Following the earthquake in Taiwan in April, the industry expected an impact on chip and especially memory prices. After all, 65 percent of the world’s advanced nodes are being produced there, and when it comes to AI servers the figure is even higher. But, contrary to previous natural disasters, the disruption was minimal and had almost no effect on the availability or prices of memory components.
The news about rising DRAM and NAND prices are mainly related to High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) and high-end SSD for AI servers, and not that much for the standard memory products that industrial customers need.
While this is good news, it’s also a bit worrying – is this the calm before the storm?
Truth is that the demand from a variety of industrial applications is lower than market research institutes initially expected. Truth also is, that the big memory manufacturers not only converted significant percentages of their DRAM production lines to HBM, they also announced the discontinuation of DDR3. Accordingly, DRAM output and availability will decline.
The big question is if the demand fades in line with the reduced output.
You see, even if we seem to sail in calm waters, the semiconductor memory market keeps you on your toes.
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