RAM

RAM memory already represents 35% of the cost of a PC. The only solution that HP finds: capable equipment

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The PC industry – like many others – is facing a perfect storm that is completely altering manufacturing costs. As revealed by Karen Parkhill, CFO of HP, RAM memory has increased its prices so much that its specific weight in the cost of a PC is now almost unsustainable. Bad business. 35% of what your PC costs you is RAM. According to the directive, RAM memory has gone from representing an acceptable 15–18% of the bill of materials for your PCs and laptops to representing a suffocating 35%. The change is drastic, and has occurred in just one fiscal quarter. Things will get worse. This increase is due to the fact that according to HP, memory costs have doubled sequentially and have grown by 100% in a few months. Not only that: the company’s forecast is pessimistic, and they expect prices to rise as 2026 progresses. From more expensive PCs… The direct consequence for users is inevitable: the prices of PCs and laptops are going to rise. Analysts are already warning of increases of between 15% and 20% in the RRP of these devices, and in fact HP has already begun to make changes to its price tags precisely to protect its profit margins in the face of the massive increase in the price of critical components such as DRAM memory and NAND chips in SSD units. …to capable PCs. But the price is not the only thing that will change. To keep the equipment “affordable”, HP is adopting another strategy that we had already seen in mobile phones: that of “cut specifications.” This means that we will see more low- and mid-range configurations with less RAM than one would expect in 2026. The measure is clearly intended to save costs at the sacrifice of performance. At the moment they are saving the ballot. At HP they are diversifying their suppliers and cutting back on specifications and extras to compensate for the extra cost of chips. The company is even using AI systems to optimize its planning processes and has halved the time it takes to qualify new materials for agile component changes. The demand for HP PCs is still there: its personal systems division grew 11% in revenue. The company warns, however, that this trend could fall: high prices could cause sales to slow down. Damn data centers. The big culprit of everything is AI, of course, which is causing most of the production of DRAM memory chips and NAND chips to be destined for the AI ​​accelerators of NVIDIA and other manufacturers and, of course, for the gigantic data centers that are being planned everywhere. In addition, the industry is focusing on HBM memories, which are much more powerful for AI applications but which cause the production of “traditional” memories to suffer. Hello, 8 GB of RAM in 2026. For many years it seemed that 8 GB of RAM had become the de facto standard in our laptops and many PCs, but a couple of years ago we clearly made the leap to 16 GB. This crisis threatens to take us back to the past and see many “affordable” computers with 8 GB of RAM. Can we survive with this memory? Most likely yes… if our use of the equipment is relatively modest. The 16 GB really helps a lot now that we have become accustomed to opening a lot of browser tabs and applications in an era where these consume more and more memory. 8 GB seemed like a thing of the past, but we fear that we will have to learn to live with that type of configuration again. In Xataka | If you were thinking about setting up a NAS to create your own cloud, we have bad news: AI has other plans

The RAM crisis is great for those who manufacture it. There are those who think that a tsunami will sink many others

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Looking at current technology is peering into a well of contrasts. On the one hand, the optimism of companies that push the narrative of a future supported by AI while spend tens of billions of dollars. On the other hand, the consequences for the consumer segment are a new component crisis. Nobody likes pessimism, but unfortunately the market does not bring good news, and the CEO of Phison has a clear message: Things are going to get a lot worse before they get better. And that means that the RAM crisis It is going to take away some technology companies… in all sectors. In short. RAM and SSDs are the components that best exemplify the cost of data centers. They are elements that They have increased the price a real outrage and are made up of NAND flash chips. It is where the information is stored, but even those components need a ‘brain’, and that is where Phison comes into play. This Taiwanese company is one of the most powerful when it comes to creating something very specific: memory controllers. They are responsible for managing access, reading, writing and deleting data from NAND memory, among other tasks. Without them, these components could not function, so it is evident that Phison is interested in continuing to inflate the market. But its CEO, Pua Khein-Seng, has made it clear in a recent interview that this boom in data centers and artificial intelligence will have a disastrous consequence for the consumer market: there will be companies that go bankrupt. And it will be soon: by the end of 2026. slap. According to the boss of the controller company, this situation will put many consumer brands on the ropes, pushing some to disaster before the end of the year. When we talk about “consumer devices”, we refer to mobile phonestablets, consoles and computersbut also cars and of other devices with RAM and flash memories, such as televisions and even routers. Because it’s not that we can’t buy a couple of RAM pills, it’s that gigantic companies like Apple or Lenovo are already facing the problems involved in not having RAM. Memory production is dominated by just three companies and, although there are others such as Intel, tesla and the Chinese wanting to get their nails in the matterSamsung, Micron and SK Hynix are still the only ones capable of supplying the demands of the one that cuts the cod: NVIDIAas well as from Meta, Google or Microsoft. All production is focusing on creating memory for AI, and that means that Corsair, Dell, HP… but also Xiaomi, Vivo, OPPO, Sony or Nintendo They cannot buy RAM or they have to do so at higher prices. Consequence? That if they buy at a higher price, they must also sell the product at a higher price. And they may make devices that users are not willing to buy if they are more expensive either by price or by a less memory than that of previous generations. Unprecedented. There were already estimates that certain mobile companies were being more cautious with their shipment estimates for this year, but the CEO of Phison give a figure: between 200 and 250 million fewer mobile phones. It also targets the aforementioned PC industries (not those that we can assemble in parts, but to those pre-assembled by the companies) and to that of televisions. If all televisions are already ‘smart’, they need components that have a price through the roof. The executive is not the only interested party that has sent a pessimistic message about the situation. In statements to BloombergMicron’s executive vice president already pointed out that the current shortage is unprecedented, ridiculing even the previous components crisis that we live in 2020. In fact, something that is also unprecedented is that RAM manufacturers request payments up to three years in advance. Big Tech optimism. While users cannot buy components and consumer-focused companies are beginning to see sea level rise, Big Tech continues investing exorbitant amounts. There is not a day that we do not have news about billion-dollar investments in some data center or agreements between the main protagonist companies. And the most curious thing about that is that a lot is being invested in something that does not yet exist. Goal, for example, ends to buy graphics cards from NVIDIA for a data center not yet built. AND NVIDIA depends on Samsung I sent him a memory that he still doesn’t have. But the wheel keeps turning and, as one of the SMIC bosses commentedthe big feature of China, “no one has really thought about what exactly those data centers will do, but companies would love to build the entire capacity of the next 10 years in just one or two years.” We’ll see who gets ahead. Image | Andrey Matveev In Xataka | There was only one way to lower the price of RAM: Samsung and SK Hynix have flatly refused

RAM is in an “unprecedented” crisis. So much so that even Tesla is considering opening its own memory factory

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Neither technological advances nor a revolution in devices: crises are what is defining the last years of the sector. He veto Huaweithe semiconductor crisis of 2020 and now, the RAM memory crisis. The difference between this crisis and the previous one is that, although the 2020 crisis was caused by a perfect storm, the RAM memory crisis is being caused by excessive interest in data centers and AI. And it is taking all sectors ahead. That there is no RAM memory for consumers is a symptom, but it implies something much bigger: although the main producers are investing millions to increase your RAM productionit is not memory for consumption, but for GPUs and data center systems. Only a few companies dominate the production of these chips, and if they cannot produce them, they do not produce the memory chips for SSDs –raising the price-. They dedicate all production to meeting the demands of AI. And, as we read in FortuneElon Musk, one of the owners of some of the largest data centers on the planethas shown that there are two ways to face this crisis: hitting the wall or taking action. And the translation is that Tesla is considering building its own RAM factory. The problem is that it is easier said than done. Tesla and Intel interested in biting the RAM biggies In recent weeks, some of the world’s leading companies have presented results and RAM has been the central topic. PlayStation, for example, has assured that they are very aware of their ability to continue manufacturing PS5 with the goal of not going upagain, the price. And NVIDIA has been stating for days that it needs TSMC – its main chip supplier – and Samsung – who provides them with new generation HBM4 memory – get the batteries. Meanwhile, the outlook is not good. own NVIDIA aims for seven or eight years of construction no brake on data centers. Intel assures that The crisis will extend beyond 2028 and Micron, one of the big three in DRAM memory, has cataloged the market bottleneck as “unprecedented.” In this technological tsunami, and during Tesla’s results presentation at the end of January, Elon Musk pointed out that the company could need to build your own memory manufacturing plant. The objective is the one that all companies have: ensure supply. Going from scratch to manufacturing RAM memory is easier said than done, however, here Tesla has an advantage: they are not new to chip manufacturing. Although they abandoned the project for a few months, at the beginning of this year Musk himself stated that They came back with their own chip for your data centers. Additionally, there is the fact that they are a company with enough muscle to create a clean chip manufacturing room next to some of its existing plants. Intel is another one looking to become one of the important voices in the RAM conversation. Together with the Japanese giant SoftBank, they are developing an evolution of stacked DRAM memory that have been baptized as ‘ZAM’ and that seeks to break the HBM memory monopoly of Samsung, Micron and SK Hynix. Now, things in the palace are going slowly, and if Intel (which is already in it) It will take between three and four years to have commercial productsTesla’s ambition may go into the next decade. Let’s hope we don’t continue in this crisis by then, but if more “players” are interested in producing RAM, it would mean that, in the event of subsequent crises, there will not be a few that dominate the sector, producing a bottleneck like the one we are experiencing. Domino effect of the AMR crisis and China taking action Because this is not just about RAM being more expensive for users: it goes much further. If companies do not have the capacity to satisfy the demand for AI, they pour all their manufacturing muscle into a single task, neglecting the others. This explains the rise in the price of SSDs, but also of other products that should not have a leading role in this conversation: hard drives or HDDs. It is a brutal domino effect because, as we say, it goes beyond the modules being more expensive: RAM is more expensive for companies and that implies mobile phones or more expensive or with less RAMconsoles that increase in price (like what is happening posing for nintendo switch 2), machines that are late and they will be more expensive (like the Steam Machine), car problems and even impacting the routers. And in this scenario, in which companies like Intel or Tesla are considering taking a bite out of the RAM sector, we have some Chinese companies that had no role in the conversation. positioning itself as an option to alleviate demand. We told it a few days ago: there were reports indicating that PC brands such as Asus, Dell or HP were considering purchasing memory from Chinese manufacturers such as CXMT. Their modules are not as advanced as those of Samsung, for example, and they do not have the production capacity of South Korean companies, but… they produce. And in lean times, that’s better than selling laptops without RAM. Anyway, as we have said on occasion, there are still more companies joining the production of RAM when the crisis has already had a full impact, but the goal is not to create more RAM for ourselvesbut for your data centers. It’s time to entrust ourselves to the most sacred thing: that our PC doesn’t break and we need to update. Images | Gage Skidmore, Intel In Xataka | The US has a problem with its AI data centers: more and more states are opposed to building them

In the midst of the RAM crisis, Intel counterattacks with ZAM. It is the chip to break South Korean hegemony

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Few would have guessed not so many years ago the Intel transformation. The company that will dominate consumer processors and servers for generations has been through a real ordeal through the desert under the rule of AMD. However, they have returned for their rights and not only –rescue through– have positioned themselves to be the great American foundry, but are looking to take a bite out of the gigantic South Korean RAM memory industry thanks to its new memory: ZAM memory. And its weapon is three-dimensionality. Z for ‘zolution’. Do you remember when, in math class, you drew the first cube? The X axis is east-west. The Y axis is north-south. What the square needed to become a cube is the Z axis, the one up and down. That’s what engineers SAIMEMORYthe company resulting from the collaboration between the Japanese SoftBank and Intel, have applied traditional DRAM memory with a single objective: to assault the enormous market for high-bandwidth memory, or HBMwhich dominates data centers. Puff pastry. A few months ago we told you that the two companies They had embarked on a joint path to stand up to the dominance of Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron in the creation of high-performance memory. lHBM memory is preferred for data centers because it has a beastly bandwidth that allows a greater number of simultaneous operations. It’s like a huge highway. However, it has limitations: it is expensive to produce, requires a lot of energy, and gets hot enough to require expensive dissipation systems. Conventional DRAM memory was not an alternative, but Intel and SoftBank began to ‘play around’ with stacked DRAM memory. It is like a puff of RAM memory (simplifying things a lot), whose main limitation came when connecting each of those thin layers of memory so that the final product had the same capabilities as that highway that is HBM memory. ZAM. After a few months of research, a few days ago at the Intel Connection in Japan, SAIMEMORY and Intel presented the ZAM prototype. According to the companiesa ZAM module can have a capacity of up to 512 GB, it is easy to produce because it consists of designing vertically stacked chips and most importantly: it can reduce energy consumption by 40% to 50% compared to conventional HBMs. If HBMs are expensive and take time to produce, ZAMs are cheaper, can be the solution to alleviate restrictions in the supply chain and, in addition, would lower the energy consumption of data centers (which is one of the problems they have), and are also easier to cool. At the moment, the company’s research points to a theoretical limit of 20 layers, but current designs move around 16 layers, so performance may be better if this current limitation can be overcome. Real alternative. Intel’s ambition is total, since they point out that their DRAM module joining technology allows them to offer two to three times the capacity of HBM modules while being up to 60% cheaper to produce. It all seems like a plus and doesn’t seem like bad technology when established giants in HBM memory creation like Samsung are also researching how to overcome the limitations of connections in stacked DRAM memory. The prototype | Photo by PCWatch Ambition. And, almost as important as the presentation of the ZAM prototype, is the alliance itself. Intel has been away from the memory market for many years. He tried it in the 80s and, again, years later with his Optane technology -that died miserably without making the slightest gap in the market. On the other hand, SoftBank represents a Japan that had the lead in this sector in the 1980s, but was overshadowed by emerging South Korean companies. In fact, Intel’s memories were eaten by the Japanese… and the Japanese by the South Koreans. SAIMEMORY has behind it not only those sharks, but other Japanese companies such as Fujitsu, Shinko Electric Industries, PowerChip Semiconductor Manufacturing or the University of Tokyo. And if ZAM memory works on a commercial level, it will not only be good news to alleviate the memory production chains (perhaps this will also alleviate the domestic market totally destroyed for the data center needs), but will mark the birth of a new and ambitious player who seeks to break the hegemony of the trident he currently leads. We will see it, of course, in a few years, since SAIMEMORY plans complete prototypes in fiscal year 2027 and begin commercialization in 2029. Image | Samsung, Maxence Pira In Xataka | The CEO of Nothing is clear that we do not need a high-end mobile phone every year. A mix of RAM crisis and common sense

China had never had anything to do with the RAM conversation. Until the crisis came

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The current component crisis brings back memories of Vietnam. Specifically, of the semiconductor crisis of 2020. If at that time there were no chips due to COVID, the incipient trade war between China and the United States and natural disasters, now it is the exorbitant investment in artificial intelligence the one that is leaving us without SSD and, above all, without RAM. The three major memory manufacturers (Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron) have dedicated themselves to creating chips for GPUs in data centers, so much so that Micron has exited the consumer segment for dedicate all your production to meet the demand for AI. own NVIDIA will not launch the RTX 6000 this year Because of this, and apart from PC users, there are others affected by this crisis: RAM assemblers. To the point that there are already reports that the main PC manufacturers are thinking about buying RAM from Chinese manufacturers. To CXMT, specifically. Bad for many, support for Chinese RAM? If there is no RAM, there is no RAM. The problem is that, as we say, there are many brands that sell memory ‘pills’but not all of them manufacture that component. If you buy an SSD or RAM from Samsung, they have manufactured it, but if you buy a module from Corsair, what they have done is assemble the chips that have been purchased from one of the major RAM manufacturers. And then there are the PC vendors. HP, Asus or Dell do not manufacture the key components of their computers already assembled: they buy them from Intel, AMD, NVIDIA and RAM and SSD manufacturers. That is to say: this shortage of components that affects us as users, It is also impacting the main PC manufacturers. The perfect example is the Steam Machinewhich seemed like it would arrive at an attractive price and not only has it been delayed, but there are already signs that this crisis will cause it to be much more expensive than it should. Also the case of manufacturers selling PC… without memory. A few weeks ago we told you that, in such a situation, Asus was considering looking at the Chinese RAM industrybut now there are more reports pointing in that direction. Nikkei Asia point that Asus, Acer, Dell and HP are evaluating sourcing memory chips from China. It would be the first time, and one of the options is CXMT (which has ‘messes‘of course industrial espionage to Samsung). With Samsung turning to HBM memory and SK Hynix pointing out that its capacity is exhausted by 2026, the price of RAM has skyrocketed between 90 and 95% this first quarter of 2026. That’s where companies like ChangXin Memory Technologies They can take a bite out of the RAM market. “There is real potential for Chinese companies to aggressively expand in memory chips and flash memory” – Tae Kim A few weeks ago they presented DDR5 chips at 8,000 MHz for desktops and LPDDR5X at 10,667 MHz for portable devices and they have already started to supply to another Chinese company: Lenovo. Aside from the Nikkei Asia report, technology analyst Tae Kim – author of the book ‘The NVIDIA Way‘- also points out that HP is analyzing Chinese suppliers for products destined for the Asian and European markets. Kim points out that, while memory chips for GPU and AI have very specific characteristics, RAM memory chips are more ‘basic’, and this crisis of the large manufacturers can mean a golden opportunity for Chinese companies to “expand aggressively in the memory chip and flash memory space.” It certainly seems like the perfect opportunity for a company like CXMT that hopes reach 300,000 units manufactured per month in 2026 and that seeks to go public to raise 4.2 billion dollars that will allow them to expand their production. And they are not the only ones, since there are other heavyweights of Chinese RAM such as Yangtze Memory Technologies Co. -YMTC- that aspires to the same as its neighbor: to bite a piece of the pie that is the international RAM market. The production of Chinese companies is quite lower to that of Samsung, for example, but with a RAM market that will not ease until 2027 according to some2028 according to Intel and to whom It has seven or eight years of aggressive expansion leftAccording to NVIDIA, it is clear that companies like YMTC or CXMT have an opportunity that they should not miss. We will see if this alleviates the market somewhat, since right now it is impossible to consider building a PC…and the one we already have better not break. Image | Blake Patterson (edited) In Xataka | The RAM crisis is so extreme that it has achieved what seemed unthinkable: Apple’s memories are “cheap”

found RAM memory modules worth 500 euros in the worst time to buy them

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A Reddit user counted this week how he had a singular habit: rummaging through his neighborhood trash can in case he found some hardware treasure. And boy did he find it: among other things, he got two 32 GB DDR4 memory modules. Those modules thrown away as waste are a little treasureespecially because with the memory crisis Its market value exceeds 500 euros. what has happened. The user, who uses the alias “ringosbigfuckingnose” indicated that he makes regular visits to the local landfill in his area to look through the garbage that people throw away in search of components for their old PCs. He pointed out how he often comes across equipment from which he can salvage things, but the other day he found a real treasure: A Samsung monitor A 5.25″ floppy drive A 5-bay Drobo NAS Two 32 GB DDR4 memory modules A 10th generation Core i7 with its fan An ASUS motherboard A real find, without a doubt, but above all for one thing. 64 GB of RAM is 500 euros in your pocket. All of these components have value, of course, but it is especially striking that I found those two memory modules with a total of 64 GB. If you take a look around stores like Amazon or PcComponentes you will quickly see that two 32 GB DDR4 modules have a price that today is difficult to lower than the 500 or almost 600 euros. An absolute treasure. An ingenious solution to the memory crisis. What this user has achieved is to find a unique solution to the RAM memory crisis that has caused prices to rise. they shoot in an absolutely extraordinary way. It’s not likely that many people are throwing away memory modules lightly, but there are certainly plenty of people who find real treasures – especially in the form of old consoles and computers – in garbage dumps and recycling centers. And what for some is trash, for others is a small (or big) gem. On TikTok it’s easy find videos with people finding some devices that may be damaged, but that have possibility of being repaired. Electronic waste that is not waste. The Reddit user commented that he lives in a city of about 8,000 people, and the local landfill has a container for recycling electronic waste, something similar to what happens with the recycling centers or clean points that we find in Spain. It was in that part where this user found all those products as is, available for pickup. electronic waste. As they pointed out in Windows Centralthere are studies that indicate that less than a quarter of electronic waste is recycled properly. That means there is a lot of money wasted in the form of still valid hardware and also minerals and components that can be mined from those components. Image | Eugenia Pan’kiv In Xataka | The AI ​​leaves another news that will make the day worse for gamers: NVIDIA will not launch new graphics this year, according to The Information

The panic of technology companies about running out of chips has broken the RAM market. Manufacturers have said enough

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The RAM market is completely broken. In November of last year we talked about a 300% increasewas the result of the perfect storm caused by AI and data centers. Faced with brutal shortages, large companies are trying to get hold of as much memory as possible, which further destabilizes the market. Now manufacturers are taking matters into their own hands. No hoarders, thank you. In an extensive report published by Nikkei Asiatalk about the big three DRAM manufacturers (Samsung, Micron and SK Hynix) implementing stricter rules for their customers in order to prevent them from hoarding memory. The measures are aimed at ensuring that demand is real, that is, that the chips are not going to end up collecting dust in a warehouse “just in case.” Manufacturers are asking for details about who the chips are for, the quantities and what they will be used for. OpenAI’s dirty deal. We go back to October 1, 2025. OpenAI signed an agreement with Samsung and SK Hynix to a potential demand for 900,000 DRAM wafers per month. The figure is equivalent to 40% of all world production, absurd, but what is striking is the “potential.” As they point out multiple users on Xare securing a critical product for data centers that have not yet been built, with money they do not have. Some analysts called this agreement “The dirty DRAM deal”whose hidden objective seemed to point to a rather dirty move: to create a moat by preventing its competitors from accessing critical technology. Open orders. The AI ​​race is not going to stop because chips rise in price and big technology companies have done what they had to do: everything possible to get chips. At the end of last year, Reuters He said that some companies such as Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Meta had even approached Micron with open orders, that is, they were willing to accept all the memory they could supply, without a price cap. A full-fledged preventive hoarding. Compulsive shopping. AI companies are not the only ones that have tried to secure their chips, PC manufacturers such as Asus, MSI, Dell or HP also began to buy RAM compulsively at the end of 2025 for accumulate inventory before what was coming. Manufacturers are aware of overorders and that is why they are now demanding data on the end customer. The winners. While everyone is fighting to get their chips, Samsung is getting rich. It is not only that has tripled its profitsFurthermore, it is the technological more has appreciated in 2025ahead of Alphabet and TSMC. For its part, SK Hynix has doubled its profitsmainly due to the boom in demand for high-bandwidth memory (HBM), of which it is a key supplier. In Xataka | There is a lack of RAM memories and Micron is going to spend 1.8 billion dollars to produce more. but not for you Image | Unsplashedited

There is an unexpected victim of the rise in RAM memory prices: the very modern connected cars

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Which what’s happening with the RAM memories is making one thing clear: the best time to buy memory modules is yesterday. The price increase is so extraordinary which is already affecting other classic components of our PCs such as SSD units or graphics cards. However, the crisis that these components are generating goes further. Much further. Data centers devour memory. The AI ​​fever, we already know very well, has generated a voracious hunger not only for cutting-edge AI chips, but also for RAM and HBM memories that accompany these chips. As indicated in The Wall Street Journaldata centers (both conventional and those dedicated to AI) will consume more than 70% of the high-end memory chips that manufacturers produce in 2026. And if they could take more, they would take them. This is not (only) about PCs or mobiles. It is evident that the first affected by this problem are conventional desktop and laptop computers, as well as our mobile devices. Hundreds of millions of them are sold every year and they all have a certain amount of RAM that is now more expensive than ever. The shock wave is already causing other components such as SSD drives or graphics cards affected, but in reality memory chips are everywhere. And above all, in one. From TV to car. The frenetic rise in memory prices is certainly going to affect other segments that we had not thought about soon. Of course it will do so on other consumer electronic devices, and this certainly includes Smart TVs, which They have their own processor, memory and storage to offer us its functions. But the problem may be even more critical for cars, which for years were already computers with wheels and which are now even better and more powerful computers (and with more memory) with wheels. Memories of all kinds. Although car electronic systems have traditionally used RAM, the latest in most cases was not needed. But that was in the cars of a few years ago, because the arrival especially of the electric car and the fever for screens in our vehicles has made these needs different. Now our cars need various types of memory, but in some cases those modules are as good (or better) than the ones we have in our cell phones and computers. The ECUs. A modern car makes use of so-called ECUs (Electronic Control Units) for issues such as controlling the transmission, the airbag system or the engine itself. It is normal for them to have between 50 and 150 of these control units or microcontrollers, and almost all of them contain RAM for temporary data and a ROM for firmware and software. Infotainment systems. The most obvious component that surely comes to mind as that “car computer” is the infotainment system, which usually consists of a touch screen, navigation functions, support for CarPlay and Android Auto systems, and voice assistants. Although in many cars these systems use 1 GB or 2 GB of DRAM memory, there are more modern cars that They reach 4 GB and even 8 GB of LPDDR4 memory. And if we talk about some manufacturers like BYD or NIO, there are models in which They use 16 GB of LPDDR5 memory. The Ford SYNC 5 system, for example, is based on a Qualcomm SoC with 16 GB of RAM. Driving assistance requires memory. In addition to these components, there are others that also require the use of RAM. Advanced driving assistance systems (ADAS) allow you to activate functions such as adaptive cruise control, lane keep assist, automatic emergency braking or parking assistant. And to achieve this they use RAM with high bandwidth, which allows working with real-time images and processing of sensor signals. Samsung knows this well and in fact manufactures modules specifically oriented to this market. Tesla’s well-known autopilot hardware, Hardware 4 (currently used) makes use of 16 GB of RAMFor example. Micron already warned. In December 2023 Micron already indicated that “a car needs more memory than a (space) rocket.” The firm, an absolute protagonist in the field of RAM memory module manufacturing, indicated how in 2023 the average vehicle used 90 GB between RAM and NAND, but in 2026 that figure was estimated to be 278 GB and would reach 2 TB in high-end vehicles. That was good news for it and other manufacturers, and even then it pointed to how “generative AI is transforming automotive.” What they probably didn’t realize is that this revolution was going to need many data centers, and those data centers were going to need a lot of memory. And this is where we are. In Xataka | “Not a phone, it’s a car”: Volkswagen believes that screens in cars are going too far

El Corte Inglés leaves this top LG laptop with 1 TB and 32 GB of RAM at more than half the price

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If you were looking for a very top laptop to work, study or even play, we have found a very interesting offer during the “Save the VAT” campaign of El Corte Inglés. It’s about this LG gram 14Z90Sa 2024 model but still a very good purchase option. Although when entering the product page, it appears available for 881.06, everything seems to indicate that it is a price errorsince when the product is added to the basket, it costs 1,078.33 euros. However, it is a good offer, considering the LG official websitethis laptop is available for about 1,200 euros (similar price to what it has in other stores). Furthermore, before, this device cost 2,649 euros, so now you can take it with almost 60% discount. LG gram 14Z90S-G.AD78B laptop, Intel Core Ultra 7-155H, 32GB, 1TB SSD, 14″, W11 The price could vary. We earn commission from these links A very top laptop at a totally unbeatable price now The screen of this ultrabook of the Korean firm is one of its main hallmarks. It is of type 14 inch IPSs with a resolution of 1,920 x 1,200 pixels and anti-reflective treatment. In addition, it features a 16:10 format and a wide DCI-P3 color range of 99%. Your brain is the processor Intel Core Ultra 7-155Hwhich is accompanied by 32 GB RAM and internal storage SSD of 1 TB. In the graphics section, it comes with an Intel Arc graphics card, which will allow you to work with 4K UHD content with maximum fluidity. This laptop is ultralight, so It only weighs 1.1 kgso you can carry it comfortably anywhere backpack. In addition, its battery is another of its highlights, as it offers a range of up to 29.5 hours. You may also be interested in these accessories ZINZ Slim and Expandable Laptop Backpack The price could vary. We earn commission from these links BENFEI Laptop Stand with Docking Station USB C 7 in 1 The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Some of the links in this article are affiliated and may provide a benefit to Xataka. In case of non-availability, offers may vary. Images | LG In Xataka | This is the gaming tower that I would buy. The computers with the best quality-price ratio for gaming recommended by Xataka In Xataka | Best gaming laptops: which one to buy and eight recommended computers from 770 to 3,000 euros

Micron has emulated TSMC and is spending $1.8 billion on a RAM factory. Don’t clap yet

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Taiwan is becoming one of the technological hotspots worldwide. If the country was already at the center of the technology sector because it is the home of TSMCwill now take on more prominence in the new era of AI. Your crown jewel is investing an astronomical sum in the United States and, now, the American Micron ends to close a $1.8 billion deal in Taiwan. And you can guess the goal. Keep feeding the data centers based on RAM memory. Micron. In recent weeks, Micron has been one of the big names in the technology sector. However, Crucial may sound more familiar to you. It is, or was, Micron’s brand for consumer RAM, but also for storage. Their products are very well regarded when it comes to assembling a PC in parts, but They turned off the tap at the end of last year and the last shipments will occur in February 2026. Now, Micron is shifting its focus to something much bigger and more lucrative: artificial intelligence. Specifically, supplying those same components, but to large companies that are setting up gigantic data centers. In the end, a data center It is made up of hundreds of “computers” that need both storage and RAM. The operation. Given the context, we come to the news. As the company itself has confirmedhave just signed an operation worth $1.8 billion to take over the P5 factory of the Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation -PSMC- company in Tongluo, Taiwan. An operation like this must pass several filters, but the company’s intention is for the transaction to be closed by the second quarter of this same 2026. They have stepped on the accelerator, and as soon as they can, they will begin to do one thing: increase the production of DRAM memory. clean room. Micron has confirmed that it is just one of the operations it is contemplating in a global expansion movement “to meet the long-term demand of its customers,” and acquiring a semiconductor factory makes perfect sense. Beyond the fact that the components and machines are different, there is something that factories of this type share: clean rooms. It is an extremely… well, clean facility stripped of any external elements. Suspended particles are kept at extraordinarily low levels, temperature, humidity and pressure are highly controlled parameters and the air is filtered numerous times per hour. Static electricity is reduced as much as possible and, ultimately, it is a clinical space so that no impurities interfere with something as sensitive as the manufacturing of semiconductors. It is, in short, like an operating room (or stricter if possible). Example of a clean room “All in one hour“Creating something like this requires a considerable investment (which is why new companies are entering to compete in the RAM segment, as rumored with Asusit is tremendously complicated), and that is why Micron has taken over existing facilities that they will only have to adapt to their activity. Besides, take the example of TSMC. In Taiwan, all components TSMC needs are “an hour” away. This allows the assembly line to be efficient, minimizing time, maximizing production and saving money. The new Micron factory will be very close to the one they already have in Taichung, being able to emulate that way of working that has led TSMC to excellence. Consumption RAM for when. Micron is expected to begin optimizing the manufacturing process in the new plant by the second half of 2027, but thanks to the context we gave before, we know that these “customers” are not those who want to assemble a PC in parts or even assemblers such as Asus, MSI, Lenovo or Gigabyte: they are the ‘Big Tech’ that are setting up data centers. In a recent interview, Christopher Moore, vice president of marketing for Micron’s client and mobile business, said the problem and the RAM bottleneck is elsewherebut also stated that this growth in data centers has gone from representing 30% of its market to 60%. He also stated that, although Crucial has disappeared, Micron will continue to supply memory to OEM manufacturers, but it is evident that the bottleneck is affecting, that prices are through the roof and that things are not looking good if you had to renew PC.E And, according to Micron’s vice president, it will continue until 2028. At least. Images | Maxence Pira, Hunter Trick In Xataka | Google doesn’t have rockets, but it is going to install data centers in space. SpaceX and Blue Origin rub their hands

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