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Why would more RAM supply lead to higher consumer prices?
by nicoburns 6d ago
Why would more RAM supply lead to higher consumer prices?
- kenny11 6d 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 6d agoPresumably DRAM production capacity gets reallocated to HBM, not sure.
- shevy-java 6d agoDepends on how quickly they are sold.
- zargon 6d agoMemory allocated for HBM is memory taken away from DDR production.
- matja 6d 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 6d 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 6d 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 6d 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 6d 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 6d agoOP article estimates HBM is going from 40% to 80% of their output.
- devy 6d 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 6d 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 6d 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 5d ago[deleted]
- T-A 5d 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 6d agoMight lower the prices of Mac Minis, Studios etc though
- airspresso 6d agoNo, those use LPDDR5(x), not HBM.
- stevefan1999 6d agoGamma squeezed by the AI business, that's why. The more you add the fuel, the further it will pump up.
- mattstir 6d 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 6d agoThe crash won't be kind to them & they deserve everything they will got for their past behavior.
- crote 5d 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.