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SK Hynix CEO sees memory chip shortage lasting until 2030
- mey 2mo agoNo projections/information/analysis. The statement from someone with a vested interest in this demand lasting an extended period of time (including the statement that demand will continue past 2030).
- thijson 2mo agoI remember in the 90's there was some sort of shortage reportedly due to fires. In the end it was found the shortage was due to collusion by the manufacturers. https://share.google/aimode/ewJpwCHUINOHzjBVg https://share.google/aimode/ewJpwCHUINOHzjBVg
- high_na_euv 2mo agoBut fortunely today we know that there is huge demand due to AI
- Danox 2mo agoIs it actual demand or is it just a future IOU? I will buy ram in the future keep the door open for me (OpenAI)? I think whatever happens it will be their last big payday because some of the companies that can do have the money and the capability are going to make plans to move away. From the Cartel.
- nubinetwork 2mo agoIt did happen in the early 2010s though https://www.crn.com/news/storage/231902425/thailand-floods-to-lead-to-30-percent-shortfall-of-hard-drive-supply https://www.crn.com/news/storage/231902425/thailand-floods-t...
- ChiperSoft 2mo agoOh its probably that again https://www.polygon.com/ram-manufacturers-sued-supply-price-fixing/ https://www.polygon.com/ram-manufacturers-sued-supply-price-...
- xattt 2mo agoIs the thing that’s different now that the colluders are banking on is that we are in a worldwide kleptocracy?
- voidfunc 2mo agoYep
- toast0 2mo agoAfter the first two times, do they even need to collude? Can't they count on each other doing the profitable thing? Especially when they PR it: > Furthermore, focused investment in HBM is creating a virtuous cycle that improves profitability in the general-purpose memory market. As resources are diverted to HBM, the supply-demand balance for general DRAM is improving. January 5, 2026 - SK hynix market outlook. https://news.skhynix.com/en/2026-market-outlook-focus-on-the-hbm-led-memory-supercycle/ https://news.skhynix.com/en/2026-market-outlook-focus-on-the...
- FLeXMurphy 2mo agoAssume the person knows something you don't.
- mey 2mo agoThey know many things I don't. I can easily assume they have a specific reason to make a public statement that is within their interests. Without any reports/prospectus/booked contracts, it's just marketing/spin.
- dgellow 2mo agoTell me when you’re looking for a new bridge, I have the best ones around
- my-huge-pony 2mo agoIn theory, shouldn't he say exactly the opposite thing if this was the goal? If demand is projected continue for a long time, this may encourage more competitors to enter this space, so supply will increase. On the other hand if everyone thought that the demand will end soon, nobody would invest in more capacity and shortage would last longer. I think this is just for short term shareholder profit.
- greycol 2mo agoNo because, some companies know they'll need ram, but they may have some leeway on timing (i.e. doing more to prolong the life of systems they'd typically replace). That means to guarantee ram they need to enter an agreement to buy the ram now. By setting the expectation that these prices continue or get worse companies that may have put off agreeing to these terms locking in prices based on demand rather than something closer to the cost of production. The agreements that these companies are being forced to make are upfront payment and then a top up to meet current market prices before delivery, there is no downside for these ram companies whether the price rises or falls (at worst they end up with supply that was already payed for by a bust company at a healthy margin and a glut in the market that would arrive anyway) Competitors are going to come online anyway because of the threat of chip embargoes against China that mean they are investing in production regardless of what the outside world is doing.
- bigbadfeline 2mo ago> If demand is projected continue for a long time, this may encourage more competitors to enter this space, so supply will increase. There are no competitors that can muster the capital to make decent RAM... other than China but China is under a heavy sanctions and tariffs regime, when Apple mentioned using Chinese RAM to ease pricing they were quickly shushed by above. The current monopolists aren't building new capacity either or are simply pretending to do it. It's a planned monopoly market for reasons I can only speculate about.
- apple4ever 2mo agoBut the longer it goes on, the more desirable it looks to new entrants.
- catigula 2mo agoAren't they printing unlimited money from this? I'm sure the chip shortage lasts as long as they're capable of extending it without falling to competitors. That's the problem with monopolies.
- dgellow 2mo agoThey do, pretty much, their margins are going up
- Danox 2mo agoI am confident it will be their last big payday for the Cartel the Chinese certainly will design around it and move on and probably will go onto dominate the worldwide market after 2028. Afterwards Micron like Intel will go around begging for support. Using future buying IOUs to set prices, it’s going to bite them in the ass.
- catigula 2mo agoChina will eventually do similar things if they're allowed to become a unitary supplier, but while they're establishing their foothold obviously they can't.
- PowerElectronix 2mo agoHe could just have said "lasting forever and ever". It's ram chips, the bottom of the barrel of semi manufacturing. If you get high prices for long enough, everyone is gonna jump into the market.
- potus_kushner 2mo agoespecially if they get away unpunished for their price fixing. https://web.archive.org/web/20260701064235/https://www.polygon.com/ram-manufacturers-sued-supply-price-fixing/ https://web.archive.org/web/20260701064235/https://www.polyg...
- throw234259 2mo ago> everyone is gonna jump into the market Whom exactly? Korea and Taiwan are already saturated. EU may take 5 yearrs just to approve plans formnew factory. US is interested in super fast super duper AIG, ddr5 is way too boring. Only competitor is mainlaind china!
- worldofmatthew 2mo ago> mainlaind china Exactly. China wil push for it as China factories will supply Chinese AI first.
- geodel 2mo agoBut for now can't EU regulate the RAM price? They seem to be able to do what they want.
- drob518 2mo agoNew title: SK Hynix CEO is desperate for memory chip shortage to last until 2030 or longer Fixed it for you.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 2mo agoSK hynix CEO compelled by CEO obligations to paint a rosy and sustainable picture of memory chip demand.
- Aloha 2mo agoI dont think he's wrong. Dell is making moves to introduce server grade hardware without ECC memory. There is plenty of DDR5, its not even very expensive, its DDR5-ECC where the prices go stratospheric.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 2mo agoThe point is that he must say this either way. If he expected demand to decline next year do you think he would come out and say that?
- simongr3dal 2mo agoWhy not? The income statements can’t lie. And if those fall short of expectations then the stock market is also gonna grill you.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 2mo agoWhy wouldn't a memory CEO go on tv and say they expect the AI bubble to pop by the end of the year?
- mmastrac 2mo agoDo you have a source for more info? That seems odd to me - LLMs are particularly resilient to bitflips, so if anything the demand would pull on DDR5 in general, not on ECC specifically.
- alephnerd 2mo agoHonestly surprised by the degree of skepticism about this on HN. The rack assemblers like Dell, HPE, Supermicro, and Lenovo have 18 to 24 month backlogs on deliveries at the moment, and even the neoclouds have 6-9 month backlogs to onboard customers onto their SaaS platforms, and 12-24 month backlogs for delivering bare metal. All those require memory. Also, 2030 is barely 3 years away from now as 2027 is around the corner. Yes we are ALL old now. Using priors from 2015-2019 today is the equivalent of thinking your experience in 1995-1999 should inform decisions made in 2008-2013.
- vlucas 2mo agoSame. There is huge, real demand for memory and storage everywhere you look. New capacity takes 3-5 years to come online. Every vendor has completely sold out capacity and is backlogged on top of that. This 5-year estimate is actually pretty realistic to me. I think we are stuck with high prices on these components for at least the next 3 years, minimum.
- boredhedgehog 2mo ago> New capacity takes 3-5 years to come online. Why should that be set in stone? Surely there are corners that can be cut if there's so much profit on the table.
- porridgeraisin 2mo agoAt a basic level, the steps involved in setting up a fab are extremely serial in nature. While there are ways in which each step has been cost-cut in the past, amdahl's law itself limits it to a minimum of 2-3 years. If you want good yields and do it more properly, you will need 3-5 like GP said. And that is still being optimistic Additionally, HBM requires 3+ times the capacity of DRAM, so it gets crowded out. They do command 5x margins, so the unit economics is ok. But this means that even new capacity will mostly be used to service HBM demand, and consumer or enterprise DRAM is unlikely to benefit at the same pace - it will benefit somewhat of course.
- Danox 2mo ago
- fakedang 2mo agoMemory chip shortage lasting *until China floods the market with their cheaper but rigged chips. FTFY. At the rate China's moving on this, it won't be long till they get a stranglehold on the consumer chip market.
- alex43578 2mo agoWhat’s a “rigged” chip in this context?
- jm4 2mo agoI took it to mean backdoored similar to the NSA's tailored access operations or the Supermicro backdoor several years ago.
- well_ackshually 2mo agoIt's chips that work just as well, except that they make the original poster sad because china bad.
- fakedang 2mo agoAre we still fooling ourselves thinking that China is such a benevolent manufacturing partner? I don't mind China - heck, I've even had dinner with some CCP honchos and would gladly partner with the Chinese given the right opportunity. But you're deluding yourself if you think Chinese devices aren't backdoored. We had to strip all of our office infra from Huawei to Ericsson and Axis after we found that practically everything Chinese was phoning back to home and sending GBs of data cumulatively. You can respect an adversary without needing to trust them.
- well_ackshually 2mo agoThat only bothers you because you're American. For everyone else, our hardware and software has already been phoning back home to Langley for decades, it's only fair the Chinese can get a piece of it too.
- marcosscriven 2mo agoWhat are the limiting factors here? Clearly it’s the fabrication of RAM/HBM chips. But if the margin is so high, why can’t other fabs like CPU fabs be used? I assume they’re not as CPU prices are going down. Or are they radically different and not easily reconfigured?
- alex43578 2mo agoVery different processes. Even setting up a new CPU design in a fab that already makes CPU dies is months of validation, for context.
- Taqas 2mo agoGiven economy of scale, on the long-term can we expect lower than 2019 RAM prices?
- ls-a 2mo ago[dead]
- nashashmi 2mo agoGiven the possibility of setting up new memory fab plants takes 10 years, given that data companies are spending money on power plants based on power consumption forecasts, but are not spending on memory fab plants, I take it that data companies are seeing the current memory makers as sufficient for their needs. Meaning if the avg consumer is going to buy memory, they are going to have to fork a whole lot more money than they did before, because they will be paying the price of profit generating data companies. The next phase of improvements will have to be in consumer software to be more memory efficient. Gone are the days of electron apps and other memory intensive systems of programming./
- Danox 2mo agoIt takes $10-$20 billion dollars and 2 to 4 years to set up a foundry, TSMC took about four years to set up their location in Arizona and there is a hell of a lot more involved with what they do. It’s not impossible to do it in less time the Chinese certainly will. If a company is motivated and has the money they can get it done. I think those three memory companies are counting on people to be stupid. Intel, Nvidia, and Qualcomm certainly thought they had Apple over the barrel…
- alephnerd 2mo agoFoundries aren't the blocker - it's packaging and OSAT that's the blocker.
- vikramkr 2mo agoThat's like 3 and a half years away? I can see that - fabs don't get built overnight and bubbles aren't under any obligation to pop on a timeline. Wild that 2030 is not that far away. Sometimes it feels like we never left 2020.
- theandrewbailey 2mo ago> Sometimes it feels like we never left 2020. There's still a part of me that thinks 2020 will be the bright shiny future that will solve all our problems, but the other parts know that 2020 showed us that we live in the dark future where all our dreams died.
- glimshe 2mo agoIn other news, Exxon sees growing oil demand in the foreseeable future.
- cute_boi 2mo agoI just hope CXMT wins this rat race. These monopolies sucks.