Without a doubt, AI is the hype topic in technology at the moment. It’s significantly shaping and driving memory development as the focus is on high-speed, high-bandwidth and low-power memory technologies. Among these, it’s particularly HBM that is getting a lot of attention. Yole Group predicts impressive growth rates in HBM for 2024 and this is just the beginning, as the major memory players Samsung, Sk hynix and Micron are ramping up their HBM3 memories this year.
Demand is high and supply comes only from a limited number of suppliers, and this has never been a good market condition for industrial customers. Not only is HBM a specialized product, it also requires its own logic, which makes it even more difficult to reach a volume to make it worthwhile for the big three players. So we are seeing a memory divide looming, where industrial applications that require high-bandwidth memory need to be creative and find workarounds for the time being as they simply won’t be able to get HBM. This is a topic that Neumonda is following at the moment, so reach out if you are in this situation, reach out.
But even if you do not require high-end memory, you should still keep an eye out on what’s happening in the market. Although prices are starting to rise, manufacturers are still cautious about ramping up production of standard components. It’s also not clear if or rather which memory products they are going to discontinue to free capacity for new technologies.
So ask yourself: Do you have the memory products that you need for this year?
Mark your calendar for embedded world 2024 (April 9 to 11) that’s a good time to meet in person and discuss your upcoming projects and need.