14 DAY TRIAL // After a long descent that left most memory manufacturers wondering if they should adopt a new line of work, the price for both DRAM computer memory and NAND flash chips rises slowly but steady. According to figures posted by DRAMeXchange and cited by the Web based news site Digitimes, after seeing the price of a 512MB of DRAM module jumping suddenly with 20 percent in the first half of July, memory producers generally expect an upward trend in the following months for both DRAM and for NAND chips, as more NAND intensive applications appear.
Just as the computer memory and flash chips demand is expected to climb, so will the entire production to match it, as only Hynix Semiconductor favored the production of NAND chips during the last month over the computer memory. According to DRAMeXchange the price of a 512MB memory chip will average between $2.20-2.50 while the price of a 1024Mb chip will be in the range of $4.50-5.00 in the second half of the 2007. One of the biggest memory makers, Samsung projects an increase of 20 percent in the price of computer memories, partly because of a tendency of adding more RAM to dektop and mobile systems, that would average an amount of 1.4GB in 2007.
NAND flash chips will see an increase in price too, as the demand grows stronger because of the multi-level cell (MLC) architecture that is being used by some system integrators. DRAMeXchange also said that the sudden price jump for NAND chips was produced by the acute shortage of the low-density single-level cell (SLC) chips and because of a reduced chip production as more manufacturers go from the 60 nanometer technological process to the 50 nm one. Both Samsung and Micron said that the market looks much more stable now after months of oversupply and falling prices.