DRAM Prices are Soaring Following HBM’s Triple-Fold Rise in Half a Year

The memory market dominance will be changed Samsung Electronics sees ‘green light’ for next year’s earnings Restructuring for high-performance, high-profi t structure

 The competition to expand artifi cial intelligence (AI) infrastructure is shifting investment and demand, which have been concentrated on high-bandwidth memory (HBM), to general-purpose DRAM. As global companies accelerate the expansion of their computing infrastructure, demand for HBM- oriented high-performance memory is shifting to DRAM for general-purpose servers.

Memory-demand companies are responding by expanding long-term contracts and pre-orders, and DRAM prices have nearly tripled in just half a year. Samsung Electronics’ semiconductor (DS) sector’s operating profi t is projected to triple next year compared to this year.
Global cloud providers including Open AI, Google and Amazon are continuing to expand their AI servers to improve computing effi ciency.
Consequently, the average DRAM capacity per server is expected to increase by more than double digits next year compared to last year, and demand for overall server DRAM is expected to increase by more than 20%.

While demand for DRAM is rapidly increasing, supply is limited due to increased investment in HBM. This is because Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix are continuing to invest in memory facilities focused on HBM. Both companies plan to focus on mass-production of HBM4 from the end of this year to next year, so it is diffi cult to rapidly increase general DRAM production capacity. An industry insider commented, “With facilities concentrated on HBM, general-purpose DRAM production capacity is rapidly decreasing. As Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix reduce production of older semiconductors, the entire market is shifting to high-performance products.”
TrendForce forecasts that the price of DRAM in the fourth quarter of this year will increase by 13~18% compared to the previous quarter. UBS also raised its forecast for fi xed transaction price increases of DRAM from 5% to 17%, stating, “The memory market has entered a supercycle that comes once in a decade due to the surge in demand for AI servers.”

 
korean-electronics.com | Blog Magazine of korean electronics, brands and Goods