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Samsung is expected to more than double output of its HBM4 and HBM4E DRAM
- GreenLightGo 15d agoThe AI boom is turning into a massive race for HBM capacity.
- gs17 16d agoA shame that this should if anything, lead to consumer DRAM prices getting even worse.
- deleted 16d ago[deleted]
- nicoburns 16d agoWhy would more RAM supply lead to higher consumer prices?
- kenny11 16d agoIf 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.
- deagle50 16d agoPresumably DRAM production capacity gets reallocated to HBM, not sure.
- shevy-java 16d agoDepends on how quickly they are sold.
- zargon 16d agoMemory allocated for HBM is memory taken away from DDR production.
- matja 16d agoDepends 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.
- EgregiousCube 16d agoKeep 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.
- pixl97 16d agoQuestion is what does the demand curve for regular ram look like also? If regular production is on a 10% increase curve but a 40% demand curve than we've been at the samw place.
- cogman10 16d agoIt'll take a lot of time. Micron has been working on expanding in Boise since around 2023. They are predicting that the first new chips will start rolling out around 2027. I don't think we'll see any relief until at least 2028 or even later. And even then, probably not without antitrust laws being enforced. Because you know memory manufacturers won't just simply drop prices, they have a long history of price fixing.
- gs17 16d agoAnd 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.
- no-name-here 15d agoOP article estimates HBM is going from 40% to 80% of their output.
- devy 16d agoHBM4 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.
- tipsytoad 16d agoPlus it takes 3x the wafer capacity for hbm than the same byte capacity in dram, so we’ll likely see the consumer market be decimated here
- chr15m 15d agoThe consumer market will not be decimated. Memory of all kinds will get very cheap quite soon because of supply and demand and substitution.
- deleted 15d ago[deleted]
- T-A 15d agohttps://www.tweaktown.com/news/112105/amd-warns-ddr5-prices-wont-recover-until-2028-as-ai-demand-continues-pulling-supply-away-from-consumers/index.html https://www.tweaktown.com/news/112105/amd-warns-ddr5-prices-...
- sgt 16d agoMight lower the prices of Mac Minis, Studios etc though
- airspresso 16d agoNo, those use LPDDR5(x), not HBM.
- stevefan1999 16d agoGamma squeezed by the AI business, that's why. The more you add the fuel, the further it will pump up.
- mattstir 16d agoPart of the implication is that factories that could be producing consumer-facing DRAM like DDR5 would be retooled to produce HBM instead, leading to even less total consumer RAM production.
- m4rtink 15d agoThe crash won't be kind to them & they deserve everything they will got for their past behavior.
- crote 15d agoThis is already happening, by the way. SK Hynix's new Cheongju M15x fab was originally intended to be for DDR, but mid-construction they shifted it to HBM. Similarly, the Icheon M10F packaging line has been retooled to HBM, allowing it to assist in processing the output of other fabs. And this was news early last year, so who knows how far it has progressed since then.
- robotnikman 16d agoMaybe this leads to device manufacturers using HBM memory instead.
- amelius 16d agoWill that be enough for AI's hunger?
- heaney-555 16d agoNot even close.
- gs17 16d agoSamsung 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.
- GoToRO 16d agoIt will be just in time for when AI will run very well on consumer hardware and the need for data centers will collapse.
- EA-3167 16d agoOr even more amusing in time for the bubble to burst, I hope the big RAM makers end up holding the whole bag for that. Greedy bastards.
- bethekidyouwant 16d agoSince you’re not greedy when there is a memory glut I’m sure you’ll be willing to pay extra to make it fair.
- EA-3167 16d agoNot at all, I’m going to relax with a cooling drink and watch the consequences of this unbelievably destructive and wasteful venture implode. I also adore the idea that it's on the customer to be "fair" to a company that dumped us a group in favor of chasing B2B money. Their choice, their consequences.
- shevy-java 16d agoAbout 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.
- pfdietz 16d agoWhat abuse? Responding to supply and demand fluctuations isn't abuse, it's the proper operation of the market.
- dumberquestions 16d agoWould if one industry gobbles up an important resource to the point that other consumers lose practical access to it, shouldn't there be limits?
- jefftk 16d agoNo. The other industries can bid for access to the resource, and under most circumstances, whether they are willing to bid higher tracks importance. Sometimes there are cases where something has significant positive externalities and so people are not willing to bid high enough, and then we can talk about some kind of government intervention (typically a subsidy that attempts to track the value of the externalities) but I don't see that applying here.
- deleted 16d ago[deleted]
- pfdietz 16d agoIf others are willing to pay more, that a signal that more value is created if the resource goes to them rather than to the more price sensitive customers.
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- psyphy2 16d ago[flagged]
- fooker 16d agoWhat's the main blocker (other than the current inflated cost) for using HBM instead of DRAM as the primary memory for consumer electronics?
- refulgentis 16d agoIn one sense, nothing, in another, everything. It is DRAM, but the bandwidth requirements mean it’s paired to a processor, i.e. no DIMMs. Not 100% sure but things like MacBooks and the Framework tower, where you have fixed RAM for the device lifetime, have ~0 tradeoff.
- nutjob2 16d agoNothing except CPU manufacturer choices. Mac laptops use it and they're consumer products. People will have to get used to buying a fixed amount of RAM with their CPU but thats unlikely to be a problem.
- chessgecko 16d agopretty sure its lpddr not hbm.
- addaon 16d ago> Mac laptops use it and they're consumer products No, Mac laptops use LPDDR, currently LPDDR5X.
- nomorewords 16d agoThe normal non-tech-savvy person already does this. They simply don't know that their ram is upgradeable or something else breaks first, before having to touch ram.
- dylan604 16d agowhat is this too much RAM thing you mention? I thought the only valid RAM situation you could find yourself is not enough RAM. Too much? That's just fantasy
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- badgersnake 16d agoNow make some DDR5.
- pixl97 16d agoHBM is DDR5 in a different package.
- badgersnake 16d agoIf it doesn’t fit it’s no use to me.
- blurbleblurble 16d agoThe beginning of the bubble pop?
- esskay 16d agoits ram for the types of systems ai needs in datacenters so...no?
- blovescoffee 16d agohow would you even derive that conclusion from the headline/article?
- blurbleblurble 15d agohttps://youtu.be/k_gaZjXD5OY?t=200 https://youtu.be/k_gaZjXD5OY?t=200
- esskay 15d agoso you fell for clickbait.
- HarHarVeryFunny 16d agoOn a related note, I was reading yesterday that apparently the real bottleneck for Chinese production of AI accelerators is HBM production, not processors or ASML equipment. The lack of ASML EUV machines certainly hurts, and pushing DUV so hard results in abysmal yields of good chips, but you can compensate by running more wafers or making smaller chips, and the net result is that Huawei's Ascend production volume is limited by CXMT's HBM capacity not processor dies. The problem is that HBM manufacture requires many steps (die thinning, via drilling, plating, alignment) where the equipment used by everyone else (Samsung, SK Hynix, Micron) is also blocked by sanctions, so the Chinese are having to develop all of this themselves too, which they have, but yields are currently low, even when using shorter HBM stacks.
- chvid 16d agoHuawei uses their own non-standard HBM called HiZQ probably not produced by CXMT.
- deleted 15d ago[deleted]
- andy_ppp 16d agoTokens per second is almost entirely memory bandwidth at inference time, training obviously needs more compute but you can add more chips for that.
- cubefox 16d agoAccording to SemiAnalysis, both inference and post-training (RLVR) is mostly memory bandwidth bound. Only pre-training is compute bound, but it now only takes a small share of overall data center capacity. https://x.com/EugeneNg/status/2099315982959616369 https://x.com/EugeneNg/status/2099315982959616369
- darig 15d ago[dead]
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- glub 16d agotl;dr; This is existing production being redirected to HBM. Which means consumer market is going to get a lot worse. And the worst thing is that is the best possible strategy for them. It's essentially win-win for everyone but consumers. - Buyer (AI) has crazy money, so will pay whatever - Seller doesn't have to build anything new, as the buyer is willing to pay whatever - Generate ridiculous profits from crazy money - No oversupply risk in case of reversal - Return from producing HBM to DDR5 in a single quarter if reversal does happen. Hold on to your existing hardware, people, and be on lookout for your local deals.
- intothemild 15d agoThis should be the top comment. It absolutely is not a great situation at all. This won't make things better.
- radiator 16d agoThe solution would seem to be preventing that "Buyer (AI) has crazy money". They already have borrowed billions and are only generating losses so the money should run out. It just needs to be made sure that nobody (taxpayers) will rescue them.
- yonaguska 15d ago> just needs to be made sure that nobody (taxpayers) will rescue them. oof.
- Taniwha 16d agoYou just know that the AI bubble is going to break and they're going to be stuck with tons of HBM4s. The big problem is that this will not depress the consumer DRAM market and mean we can all afford DRAM again
- m4rtink 15d agoI'm sure you can make it work with HBM chips on adapter boards for PC. And there should be lots of HBM chips from scavengers taking apart bankrupt data centers.
- y1n0 15d agoI’ve often wondered about die thinning. I mean just looking at sd cards and micro sd etc, it was clear that there had to be a thinning step (or many steps) and it seemed amazing to me that such a complex step could be economically viable. And yet it clearly is. All a matter of being able to operate at scale I guess. It’s not a step I’ve seen discussed very much, so it was kind of neat to see it discussed front and center in a lay article like this.
- KurSix 15d agoYeah, the scale is kind of mind-bending. You're taking something that's already extremely fragile, grinding most of its thickness away, handling it through several more process steps, and somehow doing that cheaply enough for mass-market products.
- lazide 15d agoAutomation, automation, automation. Zero chance you could do it if a human had to touch the die/chip directly during those steps. But clean room + vacuum pick and place machine? A matter of fine tuning, and it should work just fine.
- xadhominemx 15d agoThe critical back end step for HBM is thermal compression bonding - where they actually compress 13 very thin die separated by solder balls. Cracking is a major issue.
- pixl97 15d agoWe are getting so many technologies like this that are so insanely specialized and require such deep knowledge of physical processes that some event like a 1918 flu that kills 10% of the population could take out enough people that we'd be unable to make things like this for years as we fill in the missing knowledge workers. It's just crazy how far down the scale we're tickling atoms these days.
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- chr15m 15d agoA shortage is almost always followed by a glut. Memory of all kinds is going to get very cheap due to supply and demand and substitution effects.
- cute_boi 15d agoNot when companies have monopolies.
- chr15m 15d agoThere is no monopoly on computer memory. Yes, only a small number of companies produce memory because of capital requirements and complexity. When prices go up both of those things become less of a problem for investors who can see better return for lower risk on that high capital investment. They will then invest in production to capture those returns. This is literally the exact reason Samsung are doubling supply of this particular type of memory. High prices will fix the shortage.
- ajnin 15d agoMemory factories cost billions to tens of billions, "investors" aren't going to spend that kind of money if they are not reasonably certain that they are going to make a profit, and the market is very uncertain right now with everybody bracing for a bubble burst at any moment. It's not the first time there has been such a shortage in the computer parts market, and the oligopoly, be it RAM or hard drives manufacturers, has always managed to keep prices high and production low enough to avoid a price crash after recovery.
- chr15m 15d ago> hard drives manufacturers, has always managed to keep prices high No. Please take a look at the unit price for hard drive storage 10 years ago as a percentage of what it is today.
- bobmcnamara 15d ago> There is no monopoly on computer memory. Never has been, but what makes you think the major players won't collude to keep prices high?
- m4rtink 15d agoThis insane nonsence needs to stop.
- sehw 15d ago[dead]
- phooenixIam 15d agoThis is crazy!
- KurSix 15d ago[dead]
- nullbio 15d agoWill consumers actually get to purchase it though? Or are they just doubling it for frontier AI labs?
- Grimburger 15d agoWhat does it matter? All supply is supply, despite what certain folks seem to believe.
- the_other 15d agoIt matters so that average people have a chance to own their means of production, and that the current hardware-grab by entrenched capital doesn't get to charge such high rent.
- chapz 15d agoFrontier AI labs are customers just like the average Joe down the street. The only difference is who can bid more. Average Joe probably doesn't have millions or wont buy millions of chips. There are no privileged consumers that have "dedicated" amount of production, no matter the demand.
- franga2000 15d agoWhat point are you making by saying "they're just like the average Joe" followed immediately by saying they have so much more money that they can outbid the average Joe at any price point. If someone can dump 100x the money to get something I want, they're not "just like me".
- sysguest 15d agoyeah this if I'm ordering 1 RAM and demanding some special customization, even mom-and-pop stores will just ignore me but if I'm buying 100000000000 RAM, things change
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- dalton74 15d agoGood, maybe this means cloud GPU prices will eventually normalize. Still feeling the pinch from the AI gold rush.
- xbmcuser 15d agoTo me, the most idiotic thing is that the world currently cannot build power plants fast enough to even use all the HBM that is being produced. That is, a large portion of HBM and cards are sitting in storage, waiting for the data centers and the power plants to run them. The FOMO in the AI world isn't just in the stock market
- tugback 15d agoGood to see Samsung stepping up; maybe GPU prices will finally cool down a bit with more HBM supply hitting the market.
- ricardobayes 15d agoThe article features a truck that the chips get loaded onto. This quote from Tanenbaum immediately jumped into mind: "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway."
- hacker_homie 15d agoJust hope nothing changes the latency is terrible.
- leoedin 15d agoI was wondering how much financial value they put in one truck. Presumably the value density of this stuff is incredibly high (although not really to anyone else, so security probably isn't a huge issue). At what point do you split the shipment between multiple trucks to avoid huge losses if there's a crash? When I worked on satellites we had some electronics which used a radiation hardened FPGA which cost something like $500k per chip. Carrying that around was nerve wracking.
- ceejayoz 15d agoI once had to keep a $20M (technically; a million download codes for the same $20 movie for a promotion) thumbdrive in my home safe because it arrived too late to put in the safety deposit box like it was supposed to be. I had to remind myself a few times the practical value to anyone was about $22.
- fluoridation 15d agoWhy did that have to be transported in a thumb drive? It can't have been more than a few hundred megabytes at the most, right?
- ceejayoz 15d agoEnterprisey client chain-of-custody requirements. It was couriered to us, and the courier was late. Cue panicked phone calls to get an exemption to the contractual requirement for overnight storage at the bank.
- redsymbol 15d agoRight now, every company that can is ramping up their RAM production as much as humanly possible. There is such outrageous and growing demand, that it's like printing money if you can manufacture more RAM chips. And that massive financial incentive is driving huge investment in manufacturing capacity. But someday, that demand will stop rising. At some point, most people will have enough RAM. And they just won't need to buy more. The inventories of RAM will become overfull, in warehouses and stores. And suddenly the manufacturers, middlemen, and even retailers will all find the price they can sell at keeps dropping. But you can't shut down a huge manufacturing facility overnight. You can't shut down a years-in-the-making retail distribution system overnight, either. You can't even shut down a facility that is halfway finished with construction. They'll keep producing and selling RAM at lower and lower profit margins, until the day comes they finally accept they're losing money with each sale. And when that happens, we'll all have more RAM than we know what to do with. It'll be cheaper than we have all ever experienced in our lifetimes. I don't expect this to happen soon. But demand cannot keep exponentially rising forever. There will come a point, probably in the next 5 years, when demand at least levels off, even as production capacity is still rising. And it will be interesting to see what's possible at that point. We'll be able to create software that is not doable right now, because it will no longer be constrained by memory. And even cheap laptops will massive amounts.
- ricardobayes 15d agoYeah, that's kind of the beauty of capitalism. It can lead to short-term shortages but never structural ones. Any demand gets immediately fulfilled. I grew up in a country where there was a structural shortage of say, shoes and cars. You didn't really even get to choose which shoe you wanted to get, when there was a new shipment, folks went to the "department store" and got whatever size they could get their hands on and later trading it for the right one. To get any car, you would submit an application and 5-8 years down the line you would get a letter that your car would now be ready to be picked up, in a random color.
- redsymbol 15d agoThanks for sharing that. I am grateful every day that I was born in such an abundant environment. I have a few friends who did not, like you, and it always reminds me of how lucky I have been.