RAM

They say things get worse before they get better. The RAM crisis teaches us that they can always get worse

by

The current situation in which hyperscalers have made all the hardware manufacturers produce almost exclusively for them is leading us to a curious scenario. Apart from the huge RAM and SSD crisis that affects everything –and everyone– Changing from one technology to a newer one no longer depends so much on the needs of a company but on what is barely available on the market. AND The Elec points to a movement by Samsung that represents a new thrust for mobile phones, computers and everything that has soldered RAM. No more LPDDR4 modules. LPDDR4 LPDDR5. They stand for Low-Power Double Data Rate, the low-power version of the RAM tablets that we can buy when building a PC, for example. Unlike conventional RAM pickups, LPDDR memory is soldered to the boardachieving very high speeds with a minuscule energy cost. That is why it is the preferred one for smartphones, tablets and ultrabooks, but it is also ideal for some miniPCs that have become popular in recent months. The downside is that it cannot be expanded or replaced, but its features make it the only option for certain devices. The most powerful versions mount LPDDR5 and LPDDR5Xbut there are still many devices that have the fourth generation versions for cost savings reasons. The turn comes when, according to the South Korean media The Elec, Samsung has begun to cut off the supply of LPDDR4 and LPDDR4X modules to its customers. Translation. Although they are memories with a decade behind them, mid-range and entry-level mobile phones, as well as many other devices, continue to have these versions to keep prices low. At a time when the market is more volatile than evermaintaining those competitive prices by mounting memories that are still interesting in certain ranges was a strategy that made a lot of sense. However, as the media points out, Samsung seems to want to focus on the production of LPDDR5 and LPDDR5X memories. By converting the output lines of the LPDDR4 memories, they will be able to manufacture more new generation RAM, but the price to pay will be that mobile manufacturers will have to switch to that LPDDR5. Mid-range and entry-level smartphones will be faster, but also more expensive. The price to pay. A few weeks ago we already said that the impact was evident. memory represented 20% of the bill of manufacturing an entry-level mobile phone, being one of the most expensive components. And, at that time, the figure was expected to reach 40% by the middle of this year. With this reconversion of Samsung’s lines, we will see where the percentage increase is in a year in which it is already estimating a drop of more than 10% in mobile shipments. The calculations They are tremendous: In the entry range – increments of 30 dollars per unit. In the middle range – from 60 to 80 dollars per unit. In the premium – from 100 and 150 dollars per unit. Samsung itself is not spared. Here you can think that Samsung has a lever to eat the mobile market. That is to say, if it is one of the three that controls the memory production segment and, in addition, has its line of mobile phones and tablets, it can give preferential treatment to its ‘brothers’ to maintain the price in the midst of the crisis. Well no. They already commented that this was not going to happen and, furthermore, it is already flirting with the idea thats Galaxy A17 be an example of this movement. The company’s entry-level mobile has the Exynos 1330 SoC that supports both LPDDR4X and LPDDR5 memories. When the supply of LPDDR4X runs out, they will move to the new generation, which will mean that there will be two different A17s, one of them being one with 50% faster memory than the other. They go direct with HBM. But, as two pieces of news are better understood together, at the same time that the abandonment of the LPDDR4 production lines is pointed out, we have confirmation that Samsung is going to press ahead with the development of HBM memories. These are high-bandwidth memories that are packaged in AI training and inference platforms, and have been reported that Samsung has managed to reduce the HBM memory development cycle from two years to one. It’s a necessary boost to continue being both NVIDIA and AMD’s preferred choice for AI hyperscalers. Shortage. Putting all this together, the result is that there is a RAM crisis for a while. The bottleneck of the industry is enormous and that only three companies –SK Hynix, Micron and Samsung– are the ones who call the shots, and all have opted to satisfy the demands of AI, does not help the situation return to normal. Although there is Chinese companies that may have their opportunity In this scenario, the reality is that the estimate is that all the production of the large It will barely cover 60% of the memory demand until 2027. These companies, of course, are doing great. An example is that, in three months of 2026, Samsung earned more than in all of 2025. But for users and the consumer industry itself, the reality is different. And the worst thing is that there is no realistic date when we will start to see a recovery. NVIDIA has taken the lead, AMD tooand it is no longer just the US and China that need memory: Europe also wants its share of the pie. There are voices that They aim for 2028 as the year of recoverybut other forecasts they go above 2030. What is clear is that there is a crisis ahead In Xataka | TSMC’s only problem was that it was in Taiwan. So the United States has decided to get her out of there

there is no RAM for everyone and hyperscalers have absolute priority

by

When Gabe Newell, head of Valve, asked for help a few weeks ago to find RAM memory anyway and be able to take out his Steam Machine, the comment was half joking… half serious. It was planted in the same GDC in which NVIDIA took advantage of its technology of artificial intelligence to beg beg for some RAM. It was not a situation that caught us by surprise, since we have had quite negative news since 2025 regarding memory supply. RAM, SSD, hard drives and any element that the monster data centers to function. But the wheel does not stop, devices must continue to be launched and the problem is that, beyond the initial ‘run’, no one knows very well if they will be able to continue selling the hardware. And it is a problem that concerns even Apple. Neither one of the main clients of a giant like TSMC is above the needs of the hyperscalers. And he is already suffering the consequences: They have stopped selling Mac models with high amounts of RAM in a coup, especially for professional users who need all the memory possible on their computers. There are no Macs with a lot of RAM left, kid, only Maxibon A few hours ago, media like 9to5Mac and Macrumors They echoed the problem. If you went to Apple’s settings page and tried to purchase a Mac Mini or a mac studio with the largest amount of RAM available (64 GB and 256 GB respectively), the warning was not the one that usually appears on occasions of “it will take x weeks”, but rather a “not available”. That already made us suspect that something was wrong with the supply, but it is also not an isolated problem in the Apple Store in the United States. If right now we go to the Spanish page to configure either of the two Macs with the maximum amount of RAM, it directly sends the same message that it is not available. This goes beyond the classic “reserve and we ship it on a certain date”, it implies that Apple does not accept orders for those specific models. And it is not an anecdote. As pointed out MacRumorsa few weeks ago Apple quietly removed the option to configure Mac Studio with 512 GB, which already indicated that something was up. Other configurations had delivery times of one to five months, and the fact that both models cannot now be configured with the maximum versions of RAM suggests that they will probably also end up disappearing from the store. For most users, 16 and even 32 GB of RAM is more than enough, but those who configure a Mac Mini and Mac Studio model with 64 or 256 GB of RAM do so because it is necessary. It is no longer so much the extra price as it is knowing that that amount of RAM is needed for professional tasks, and eliminating the option (just when Apple has killed the Mac Pro) can be a problem for a niche of users who precisely need these features. For now, if we are going to configure a MacBook Pro, we can choose the maximum amount of RAM without a problem (beyond the longer waiting times than when there was no global supply problem), but in the background there is a much bigger problem. The estimates They point out that RAM producers will increase their production by 16% year-on-year, a figure very far from market needs. Analysts predict that this shortage will last until 2027 or 2028, but also there are more negative estimates They point to 2029 or 2030 to begin to see the market recovery. As soon as possible. And, although we focus on Apple because it is always the most striking case, we have already commented the case of the Steam Machine which cannot be launched because Valve does not have RAM… and there are more cases from manufacturers such as Dell, Lenovo or Asus turning to the Chinese market to be able to launch teams. Computex is one of the big annual events for PC manufacturers and is just around the corner in the middle of an unprecedented crisis. Because there is no RAM, there is no SSD, hard drives are in danger and even graphics cards are not secured. The truth is that it will be interesting to cover the event because the Manufacturers and sellers are going to have to juggle with the little that is available to them. And in Apple’s own upcoming calendar, we will have WWDC where, supposedly, there will be new professional processors. And, no matter how much there are new Apple Silicon, if these professionals cannot configure their computers with large amounts of RAM… it will not be worth much. It could also be a movement in anticipation of the renewal of the equipment, but they eliminated the 512 GB in March and now this is strange. In short, and as has been happening for months, everything is wrong with the RAM market. In Xataka | “We buy anything”: there are stores in Japan so desperate for PC components that anything is worth it

With the RAM market in crisis, an unexpected winner appears: China

by

The saying goes that, in a troubled river, fishermen gain. In the case of the RAM crisisto a troubled market, manufacturers profit. All devices need NAND chips. They are the ones that go into the RAM memory or the storage that is used from the mobile phone to the car, the router and the SD memories and Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron are the ones that control the majority of the production. The data centers need a huge amount of memorywhich has caused everything other than producing for them to be missing out on a large portion of the pie, which is why the three companies have thrown themselves into it. And, since their most important factories cannot do more, they have made the decision to inject a lot of money into China, which is not their favorite scenario, but what gives immediate relief. And all the extra RAM they make… it’s not going to be for us. Exploited. A few weeks ago we said that Jensen Huang, boss of NVIDIA, had met with senior officials from the Asian technology industry, including executives from TSMC and Samsung. He told the first ones to get their act together because NVIDIA was going to need a lot of wafers this year. In the seconds, more of the same, but with HBM4 memory new generation. Shortly after, it was Lisa Su, AMD’s boss, who visited Samsung’s offices in South Korea to reach a deal for HBM4 memory of South Koreans for AMD’s new platform focused on artificial intelligence. Everything moves to the tune of AI training and inference. We are talking about Samsung, but SK Hynix is ​​also developing new generation memory and the objective is the same: to produce everything possible because, although as users we cannot buy RAM or SSD and Valve can’t make the Steam Machinethey are doing great. Wons galore. The problem is that, although the numbers come out, the production lines can’t take it anymore. There are very few companies to create RAM that supplies a brutal demand, and that means that they either expand… or they don’t arrive. And that is precisely what they are doing, but looking at the industrial fabric that can serve as support: what they have been manufacturing in China. In SCMP we can read that Samsung is going to intensify its investment in its Xi’an plant. Specifically, 67.5% compared to the previous year. This will bring the investment to 465.4 billion won -about 264 million euros- in the Chinese plant. This is Samsung’s only plant abroad, and also one of the company’s most important because it is estimated to produce 40% of South Koreans’ NAND memory. The million-dollar investment comes after a few years of hiatus, but they are not the only ones. SK Hynix is ​​also going to inject 581.1 billion won -331 million euros- into its Dalian plant. It is 52% more than in the previous period and the largest disbursement since they acquired the factory in 2022. Immediate relief. The information They point out that it is not so much to produce more, but to satisfy the demand for cutting-edge memories. Recently, Samsung began mass manufacturing the HBM4 memory and SK Hynix the fastest DDR5 memory, and this strategy is focused on the two plants manufacturing that advanced memory instead of the rest of the factories having to adapt to the cutting-edge memory creation processes in order to continue dedicating themselves to other types of NAND chips. It also responds to a more pragmatic vision. Setting up a memory factory is not cheap, but above all, it is not fast. It takes about four or five years to build, polish the clean rooms and optimize the operational lines. It is much faster to adapt existing factories to obtain a much faster response. The reason is that they need wafers, and they need them now. From SK warned that the global shortage of wafers exceeds 20% and, probably, the situation will continue until 2030. Not very favorable weather. The curious thing is that this increase in investments occurs when the situation between China and the United States continues to be very turbulent. Although they have been relaxing, the United States imposed export controls on advanced chip manufacturing equipment destined for China. As much as Samsung is moving money and advanced machines to Samsung, it is in China and that means they must obey Washington’s order. There is licenses and annual permits and, both Samsung and SK Hynix, have a deadline to be able to send tools to their facilities, which are the ones they are taking advantage of because it is estimated that China represents 40% of Samsung’s NAND production and between 40% and 45% of SK Hynix’s. In fact, the company has another plant in Wuxi from which 30% of its NAND chips come out. China, from chill. Whether there is an upsurge in export orders or not remains to be seen. What is on the table at this moment is that China, “without doing anything” (and this with many quotes) is emerging as a very important player in this playing field. It is not only that Samsung and SK Hynix, the two most powerful in the sector, have greatly increased investment in their territory, but that their own RAM companies can see in this scenario the boost they needed to place themselves in the global conversation. One of the largest manufacturers in the country is CXMT and not only have they been polishing their manufacturing process in recent months to create 8,000 MHz DDR5 memories, but they have scaled their production capacity to reach a global market share of between 11% and 13%. Together with the manufacturer YMTC, they are emerging as an opportunity for brands like Lenovo, Dell or Asus, which need RAM to continue selling computers, have available without drastically increasing the price of their equipment. But hey, as we have said more than once in recent weeks, all the extra RAM they manufacture is … Read more

Data centers have eaten up the world’s RAM. Now they threaten to eat the batteries

by

If the question is “what are data centers hungry for,” the answer is a simple “yes.” We hadn’t talked about the RAM memory crisis not because would have finishedbut because it was nonsense keep repeating it. The summary is that things are still as bad as they were a few weeks ago and, although the machines are at full capacity to create more, everything is going to the same place: the AI ​​platforms of the data centers. But it is no longer that they have broken the market for RAM, SSD, hard drives and everything that has to do with chips: it is that they are now going after batteries. The Panasonic case. The Japanese giant advertisement a few hours ago its plan to triple its lithium-ion cell production capacity. They are going to expand their facilities dedicated to this, but they will also adapt some of their manufacturing plants for elements for the automotive industry to manufacture more batteries. All the extra batteries they can make will be few, to the point that they not only propose the change for Japanese plants: also for foreign ones like the one in Kansas. Because? The short answer is because of AI. The long answer is that AI can’t stop working for even a second, and that’s why computers need backup power sources. That energy comes from batteries that are installed between the racks and which, in the event of any outage or specific peak, they ‘pull’ in order to continue operating. And since the equipment requires an insane amount of energy to operate, many, many backup batteries must be made. They are still modules with hundreds of “stacks” that are embedded in the racks All sold. The forecast is such that the Japanese company estimates that, for the next fiscal year, it can sell batteries worth 800,000 million yen, about 5,000 million dollars. It would quadruple its current sales and that implies something else: everything is sold. Its customers have already bought 80% of Panasonic’s output, leaving non-customers to fight for just a fifth of the volume. That will increase prices, generate shortages and cause the same thing that is happening with RAM and other components: there are no units, prices skyrocket, companies see that there is demand and allocate their production to creating that product and the consumer market suffers the consequences. It’s exactly the same thing we’ve seen with HDDs, with Seagate and Western Digital pointing out that what they were going to produce during the next few months was already sold. And it has also happened with RAM. The situation with them became so desperate that the main manufacturers have begun to ask for payments three years in advance. Because as the boss of SMIC – one of the largest foundries in China – pointed out a few days ago, everyone wants to have the infrastructure of the next decade by… yesterday. Supercapacitors. Aside from the “bad” news, Panasonic is also working on something new. Compared to traditional capacitors, the Japanese company is developing supercapacitors for data centers. These are capacitors that can store more energy, but also deliver it more slowly. They are denser than batteries and are expected to be high-fidelity elements to support data center equipment during outages or peak loads. They wait have them ready by 2027. The renewables. In the end, these Panasonic batteries (and other manufacturers) are simple safety elements to ensure that uninterrupted flow of power in the hyperscalers’ racks. How does it affect us? Well, because the capacitors and equipment manufactured by Panasonic are also found in consumer hardware and if they now focus on data centers, the same thing will happen as with NAND chips and everything that uses a memory chip. And, in the background, there are also the most conventional batteries to store a large amount of energy from renewables. Because we have already mentioned that data centers consume a lot, so much so that even has turned to coal, gas is a common resource and there are companies that are opening its nuclear power plants. But if you opt for renewables, it will be necessary to equip data centers with tens of hundreds of batteries capable of absorbing the energy blow. In fact, there are already car battery manufacturers that they are converting. In short: everything bad… except for companies that manufacture those components. Images | panasonic In Xataka | If you were thinking about setting up a NAS to create your own cloud, we have bad news: AI has other plans

Micron knew that the RAM crisis was going to be great for them. The reality that has gone even better

by

As it could not be otherwise, the companies that are benefiting the most from the RAM crisis They are precisely those that have the product and, therefore, they are the ones that set the price. Micron is one of those few companies that is profiting from the excessive demand of this key component for any gadget, a demand caused by the AI ​​fever. The figures from its latest financial report have even exceeded expectations. Although there are some nuances to comment on. Let’s go to trouble. What has happened? Micron just published the results of its second fiscal quarter with numbers that have left analysts speechless. Its revenues have almost tripled those of the previous year, reaching $23.9 billion, well above Wall Street estimateswho expected about 20,000 million. Earnings per share have skyrocketed to $12.20, compared to the $9 projected. And for the third quarter, the company anticipates revenue of approximately $33.5 billion, almost ten points above what the market expected. Those who share the benefit. Artificial intelligence has changed everything in the memory market. The data centers that power AI models require massive amounts of high-performance memory, and the available supply cannot meet that demand. Micron, together with Samsung and SK Hynix, forms the trio that controls practically the entire supply world of high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, which are basically one of the key components to run the long-awaited NVIDIA GPUs. Those who buy at any price. Micron’s own CEO, Sanjay Mehrotra, counted to CNBC that the company can only cover between 50% and two-thirds of what its main clients need. Put another way: there is a queue of buyers willing to pay whatever it takes, and Micron simply doesn’t have RAM for everyone. According to SK Group President Chey Tae-won, the global shortage could last another four to five years due to structural bottlenecks in semiconductor production. What’s coming Aware that what is happening now will not last forever, Micron is investing at a speed that has made the market nervous. The company plans to exceed $25 billion in capital spending in 2026 alone, and has already announced that in 2027 that number will rise another $10 billion. Among other operations, it has closed purchasing a plant of Taiwanese Powerchip for $1.8 billion, which will begin producing DRAM wafers in the second half of 2027. The company has also started mass shipments of its new HBM4 memory of 12 layers, which will be directed to the new Vera Rubin platform from NVIDIA. Precisely how much NVIDIA will depend on Micron for this new generation compared to its rivals is the big open question for all investors. Everything is going well for them, but the shares are going down. There has been a bit of a cold reaction in the stock market, as shares have fallen around 5% in the session after the results, despite the fact that the numbers have beaten all forecasts. The reason is the same thing that happened with NVIDIA a few weeks ago: When expectations are very high, even good results can disappoint. From Goldman Sachs they counted that the value could move in a narrow range in the short term after a “very solid quarter with guidance well above consensus, in a context of already elevated expectations.” That has not prevented banks like Wells Fargo or Barclays from updating their upward forecasts to $550 and $670 per share, respectively. The big photo. Micron has accumulated a revaluation of more than 60% so far this year, and has become the most profitable value on the PHLX (Philadelphia Semiconductor Index). Mehrotra affirms that Micron is “the invisible layer that powers AI today.” But it seems that the company is slowly losing that cloak of invisibility. In Xataka | NVIDIA has been pining for months to sell its H200 to China: it just received the news it was waiting for

With the RAM market completely destroyed, Valve has a message to create the Steam Machine: “help”

by

Valve is not having any luck in the hardware world. If with software it is the undisputed queen of the PC ecosystem thanks to Steamwhen they try to launch a console things don’t go so smoothly. More than a decade ago they already tried it with some first Steam Machines that they had no identity. Now they have returned to the fray with a Steam Machine that it looks very goodbut it comes at the worst time. And in the middle of the RAM memory crisisValve only has one thing to say. Aid. The crisis. At Xataka we have been covering the RAM memory news because, although it seems that it is a crisis of a specific component, it is really something that It is affecting the entire industry of semiconductors… and consumption. If in 2020 it was a perfect storm What caused the semiconductor crisis is now the enormous demand for RAM by AI companies. They are all building gigantic data centers and there is a problem: there is only three big RAM manufacturers (plus a fourth that is emerging in China) and all of them have focused on creating RAM for data center equipment. The consequence is that there is no RAM for anyone else. And this not only affects RAM as such: it affects the price of cell phones, computers, cars and even to the router. And, of course, to the Steam Machine. Hey kid, do you have RAM? Valve announced its new machine at the end of last year and they targeted early 2026 to give a release date and price. The problem is that the days were passing, the price of RAM was rising and the question arose: What about Steam Machine? Well what happens is that Valve is desperate. They have already said that it will be released this year (in principle it was going to be spring), it seems that it will be expensive and, in addition, they have pointed directly to the crisis in the supply problems they are having with his other console, the Steam Deck. With this panorama, Valve has appeared at the GDC fair to explain its vision of the console/PC and, in an environment full of manufacturers and professionals, launched a request to the public: If you have access to a large amount of RAM, we are in the market and we would like to buy it.” Complicated. It is a humorous comment, but also somewhat symptomatic. Valve has the money as punishment, but it is not even close to being a premium customer of those few foundries capable of creating RAM. If even Apple can have a bad time, being the second client of the giant TSMCValve does not even enter the annex in the memory request sheet. There are analyzes of all kinds about the consequences of this crisis. In it mobile market will feel a strong bloweven targeting manufacturers that will have to stop launching devices due to market conditions. But on PC, things are more or less the same, with global shipments forecast to be 11% less than the previous year. Captain after the fact. It’s no longer that the Steam Machine may or may not come out, it’s that if it does come out, it would be very expensive. It is something similar to what would happen with the rumored PlayStation 6 that could have seen the light this year and about which we already know that we will not have news in the short term. And here the big question may arise: why didn’t Valve release the Steam Machine when they announced it? Obviously, there were units prepared because they were shown to the press and, furthermore, it is not cutting-edge hardware, so it would have been easy to have it on the market in November 2025. But of course, the situation escalated at a dizzying pace and launching a console at X price and two months later raising it by 200 euros due to the price of RAM or, even worse, stopping selling it because you don’t have units available would have been a tremendous blow. Not so much to the coffers, which in the end with Steam they get a good pinch, but to the reputation. And it is clear that a second disastrous launch of a Steam Machine is something that Valve cannot afford. Now we just have to wait to see when they will be able to launch the machine and, above all, if the price corresponds to components that have already been available for five months. they seemed somewhat fair to us for the most demanding games. Images | DOTA2 The International In Xataka | The price of RAM has skyrocketed and the best example to see the debacle is a 100 euro PC: the Raspberry Pi

Without helium there are no chips or RAM. And the largest producers are in the eye of the Iran war

by

Think of the world as if it were a puppet. It is supported by threads that move, but when one of those threads breaks, the whole wobbles. If several strings break at once, the puppet falls apart. In the technological world, 2026 has started on the wrong foot. The main RAM memory companies They have turned to producing memory for AI, leaving the consumer market. This has caused an unprecedented increase of prices that affects consumers, but also companies. Right now, it’s impossible to guess when it will return to normal because each party involved thinks one thing. And, for a few days now, we have another of those threads that I talked about at the beginning: the iran war. The consequence We are already seeing it immediately: the Strait of Hormuz boilingthe barrel of crude oilreaching stratospheric prices and a gasoline –dieselabove all- through the clouds. But since everything that goes wrong can get worse, now there is another crisis knocking at the door: that of helium. And it is the perfect union between RAM crisis and the war in Iran because without helium… well, without helium there are many things that do not work. Neither does artificial intelligence. RAM crisis + Iran war = no helium For many, helium is that gas that gives us such a funny voice and allows us to inflate balloons that float. For the semiconductor industry, helium is a critical and irreplaceable element in the manufacturing process. Being a noble gas, it does not chemically interfere with the materials of the silicon crystal growth process. inside the huge machines that companies use to create the wafers that are later used to make chips. They prevent materials from reacting with oxygen or other contaminants, so the results are purer. They are like a shield, but helium is also essential to dissipate the heat of the extreme lithography machinesto eliminate waste after each manufacturing cycle and even to identify any leaks in one of these machines. Its particles are among the smallest that exist and are what reveal even the smallest leaks in manufacturing chambers that must be under vacuum. Come on, it is not an element that can be easily replaced. There are two companies that right now have such a deep dependency that any variation in supply would be fatal. What companies? Exactly: Samsung and SK Hynix, the same ones that have dedicated themselves to AI and the same ones that do not plan to lift a finger to alleviate the crisis of RAM memory prices (and therefore of SSDs and any device that has a NAND chip). Both are involved in the manufacturing process of the sophisticated HBM4 memoryand both need helium. The problem is that helium is a byproduct in natural gas production, and some of the world’s largest refineries are in the Middle East. With the war in Iran, it is clear that the civilian targets are data centers and energy producers. If these infrastructures are attacked, the rest of the West is paralyzed, and they have begun to launch kamikaze drones against them. There is the oil company Ras Tanurabut also that of Ras Laffan, from QatarEnergy. It is one of the whales in the production of natural gas and, therefore, in the production of helium. And if the refineries close and the ships do not arrive, the smelters’ reserves begin to run out. There are already voices that they point to problems in the medium term if the situation persists. SK Hynix claims that they have a “diversified supply chain and sufficient helium inventory”something similar to what has commented another of the large chip manufacturers: TSMC. The problem is that these guarantees are short-term. If the situation continues with a prolonged closure of Hormuz, more than 25% of the world’s helium supply will be affected. This will cause the companies that ‘use’ gas the most to begin to see that their reserves are depleted at a faster rate than they are replenished. the market, always so unstablehas already reacted and actions Both Samsung and SK Hynix have fallen in recent hours due to supply concerns. Because we are no longer talking about a price of RAM and runaway gasolinewe are talking about helium being necessary for the manufacturing of any advanced chip, but also in quantum computing or for the numerous space launches. And as Hormuz continues, there will be many entities fighting for an essential, irreplaceable and very valuable good. Faced with SK Hynix’s moderate optimism, more pessimistic voices are already seeing echoes of the component crisis of 2020. Images | VALGO, ASML In Xataka | ‘Focus: The ASML Way’: the book that reveals the secrets of the most powerful European company in the chip industry

8 GB of RAM has gone from $40 to $130 in five months. It is explained in four words: “It is what it is”

by

At this point in the film, it no longer escapes us that we are in the midst of a new component crisis. What started with RAM crisis ended up mutating into SSD crisis and any device that has memory or a memory controller. We are in an “unprecedented” situation, said by the companies themselves that manufacture that memory, and although it all started with SSDs and more expensive RAM ‘chips’, now things have escalated. How much? Let’s go with some examples. a rocket. Maybe in Europe they are not the best known, but Framework It is a company that is doing things well. It has a desktop PC, but also something much more interesting: modular laptops. It is not so common to be able to choose all the components of a laptop, and the Framework components do give us that opportunity. The fact is that they are the perfect example to see how the market is. In September they stopped selling standalone RAM modules. They were not the only ones who began to sell computers without memory or with less physical SSD than advertised, but now the next ‘stick’ has arrived: if before 8 GB of RAM cost 40 dollars, now it is 130 dollars. And if you wanted 96 GB of RAM, before it “only” cost you $480… and now you have to shell out $1,340. It’s the market, friend. It is estimated that prices are increasing between 6% and 16% on the company’s equipment. The Framework Desktop 32GB LPDDR5X memory is up $110 since it launched. And the 128 GB one has increased by about $600. The equipment that was already built in the warehouse has not been affected by this, but as the stock runs out, they will inevitably follow the same path. “The price is what it is, unfortunately,” says the CEO of Framework In ArsTechnica we can read that Nirav Patel, CEO of the company, points out that they are trying to solve the problems, but in the end… he is not on his own and the best thing he can do is be transparent. In an interview with BIpoints out that they are looking under the rocks and that if an intermediary tells them “we have found 5,000 RAM modules in a warehouse”, they would buy them without thinking. The problem is accessing new RAM modules… because there aren’t any. Increases. As we say, it is no longer just the RAM that we can see in stores like Amazon, but the components of a computer, a cell phone, a television, a cara modem or… one Raspberry Pi. Since this crisis began, we have talked a lot about how manufacturers were saying that things were tough and it was going to take a while for the market to recover. But the case of Framework helps ground things, and so does Raspberry. Because if Framework uses DDR5 memory, which is the most advanced, Raspberry’s is not the latest generation. However, the company has also had to raise prices. Yes three months ago increased a little, now they have skyrocketed. Its memories are LPDDR4 and the company has published a table that point Because the more RAM your board has, the more the price goes up. Raspberry PI 4 and Raspberry Pi 5 Price increase 1 GB Nothing 2GB 10 dollars 4GB 15 dollars 8GB 30 dollars 16 GB 30 dollars Out of the race. In the end, it all depends on the price of the device. In a 4,000 euro computer that you need for professional work, you have no choice but to pay about 600 more to expand the RAM. But on cheaper equipment, the feeling is that it has a much greater impact. This is the case of the Raspberry. In a 120 euro device like the Raspberry Pi 5 of 16 GB, an increase of 60 euros is stupid. And as the situation lasts a long time, that will be the big problem for many software manufacturers. Apple just present new laptops and the iPhone 17e and, in Spain at least, the price has remained the same. This has not happened in other countries such as the United States, seeing strong increases in some models. Apple, Lenovo, Dell… are companies that have already said that things are bad and the users will have to bear the cost. But there are also voices that point out that not all companies can allow their users to be the ones who ‘swallow’ with the situation. From SMICChina’s large foundry, has already pointed out that there will be hardware companies that will be left out of the game. We are already seeing it: the cheap mobile is suffering the consequences and the Chinese Meizu, which wanted to eagerly return to the Western market, is already backing down. 2027 2028. Valve and its Steam Machine is another example: the console should come out this spring, but not only is there no price, but it is not known when it will arrive. And when will the end of this catastrophic situation be? It’s the million dollar question. Patel comments that the relief will begin in early 2028, a date similar to what other parts of the industry are managing. However, Jensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA, has already warned that the AI ​​race He has seven or eight years leftand just now they have begun to commission TSMC to begin mass manufacturing of Vera Rubin, their next-generation acceleration platform. It is something that needs memory and only Samsung and SK Hynix (two of the big three RAM companies) are able to supply it right now. In the end, it is about going day by day in this new crisis, but everything indicates that if we need something, it is better to buy it as soon as possible because ifamsung, Micron and SK Hynix they are not doing consumption memoryprices will rise more and more over the next few months. Images | Raspberry, Framework In Xataka | SK is one … Read more

In the midst of the RAM and SSD crisis, there are those who are launching laptops and mobile phones with more capacity at the same price: Apple

by

Apple has set out to eclipse the Mobile World Congress. He does not attend the Barcelona fair, but he has presented products. For now, the iPhone 17ethe new MacBook Pro with the M5 Pro and M5 Max processorsthe new MacBook Air M5 and the renewal of your monitor Studio Display. And what has caught my attention the most is the “generosity” of an Apple that has not accustomed us to it. Because, with the one that is falling with the RAM crisis and of SSD priceApple is offering more without increasing the price. And it is something that has several readings… and some asterisks. The new devices. There isn’t much new in anything the company has presented so far. It is assumed that there is still a ‘cheap’ MacBook throughout this Wednesday, March 4, but what they have already presented is, basically, the same as last year, but with new processors. The iPhone 17e is a mobile phone with an outdated design, but it includes a slightly cut version of the processor of the iPhone 17 Pro. The MacBook Pros were already beasts in many ways and now they can be equipped with the M5 Pro and M5 Max that reach absurd figures for GPU capacity and memory bandwidth in the most powerful versions. And the MacBook Air was already a very interesting device for mobility, but now also somewhat more powerful. As I say, not much new on the front, until we look at the storage. With the one that is falling… At this point, no one is aware that we are experiencing an unprecedented component crisis. It’s not like 2020, when a bunch of factors caused a global chip crisis. Now there is only one “culprit”: artificial intelligence. There is three main companies that manufacture memory (Micron, SK Hynix and Samsung), and the three have focused almost the entire his production to memories for AI. This is causing not only us to have to pay more to be able to buy RAM or an SSD for our PC, but also the manufacturers themselves are changing their device launch plans –the steam machine-, there is someone who is selling laptops without RAM or without SSDwho looks to Chinese manufacturers to see if they can find a solution or, directly, those who can withdraw from the market. And, in the middle of that hurricane, Apple (which It is not characterized by its popular prices), launches devices. And the surprise came. Generosity. I’m not going to explain much, I’m just going to give some information: The iPhone 17e starts with 256 GB of storage and costs 709 euros. He iPhone 16e It started at 128 GB and cost 709 euros. The MacBook Air M5 costs 1,199 euros with 512 GB of SSD. He MacBook Air M4 It cost the same at launch, 1,199 euros (in October last year they lowered it by 100 euros to 1,099 euros), but with 256 GB. On these devices, Apple has doubled the storage while maintaining the price. And not only that: the Studio Display XDR was sold with a basic tilt adjustment stand, but you could purchase the articulated arm that allowed you to adjust both angle and height. The price of support? 999 euros, which became a meme. Now, the new Studio Display XDR It comes with that ‘Pro’ support included. Of course, the base MacBook Pro M5 costs 100 euros more with a 1 TB SSD instead of 512 GB. Generosity? What is happening here, is the first thing I thought when I started analyzing the price. There are several options that can be compatible… and even all at the same time. No company is there to give away, so it is simply possible that they have a huge stock of 512 GB SSDs that they now mount as a base in their computers. This would make sense if we take into account the very high price of expanding the memory on an Apple device. The most basic option would be the most chosen, so those with 128 GB on mobile phones and 256/512 on MacBooks would be the best sellers and, therefore, have a surplus of the expanded options that fewer people would opt for. Another reading may be that, due to the high price of the devices, Apple decides to absorb part of the cost of RAM because it’s still worth itmaking money per device sold and expanding the Mac user base at a time when Windows laptops can have a very difficult time. What Apple saves are the chargers in its new equipment. The MacBook Pro no longer included a charger, but the MacBook Air did. Now not even that. The turn. The other option is that… it will be our turn. The prices that I have detailed are in euros and for Spain if we take into account the launch price, without subsequent offers or reductions. In the United States, things are very different. They have also doubled the storage, but the MacBook Air in its 13 and 15-inch versions now They are 100 dollars more expensive than the previous generation. It is always complicated because direct conversions cannot be made from the US price to the European price (in fact, the M5 MacBook Air costs $1,099 and $1,299 compared to our 1,199 euros and 1,499 euros), but we may simply have to face that price increase in 2027 models. Because, unfortunately, the RAM crisis is going to last a long time. Intel He thinks he has the rest of the decade ahead of him, NVIDIA does not have good forecasts either and Samsung has just said that, if that, it will begin to ease in 2027. Images | Apple, Samsung In Xataka | Apple has been the industry’s first customer for decades. AI is relegating it to the background

All the money in the world won’t satisfy AI’s RAM hunger

by

There is no RAM for so much AI. At this point in the film, no one can ignore that we are fully immersed in a new component crisis. Unlike the perfect storm that shook the technology industry in 2020, the new crisis is due to something very specific: the voracity of data centers and the artificial intelligence. In recent weeks we have seen negativity everywhere, but now one of the main people responsible for the lack of RAM comes to say that things are not going to stay the same. They are going to get worse. 30% of the goal. Chey Tae-won is not just anyone. This is the CEO of SK groupone of the largest conglomerates in the world and a South Korean giant that controls everything from the energy industry to chemicals and telephony. In addition, it has SK Hynix, one of the largest manufacturers of memories from around the world. If there is an authorized voice in this crisisof course it is yours. And what did he say? Well, there’s still a RAM storm left for a while. In a recent interview, stated that memory supply will be more than 30% below AI demand for this year. That is, by turning all their production to high-performance memory for AI, completely abandoning the consumer sector, they will be far from be able to satisfy what companies like NVIDIA they are claiming. structural problem. As we say, we have been talking about the state of the industry for weeks, but now we understand the extent to which the consumer sector has taken a backseat to memory manufacturers. That “we have given everything and we are going to fall within 30% of the goal” is tremendously revealing and explains the reason why everything with a memory chip is rising in price. Micron, SK Hynix and Samsung are the three companies that lead production by memory. They make both consumer memory (that of the mobile phone, the PC, the routerTV or car) as a professional (high-bandwidth HBMs), but their production is not unlimited: if they want to increase performance in one type of memory, they must lower that of the other. And that’s what’s happening: the AI ​​business is memory hungry, and for every unit of high-bandwidth memory produced, several units of standard memory must be sacrificed for other devices. This creates a bottleneck and an “unprecedented” shortage, according to Micron’s vice president, as the AI ​​industry is consuming all memory production capacity, creating a tremendous shortage in the conventional branch. All sold. As consumers, buy an SSD, a RAM module and a Large capacity HDD is a luxury right now, but to those who control chip production, it’s going well for them because they are selling all production before starting to “print” chips. Chey Tae-won himself has commented that the profit margins on his HBM4 chips are stratospheric, around 60%. Micron has already commented that all of its HBM memory production capacity for 2026 is already sold, and These are statements similar to those of Western Digital a few days ago. This implies that they have already sold components that do not exist for graphics cards that do not exist and that will power data centers that do not yet exist. abandoning ship. Samsung, SK and Micron are expanding their production lines and opening factories, but getting clean rooms It’s a slow process for them to start making chips, and Micron’s new plants, for example, aren’t expected to start making RAM until 2028. And when they do, it’ll likely be memory for data centers, not consumer price relief. In the end, there are only a few suppliers for many manufacturers, and that has another consequence: there will be brands that they have to get out of the car. The CEO of the SK group has commented that “there will probably be PC and smartphone manufacturers that will end up abandoning their businesses”, but he has not been the only one. A few days ago, the boss of Phison, a company that makes memory controllers, pointed in the same line. And it is easy to understand: if a manufacturer with low volume costs much more for memory, it has two options: sell a PC/mobile with less RAM or sell that same product much more expensive. Neither is a good idea. The price of 32 GB of DDR5 RAM from Crucial. Micron’s Crucial no longer exists Not very hopeful forecasts. The big question is when this solution will end. From SMIC, the large Chinese foundry, it is estimated that storm remains for a while because everyone wants to build their infrastructure for the next decade over the next two years. There are analysts who estimate that manufacturers – such as those in the automotive sector – are stockpiling AI out of “panic” that it will run out and now HBM4 memory is being produced, but in a few years there will be superior technology that will make AI faster and more capable… and the industry will turn to it again if the bubble doesn’t burst first. Domino. Meanwhile, companies like TeslaIntel or the Japanese giant SoftBank They want to get fully into the DRAM market and the companies Chinese companies like CXMT have an opportunity to meet the demand for AI for devices such as laptops. And, although we now see how it has impacted the price of loose components, we have to wait to see what happens in already assembled devices. Lenovo has pointed that the price of laptops is going to rise, but there are also warnings about important price increases in mobile phones, above all in low and mid-range devices, where the price of RAM represents a large part of the product cost. As I have said before, we have to cross our fingers so that the mobile phone or PC does not break, since once it is time to change it, paying the price will not be something pleasant. Images | Xataka, Bananovaya In Xataka | We … Read more

Log In

Forgot password?

Forgot password?

Enter your account data and we will send you a link to reset your password.

Your password reset link appears to be invalid or expired.

Log in

Privacy Policy

Add to Collection

No Collections

Here you'll find all collections you've created before.