attack the trident that dominates the market

One more day, new bad news related to the RAM memory crisis. If you were expecting a Steam Machinenow you can expect it to be more expensive. The rise of AI is causing a component crisis that has no clear end. The SSDs have gone up in price a lot and have 32 GB of RAM on your PC It is the new “I have land.” All Big Tech needs more and, in the absence of it, Intel has chosen to get into it like an elephant in a china shop.

Hand in hand with SoftBank to create its own memory chips for data centers and, in the process, take a bite out of the South Korean industry that controls the scene.

No end in sight. Intel has been covered several times in recent days. Like a phoenix, it seems that the crisis is behind us and, after years of promises, realities begin. They are ready to start producing its new generation of processors, but also its CEO, Lip-Bu Tan, has commented that They will start producing GPUs for data centers.

With that they want to take a bite of the cake that NVIDIA is eating almost alone, but also, the executive let a more bitter pill: “there is no relief in sight for the end of the AMR crisis.” So it points out that does not see a horizon for this price escalation before 2028, and it makes sense if we take into account recent forecasts or possible ‘strange’ movements by some companies.

Intel 🤝 SoftBank. Market estimates such as those of TrendForce They point to a memory price increase of between 90 and 95% quarter-on-quarter in this first quarter of the year, but it is not the only thing: SSDs will also rise between 55 and 60% due to one of their components, NAND memory. It is a bad time to build a PC, although companies are moving to open RAM factories, but not for you: for the AI.

And here Intel, as we already saidhe doesn’t want to be left behind. A few months ago, Intel partnered with Japan’s SoftBank to find a replacement for HBM memory for data centers.

Fix a problem. HBM memory (high bandwidth memory) is ideal for data centers. They allow a large amount of data to be temporarily stored, and they do so at high speed. The problem is that they get very hot and are complex to manufacture. It is one of the key components of GPUs and requires both large amounts of power and optimal heat dissipation.

What Intel and SoftBank are looking for is to create an alternative based on stacked DRAM chips. They are not that optimal, but the idea is to find a way to wire them as efficiently as possible so that they are a threat to the HBM memory monopoly.

“Monopoly“The idea is to have a prototype in the short term with the aim of starting to market it by 2030. We will see if AI fever lasts so long. But anyway, if the experiment goes well, it could be a significant blow to the South Korean companies Samsung and SK Hynix, as well as the American company. Micron.

They are the three companies that they practically control the market for both RAM like HBM chips. And something as important as it is symbolic: it will be the first time that Japan aspires to return to the throne of memory chip manufacturers that it ruled in the 80s and that it lost to South Korea. Although be careful: Samsung is also investigating these stacked DRAM memories.

NVIDIA and its demands. In the end, they are all moving. The big producers have already detailed its roadmap for the development of RAM for the next five years. And the whales that are taking over the product -NVIDIA-, are ‘encouraging’ the production companies let’s get the batteries.

Without going any further, a few days ago Jensen Huang, boss of NVIDIA, met with representatives of the Taiwanese industry (TSMC, Asus or Foxconn) and told them that this year he needed a lot of memory and a lot of wafers. Also I know it has told Samsung.

As we said in the first lines, if you were hoping for a quick solution to the crisis or wanted to build a PC, the news is not good. And all the movements that we are seeing in the industry to expand production and find solutions point to the same direction: continue powering data centers.

Images | Intel

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