GoKawiil
Tech News
A Munich Regional Court ruled on September 18 that Micron infringed two YMTC utility model patents covering 3D NAND technology, granting injunctions with 10-year protection terms. Three other related cases in the same filing were adjourned. Micron says it disputes the ruling and has filed an appeal to the Munich Higher Regional Court.
DapuStor introduced a dual-mode firmware for its enterprise J5060 SSD that lets operators carve out a portion of QLC flash to run as pSLC, boosting speed at the cost of capacity. Depending on configuration, users sacrifice 6% to 20% of QLC storage in exchange for random-write performance that's over seven times faster, with the fixed region exposed as its own block device rather than a dynamic cache. The drive, shown at FMS 2026, spans 15.36TB to 122.88TB capacities but still has no announced price, customer, or release date.
Testing by Bilibili channel Homolab found that the 1TB iPhone 18 Pro Max, which uses QLC NAND, suffers major performance drops compared to the 512GB TLC-based iPhone 18 Pro. Once its SLC and secondary TLC caches are exhausted, sustained writes fall to about 79.4 MB/s and can dip as low as 25.6 MB/s, worsening to just 1.1 MB/s once the drive is 60% full.
According to Reuters sources, Chinese DRAM maker CXMT is considering building an experimental 3D NAND production line at its planned second facility near Beijing, which has yet to break ground. The company has also set up a Beijing research institute reportedly working on NAND flash development, and has discussed potential NAND supply with at least one prospective customer targeting AI storage products. CXMT has not officially confirmed any of these NAND ambitions.
Analysts at Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan, and TrendForce report that legacy memory types like NOR flash and SLC NAND are facing severe supply shortages as manufacturers redirect production capacity toward more profitable HBM and DRAM chips driven by AI demand. Contract prices for both chip types have already more than doubled in the first half of 2026, with SLC NAND expected to rise another 120-170% in the second half.
Taiwanese media report that Micron's two main unions are pressing for larger bonuses after the company's profits surged on AI-driven memory demand. Union chairman Lin Zherui pointed to Micron's record earnings, arguing compensation has stayed capped near 200% of salary even as SK Hynix and Samsung paid workers hundreds of thousands of dollars this year. Reports suggest union membership has grown sharply as frustration builds, raising the possibility of labor action.
Modern flash storage relies on NAND memory cells that trap electrical charge, with newer 3D NAND designs stacking cells vertically and packing multiple bits per cell to boost capacity while lowering cost per gigabyte. These improvements have made flash ideal for SSDs and portable devices, since it lacks the moving parts of hard drives, giving lower latency and better durability. However, flash remains fundamentally different from RAM, serving as persistent storage rather than the fast temporary memory a system needs while running.
Chinese chipmaker YMTC has told investors it intends to become the world's biggest NAND flash producer by the end of 2027, surpassing Samsung and SK hynix. The Wuhan-based firm recently filed to raise 33 billion yuan ($4.9 billion) on Shanghai's STAR Market, with most funds going toward upgrading production lines and expanding research and development.