If Samsung is limited in the number of wafers they can process per month and they use more of those to produce HBM they necessarily have less of them left to make other products, like consumer DRAM.
Depends on what proportion of Samsung's output is current HBM4 and HBM4E DRAM.
Everything in their statement can be true and it be a bad thing for consumers of non-HBM RAM.
"HBM capacity to expand to 250,000 wafers a month"
So let's say their current HBM capacity is 100k wafers/month (pure speculation/random number for illustration), and their total RAM capacity (including HBM( is 300k wafers/month, then non-HBM capacity reduces from 200k to 50k.
Keep in mind that total manufacturing capacity is increasing as well. Perhaps not enough to fully offset, but it's incorrect to assume that supply capacity is flat.
And it's worse than that, Micron said that converting capacity to HBM was at a 3:1 ratio, so that 250k HBM could be up to 750k in non-HBM. Fortunately, some of the increase is due to improved processes.
HBM4 and HBM4E DRAM are NOT the DDR4/5 that consumer markets need. Capacity allocation is leaning more to data center grade HBMs so less to produce dedicated DDR4/5 DRAMs. Supply demand will further drive up the consumer DRAM price! Note, the article mentions NO of new fabs is being constructed (all semiconductor manufacturers know that constructing more fabs means the boom/burst cycle will eventually kill them, so no one create more fabs) Perhaps the federal government need to step in here - the market doesn't fit the issue.
Samsung is already building another fab (which was originally suspended due to low memory prices years ago). Hopefully when it goes live in a few years it's not all dedicated to HBM for AI.
About 2 years ago I bought some SDRAM or something like that, DDR4 or DDR5, don't recall offhand. A few months ago I looked at the price today, and it was over
3x as high. That's just insane. Governments need to do something against this abuse system that AI amplified here.
Governments need to do something against this abuse system that AI amplified here.
Which governments, and what exactly would you want these governments to do? The demand is global. There are no levers a single government can pull to meaningfully influence the global demand without fully committing to an protectionist economic policy, in which case the U.S. doesn't have the facilities to magically pop up world class fabs overnight, and South Korea and Taiwan don't have the market demand that the U.S. generates to justify their investments in making these chips and China lacks the IP to be able to build anything comparable to Nvidia's silicon at the moment.
No one has all the cards and no one controls all the levers.
A shame that this should if anything, lead to consumer DRAM prices getting even worse.
Why would more RAM supply lead to higher consumer prices?
If Samsung is limited in the number of wafers they can process per month and they use more of those to produce HBM they necessarily have less of them left to make other products, like consumer DRAM.
Presumably DRAM production capacity gets reallocated to HBM, not sure.
Depends on how quickly they are sold.
Memory allocated for HBM is memory taken away from DDR production.
Depends on what proportion of Samsung's output is current HBM4 and HBM4E DRAM.
Everything in their statement can be true and it be a bad thing for consumers of non-HBM RAM.
"HBM capacity to expand to 250,000 wafers a month"
So let's say their current HBM capacity is 100k wafers/month (pure speculation/random number for illustration), and their total RAM capacity (including HBM( is 300k wafers/month, then non-HBM capacity reduces from 200k to 50k.
Keep in mind that total manufacturing capacity is increasing as well. Perhaps not enough to fully offset, but it's incorrect to assume that supply capacity is flat.
And it's worse than that, Micron said that converting capacity to HBM was at a 3:1 ratio, so that 250k HBM could be up to 750k in non-HBM. Fortunately, some of the increase is due to improved processes.
HBM4 and HBM4E DRAM are NOT the DDR4/5 that consumer markets need. Capacity allocation is leaning more to data center grade HBMs so less to produce dedicated DDR4/5 DRAMs. Supply demand will further drive up the consumer DRAM price! Note, the article mentions NO of new fabs is being constructed (all semiconductor manufacturers know that constructing more fabs means the boom/burst cycle will eventually kill them, so no one create more fabs) Perhaps the federal government need to step in here - the market doesn't fit the issue.
Will that be enough for AI's hunger?
Not even close.
Samsung is already building another fab (which was originally suspended due to low memory prices years ago). Hopefully when it goes live in a few years it's not all dedicated to HBM for AI.
About 2 years ago I bought some SDRAM or something like that, DDR4 or DDR5, don't recall offhand. A few months ago I looked at the price today, and it was over 3x as high. That's just insane. Governments need to do something against this abuse system that AI amplified here.
What abuse? Responding to supply and demand fluctuations isn't abuse, it's the proper operation of the market.
Would if one industry gobbles up an important resource to the point that other consumers lose practical access to it, shouldn't there be limits?
Which governments, and what exactly would you want these governments to do? The demand is global. There are no levers a single government can pull to meaningfully influence the global demand without fully committing to an protectionist economic policy, in which case the U.S. doesn't have the facilities to magically pop up world class fabs overnight, and South Korea and Taiwan don't have the market demand that the U.S. generates to justify their investments in making these chips and China lacks the IP to be able to build anything comparable to Nvidia's silicon at the moment.
No one has all the cards and no one controls all the levers.
I'm surprised this is getting posted on hn
Why wouldn't it get posted here?