SCOTTSDALE, AZ – The DRAM market is expected to reach sales of $101.6 billion in 2018, up 39%, making DRAM the largest of all IC product categories this year, says IC Insights.

If the forecast is achieved, it would mark the first time an individual IC product category has surpassed $100 billion in annual sales, says the research firm. The DRAM market is forecast to account for 24% of IC sales.

The NAND flash market is expected to achieve the second-largest revenue level with total sales of $62.6 billion in 2018. Taken together, the two memory categories are forecast to account for 38% of the total $428 billion IC market.

For many years, the standard PC/server MPU category topped the list of largest IC product segments, but with ongoing increases in memory average selling prices, the MPU category is expected to slip to the third position in 2018, says IC Insights. IC Insights slightly raised its forecast for the MPU category to show revenues increasing 5% to an all-time high of $50.8 billion. Helping drive sales this year are AI-controlled systems and data-sharing applications over IoT.  Cloud computing, machine learning, and the expected tidal wave of data traffic coming from connected systems and sensors is also fueling MPU sales growth this year, says the firm.

Computer and peripherals and wireless communications are forecast to round out the top five largest product categories for 2018.

Four of the five largest categories in terms of unit shipments are forecast to be some type of analog device. Total analog units are expected to account for 54% of the total 318.1 billion IC shipments forecast to ship this year. Power management analog devices are projected to account for 22% of total IC units and are forecast to exceed the combined unit shipment total of the next three categories on the list.

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