SK Hynix Completes First Phase of $9 Billion Intel NAND Business Buy

South Korea's SK Hynix said it had completed the first phase of its acquisition of Intel's NAND flash memory chip business, after it received regulatory nods from eight countries including China. From a report: In exchange, SK Hynix will pay $7 billion out of the deal's total $9 billion price tag, the world's second-largest memory chip maker said in a statement on Thursday. The deal, signed in 2020, will allow Intel to focus on its smaller but more lucrative Optane memory business. For SK Hynix, it is the biggest acquisition ever as it seeks to boost its capacity to build NAND chips, used to store data in smartphones and data centre servers.

Ludicrous speed.

[Ostracus]

The deal, signed in 2020, will allow Intel to focus on its smaller but more lucrative Optane memory business.

Just as soon as I get my desktop supercomputer.

So are NAND's dying out

[bobm]

So are NANDs dying out or Intel being stupid again? It seems that Intel is thinking that the end of NANDs as a growing market.

Seriously curious here.

Re:

[bsmith0]

As Intel said very expensive to run said business with low margins. They'll leave it to others. Many businesses have gone in this direction.

Re:

[ItsJustAPseudonym]

Aye, this. NAND is still the underlying technology of SD cards and solid-state drives. But "raw NANDs", i.e. ones that are not packaged with an SD controller or an SSD controller, are the most bare-bones and cheapest implementation of the NAND memory. Any system that is using them is doing so because they are cheap.

It's a pain in the butt, because such systems must have some kind of firmware to manage the NAND. It's usually more reliable to use an SD-card for the memory, or its chip-packaged relativ

Re:

[tlhIngan]

Aye, this. NAND is still the underlying technology of SD cards and solid-state drives. But "raw NANDs", i.e. ones that are not packaged with an SD controller or an SSD controller, are the most bare-bones and cheapest implementation of the NAND memory. Any system that is using them is doing so because they are cheap.

Raw NANDs are still the backbone of storage. They're not "the cheapest" by any means (in fact, raw NAND is actually more expensive than managed flash these days!).

Managed flash where 1 or more N

Re:

[ShanghaiBill]

Intel's core business is making branded high-margin products based on proprietary IP.

NANDs is a low-margin commodity business.

Intel making NANDs makes as much sense as Nieman Marcus managing Walmart.

Re:

[Rockoon]

You are right, its much better to let fabs sit idle than it is to make and sell things....

Re:

[ShanghaiBill]

You are right, its much better to let fabs sit idle than it is to make and sell things....

No fabs are idle.

The transfer will be done in phases over five years.

Re:

[Rockoon]

The point is that Intel, due to its vertical integration, has had those fabs essentially idle for awhile now.

That is why these fabs are more valuable to SK than they are to Intel. Even if SK doesnt run them 24/7 for themselves, they will be able to rent out time while Intel just cant until they break up.

Re:

[bsmith0]

SK Hynix will own the fab. It definitely will not be sitting idle.

And the USA Complains About No Semiconductors

[theshowmecanuck]

I thought there was some sort of supply chain issue the USA was trying to solve. Go figure.

Re:

[bsmith0]

Tell me you have zero clue without telling me you have zero clue.

Re:

[theshowmecanuck]

I'll go one better. You're a cunt. Not snide enough? Doesn't matter, you're still a clueless cunt.

I don't know much about SK Hynix

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

I don't know much about SK Hynix but they make a pretty good 1TB SSD.

I got a pair of them for $75 (each) recently and they met and/or exceeded their advertised read/write speeds.

I used a variety of different software and types of tests just to make sure I wasn't getting biased results, and on every test they always came out at or above the claimed speeds. Usually above.

The ones I got were the "SK hynix Gold S31 1TB SATA Gen3 2.5 inch Internal SSD".

(B07SNHB4RC if you're interested. I have no connection to Am