Comment by matja
5 hours ago
Depends 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.
And 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.
Keep 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.
It'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.
Question 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.