The global semiconductor industry recorded its best year in more than a decade in 2017, with annual revenue jumping by 22 percent over the previous year, to $429.1 billion.

That’s according to new data from the U.K.-based analyst firm IHS Markit Ltd., which attributed the rise to a massive spike in demand for processing power for use in emerging applications for memory chips, including big data, the “internet of things” and machine learning.

This demand spike helped propel Samsung Electronics Ltd. into the pole position as the world’s leading chip maker, ahead of rival Intel Corp., which had held the top spot for more than a quarter of a century. Samsung’s revenue leaped by 54 percent in 2017.

IHS said sales of dynamic random access memory chips jumped 77 percent overall, while flash memory chips saw sales rise by 47 percent. The market was also notably impacted by increasingly tight supplies as the year wore on, with noticeable revenue jumps towards the latter end of 2017 as demand increased.

The growth rates for both DRAM and flash were the highest in over a decade, IHS Markit said. The increased demand also helped fuel annual growth rates of around 80 percent for memory chip makers SK Hynix Inc. and Micron Technology Inc., which are ranked third and fourth in the world, respectively.

IHS Markit said the fabless business model of some semiconductor makers, which involves selling designs of chips to third-party foundries for production, also saw a major expansion. For example, the smartphone chip maker Qualcomm Inc. saw 9.5 percent growth in the last year despite ongoing legal troubles with Apple Inc. that hurt its earnings.

Nvidia Corp. also got a mention for bursting into the list of top 10 chip makers for the first time. The company saw its revenue jump 42 percent on rising demand for its graphics processing units, which are increasingly being used in applications such as high-performance computing and machine learning applications such as autonomous cars.

However, IHS Markit warned that the industry could shift yet again as chipmakers begin to step up production of 3-D NAND flash technologies used for in-memory processing of big data. Examples of 3-D NAND technologies include Intel’s Xpoint nonvolatile memory chips, which are designed for data centers.

The 3-D NAND transition is now almost three-quarters of production, and it’s projected to provide supply relief for the strong demand coming from the solid-state drive and mobile markets, said Craig Stice, IHS Markit’s senior director or memory and storage. “Prices are expected to begin to decline aggressively, but 2018 could still be a record revenue year for the NAND market.”

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