the storage supply-demand gap may be worse than the market expects: Nikkei reported that Japanese distributors claim the storage demand gap has reached 40% to 60%, and prices may rise by about 50% by the end of the year; SpaceX has not accounted for the approximately $1.3 trillion capital expenditure from ultra-large cloud providers, and total spending may exceed expectations; SanDisk's expected gross margin of 80% is expected to be maintained until 2030; and order visibility for companies like Samsung has extended to 2031.Serenity emphasized that storage stocks are highly volatile, with some of its positions showing unrealized gains of over 270%, making them easier to hold. However, the company's operational fundamentals and short-term stock prices often do not align. The same logic applies to other bottleneck areas such as optical modules, CW lasers, and substrates; after a rebound in stock prices, there is no need to assume that shortages have ended. Storage prices and supply-demand structures remain tight, and market sentiment and valuation narratives are rapidly rotating.

The Bank of Korea stated that thanks to Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix actively expanding domestic production facilities, South Korea's leading advantage in memory chip capacity is expected to further expand.The Bank of Korea expects that new chip factories to be put into production by 2028 will increase South Korea's monthly wafer capacity by approximately 600,000 wafers.

The research institution Sigmaintell has released a storage price indicator showing that in the third quarter of 2026, the overall supply and demand in the global storage market remains tight. Prices for all categories of DRAM (Dynamic Random Access Memory) and NAND Flash (flash memory) continue to rise month-on-month, but the rate of increase has significantly slowed compared to the second quarter, with the month-on-month increase for some storage chips narrowing to within 10%.

Changxin Storage filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Defense on August 28, Eastern Time. Changxin Storage stated that the company filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, accusing the U.S. Department of Defense of mistakenly listing it as a "Chinese military enterprise," with the company first being named in January 2025. Changxin Storage is not a military enterprise; it only researches and produces DRAM (Dynamic Random Access Memory) products for commercial and civilian use, and they are not used for military purposes.

The core development team of Solana, Anza, announced that the Solana testnet has enabled the first phase of the SIMD-0437 proposal, and the account rent reduction mechanism has begun testing. This proposal includes a total of 5 functional gates, with only the first functional gate currently activated, and all adjustments have not yet been completed and deployed to the mainnet.Once all 5 phases are completed, the storage cost parameter lamports_per_byte for Solana will be reduced from 6960 to 696, resulting in an overall reduction of 90%. For example, in the case of token accounts, the deposit required to maintain an account in a rent-exempt state is expected to decrease from approximately $0.16 to $0.016, thereby lowering the costs of account creation and application deployment.

SK Hynix CEO Kwak Noh-Jung stated that the company is exploring ways to deepen cooperation with Japanese memory chip customers and suppliers, and is cautiously assessing how to jointly develop the NAND flash memory market. Regarding the company's significant indirect stake in Kioxia, he mentioned that there are currently "no definite plans."After Toshiba's recent divestment, SK Hynix's investment vehicle BCPE Pangea Cayman2 has become Kioxia's largest shareholder, holding a 14.19% stake. SK Hynix holds bonds that can be converted into nearly all voting rights of this investment vehicle; according to a previous agreement, its voting rights cannot exceed 15% before 2028 without Kioxia's consent.In addition, SK Hynix is investing over $4 billion to build its first U.S. HBM packaging facility in Indiana. The cleanroom of the factory is expected to be operational by October 2028, with mass production of the next generation HBM planned for the second half of 2029, and it is expected to employ about 1,000 people once fully operational. The company is also still evaluating the possibility of listing its U.S. NAND subsidiary Solidigm, but no decision has been made yet.

According to Nikkei Asia, storage chip manufacturer Kioxia Holdings plans to build new production facilities at its factory in northern Japan, with project investments expected to exceed 1 trillion yen (approximately 6.27 billion USD).Kioxia currently ranks third in the global NAND flash memory market, behind Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix. The company's move aims to follow its South Korean competitors in increasing production capacity to meet market demand.

According to Gate market data, after-hours trading on Wednesday for U.S. stocks saw Nvidia's new quarterly results continue to exceed market expectations, with a forecast of approximately 70% sales growth for the next fiscal year, driving AI concept stocks higher in after-hours trading.The storage sector collectively strengthened, with SK Hynix rising 4.48%, SanDisk up 3.71%, Micron Technology up 3.67%, Seagate Technology up 3.15%, and Western Digital up 3.11%. The Neocloud sector saw widespread gains, with Nebius up 6.27%, CoreWeave up 4.76%, Applied Digital up 3.26%, and both IREN and Core Scientific up 3.16%.Optical communication stocks rose across the board, with Applied Optoelectronics up 4.25%, Marvell Technology up 4.08%, Credo up 3.78%, Coherent up 3.35%, and Astera Labs up 3.34%. Semiconductor stocks also strengthened, with Arm up 4.18%, Marvell Technology and Nvidia both up 4.08%, Lam Research up 2.65%, and KLA up 2.42%.

According to Gate market data, U.S. stocks opened higher, with the three major indices rising: the Dow Jones up 0.36%, the S&P 500 up 0.35%, and the Nasdaq up 0.65%.The storage concept rebounded, with SanDisk (SNDK.O) rising about 3% and SK Hynix (SKHY.O) also rising about 3%. Alibaba (BABA.N) fell 0.6%, while Jack Ma and Joe Tsai continuously increased their holdings.

According to Gate market data, the Nasdaq 100 index futures continue to rise, currently up about 1%, while the S&P 500 index futures and Dow futures are up about 0.5%. The storage concept rebounded before the market, with SK Hynix, Western Digital, and Micron Technology all rising over 3%, and SanDisk rising over 4%.

Xiaomi officially released the Xuanjie O3 chip. The new generation Xuanjie O3 is the world's first flagship mobile processor (SoC) that supports LPDDR6 memory chips. According to reporters from the Financial Associated Press, domestic storage leader Changxin Storage (CXMT) is a core partner for Xiaomi's Xuanjie O3 LPDDR6 memory.In March this year, there were reports that Changxin LPDDR6 had sent samples to key customers, and in early August, multiple media outlets reported that it was nearing the end of verification. With the launch of the Xuanjie O3, this marks the first application of domestic LPDDR6 chip products in flagship processors, which also means that domestic low-power memory has officially entered the global top tier.

According to TrendForce, at Hot Chips 2026, Micron emphasized that the progress of AI computing power is faster than storage improvements, and the challenge of the "storage wall" is becoming increasingly prominent. Micron Fellow Raghu Sriramaneni pointed out that the computing power of AI accelerators increases approximately threefold every two years, while the bandwidth of HBM increases by less than double during the same period, and the gap may further widen. The deepening reliance on HBM also brings reliability issues; Micron cited Meta Llama 3 data indicating that HBM failures account for about 17% of unexpected training interruptions. New designs that blur the boundaries between computing and storage may help break through the bottleneck.The expansion of HBM also brings area and supply pressures: the latest generation of packaging integrates two GPUs with eight 12-layer HBM4 stacks, with storage accounting for about 90% of the semiconductor area, more than eight times the area occupied by GPUs; achieving equivalent capacity with HBM requires about three times the wafers of standard DDR5 DRAM. Thermal management has also become a key constraint, with solutions such as liquid cooling and ultra-thin chips being explored.Micron is advancing innovations in interconnect, packaging, and cooling, including SerDes and die-to-die PHY optimized for storage, larger size SiP and advanced packaging with glass substrates, as well as liquid cooling and hybrid bonding, and is developing fusion bonding to reduce thermal resistance and enhance data throughput.

According to Gate data, Changxin Storage (CXMT) is currently priced at $8.256, with a 24-hour increase of 0.78%. According to CoinGlass data, Gate Changxin Storage (CXMT) has a position volume of $6.6283 million, ranking first among centralized exchanges.

Sei announced the launch of the Eidos upgrade, which involves a comprehensive reconstruction of the on-chain storage layer. Eidos is one of the three parts of the Sei Giga upgrade trilogy, following the consensus layer Autobahn and the execution layer Ares, which have been progressively advanced. Eidos is responsible for addressing the most critical storage bottleneck in blockchain scalability.Core changes include: replacing the traditional Merkle tree with FlatKV and LtHash, allowing state updates to shift from chain-based hash recalculation to constant time operations; migrating EVM state to an independent database, with historical data moved to off-chain archives, and nodes retaining only the content necessary for real-time operations.Sei's long-term goal for the Giga upgrade is 200,000 TPS, and Eidos is a key underlying support for achieving this goal. This upgrade represents an update to the technical roadmap, and the specific implementation effects will need to be validated in the future. Node operators can configure migration according to Sei's official documentation.