DRAM

Huawei is building a semiconductor empire. And in the middle of the crisis, now it is going for its own DRAM factory

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If Huawei has a message for the United States that tried to ostracize it with the five-year-old vetothat message is “thank you.” It was the same president of the Chinese company who commented a few days ago that, without the pressure from the westChina and Huawei could not have developed their technology at the speed they have. Because Huawei is developing an empire, and the latest reports suggest that they are going for the missing piece: DRAM memory. And they are creating a megafactory so as not to depend on anyone in a market that is far from improving. DRAM factory. It is estimated that SK Hynix, Samsung and Micron have more than 90% of the global DRAM market. With the big three focusing all their production on AI platforms, neither consumers nor companies of consumer products can access components at competitive prices, so they look for alternatives. It is said that Apple would be looking at the Chinese CXMTbut now there are those point that Huawei is creating a DRAM factory with government support. The company Swaysure, from Shenzhen, one of the technological hearts of the country, would be building with Huawei a factory with the capacity to create 12-inch wafers. The planned production would be 140,000 wafers per month and, in charge of all this, would be a former director of TSMC. chip empire. China has one goal: that at least 80% of basic technology that their companies use is supplied by national companies, and Huawei plays a fundamental role there. It is no longer about the huge campuses that they have to promote their own business, but also their presence in all the technological sectors of the country and the importance that they are gaining by becoming one of the pivots of semiconductors in China. With the help of SMIC, they have managed to develop chips with an advanced architecture in record time and, in addition, it is estimated that at least 11 factories throughout the country operate it with the help of allied companies. They create logic chips, have foundry services, and also operate in the DRAM chip segment. With the new company led by Swaysure, they would take another step to achieve greater independence from the big players in the memory and NAND chip sector. In the end, it is about creating an industrial network that allows us to achieve that 80% goal and, above all, be more independent from foreign technology. Images from Planet Labs and Financial Times in which you can see the evolution in the construction of a Huawei and SwaySure plant between 2022 and 2025. parallel reality. To achieve this, Huawei has some of the most impressive technological and R&D campuses on the planet, which has allowed them in a very short time to not only rise from the ashes, but create a parallel reality. In terms of software, HarmonyOS is on more than 1 billion devices, the Huawei Clouyd service is growing outside of China in countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America, and then there are the chips. They have the Ascend and Kunpeng optimized for both AI and edge computingrecently introduced a supercluster for advanced AI tasks and intend to change the paradigm of the evolution and development of processors with a ‘Tau Law’ under which they will begin to create their new Kirin consumer chips that we can see in devices such as mobile phones and tablets. And that they have the Chinese government support It is a guarantee. Chinese lever. Returning to Huawei’s RAM, this movement is not designed to compete against the big three in the sector, but rather to not depend on them. That is, Huawei should not want to be Samsung in such a short time, but having the capacity to make its DRAM, it could stop depending on Samsung or SK Hynix, for example. Furthermore, these types of movements are part of a more long-term strategy, one in which Huawei has gone from being a large company in China to being one of the lungs of the country’s technological developmentdriving the AI ​​platforms of other companies with its hardware and being the heart of some of the data centers in which China is going to invest 300 billion dollars over the next five years. HE esteemIn fact, Huawei will take over 60% of the Chinese AI chip market in 2026. Now, no matter how much they invest and create new foundries, they still have a hot potato: no one manufactures advanced lithography machines like ASML’s to which Chinese companies have restricted access. They are advancing through alternative techniques and reverse engineeringbut if China wants to be the first technological nation in the short term (an objective that they have marked themselves), at some point they will need those huge, next-generation “printers.” Image | ASML In Xataka | US adds Netherlands to Pax Silica alliance: ASML host nation enters anti-Chinese bloc

There is a perfect storm with AI and data centers. And it will cause the DRAM and Nand memories to become a luxury

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A remarkable rebound to the prices of NAND memories (used in SSD units) and the drams of our PCs and laptops is coming. For two years users We have benefited From a time of bonanza in these components, but that ends. And the AI ​​and fever has the fault to create more and more data centers. When the memoirs were cheap. In March 2023 The prices of the NAND and dram memories were falling to lead. The pandemia had caused an extraordinary demand, but once the confinement ended, the situation was invested. The manufacturers had produced too much – waiting for the demand to remain – and found an exaggerated inventory. People no longer wanted so many memory modules or so many SSD units, and prices collapsed. AI changes everything (and this, too). The effects of that imbalance have been extended for two years, but the arrival of Chatgpt caused a Fever by the AI ​​that has ended up causing another fever: that of the data centers. These facilities use thousands of GPUS and these GPUS make use of huge amounts of memory. Above all, HBM memories that Since its creation They were oriented to business applications: they were much more expensive, but also much more powerful. Price evolution of SSD Samsung 980 Pro of 1 TB. In mid -2023 the units raised their lowest price. From there, the price began to rise. Source: Camelcamelcamel. Price increases will go to more. SSD units such as Samsung 980 Pro of 1 TB are a good example of what is happening. In Camelcamelcamel We can see that evolution of prices that marks minimal in mid -2023 and then rise. These units have been replaced by the 990 pro of 1 TB with an evolution less pronounced in the increasestrue (in fact, it is around 100 euros, an interesting price), but everything indicates that this curve will soon follow the tendency of its predecessor. The forecasts of the Trendforce consultant are clear: the DRAM and NAND memories are going to climb a lot and very fast. And the DRAM memories will also go up. The prediction is the same for the DRAM memories market that, for example, are used in the DDR4 and DDR5 memory modules of our PCs and laptops. According to Trendforce In the third quarter of 2025 – which has just begun – we will see a rise of more than 40% in DDR4 memory modules. In the case of GDDR5 memories we will have a break and the climb will reach 8%. Most expensive pcs and gaming. This type of increases especially affects the end users who buy PCs and laptops to work, but also to play. Memory modules for graphics cards will also notice this quarter notably according to Trendforce. The GDDR6 memories will do it up to 33% and the GDDR7 up to 10% according to their estimates. HBM memories to power. Data centers that now all large technological ones are rushing to build need huge amounts of memory, and that is conditioning the balance between supply and demand both in the business market and in the market for end users. In fact, memory manufacturers are increasingly focusing on focusing production on HBM memories – used in AI accelerators – and leaving traditional DRAM and Nand memories. Micron points out that its production of HBM modules for all 2026 It is already soldand SK Hynix seems to be in a similar situation: the demand for these modules is extraordinary. The Raspberry Pi as an example. We are already seeing the consequences of this type of movements. The Raspberry Pi, who had gathered memory modules during the bonanza season, were forced to raise the prices of the new models a few days ago for the shortage of memory. Thus, the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 and 5 in their 4 GB variants rose five dollars, and those of 8 GB rose 10 dollars. The company’s own CEO, Eben Upton, explained that “memory costs about 120% more than it cost a year ago.” Why not create more memoirs? The solution seems obvious: if more memories are needed, more factories should be created. However, manufacturers are reluctant to this for several reasons. The first, the enormous cost of these plants, which amounts to tens of billions of dollars. The second, that these factories take years in come to produce. And the third, who do not want there is a “AI bubble” and this explodes would make them meet again with an exaggerated inventory and some factories that they no longer need. Bad matter. Image | Samsung In Xataka | Samsung has its greatest competitor at home. His future with the chips depends on his rivalry with SK Hynix

Samsung has lost a 30 -year leadership in the DRAM chip industry

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The artificial intelligence (AI) is drastically reconfiguring the hardware supply chain. Samsung has led the DRAM chip industry for more than three decades, but the AI ​​boom has triggered something that just two or three years ago would have seemed unthinkable: Now it is SK Hynix the manufacturer of integrated memory circuits that LEADS THE HBM Chips Market so much (High Bandwidth Memory) like that of the DRAM memories. The latter are those used by most of the devices with which we are familiar, such as computers or mobile phones. However, HBM memories are those that are integrated into those hardware solutions in which it is necessary to prioritize maximum performance, such as, for example, for example, The GPUs for ia. Samsung and Sk Hynix are South Korean companies, but the third in discord, Micron Technology, is American. And, as we are about to check, already steps on Samsung. We have a new leader and their figures are objectively spectacular During the last months Samsung has led the manufacturing market for integrated dram memory circuits with an approximate 40%share, while SK Hynix defended A very worthy 29%. Behind both was Micron Technology, with 26% approximately. During the first quarter of 2025 these figures have varied in a very important way. In fact, as I have anticipated a few lines above, now the leader is SK Hynix. SK Hynix is ​​the Nvidia supplier if we stick to its GPU for ia This last company controls no less than 70% of the Integrated HBM memory market market, so its leadership in this sector is overwhelming. In fact, SK Hynix is ​​Nvidia’s supplier If we stick to their GPU for ia. Samsung has an approximate share of 28%, and Micron touchs 18%. If we deviate our gaze towards the dram memory chips the figures are much more even, although SK Hynix leads for the first time. In one of the graphs that we publish on top of these lines we can see that during the first quarter of 2025 SK Hynix it has erected as the leader of DRAM memories with a fee of 36%. Samsung now occupies the second position with 34%. And Micron Technology follows them closely with 30%. Behind them, although they do not appear in this graph, They step stronger and louder Chinese memory manufacturers Yangtze Memory Technologies Co. (YMTC) and Changxin Memory Technologies (CXMT). The second graph predicts how the HBM memories market will evolve over the next five years. SK Hynix presumably will maintain its leadership, although it will lose a part of its share due to the saturation of the hardware market for AI and the growth of competition. Samsung, meanwhile, about 25% will be stabilized market share. And finally, Micron will be the only one of these three companies that will grow up to 20% market share. These figures are just a forecast, but they allow us to get a rather accurate idea about how this semiconductor industry market will evolve. Image | Samsung More information | SCMP In Xataka | South Korea fears US reprisals. To avoid their old lithography equipment, they take dust on a warehouse

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