We haven't been complaining about RAM prices quite as much on the podcast lately as we had been, but our negativity remains strong. It's just human nature to accept our fate as…

Owing to the surge in DRAM prices, one kilogram of memory chips manufactured in Korea is now worth as much as 620 grams of gold. The global memory shortage, ushered in by the ongoing AI infrastructure buildout, has led to triple-digit percentage increases in memory chip prices. Owing to the price rises, memory companies SK hynix and Samsung have also paid generous bonuses to their employees, with Micron's workers in Taiwan also purportedly interested in similar bonuses. Data From Korean Trade Statistics Agency Shows One Kg Of DRAM Costs As Much As 620 Grams Of Gold Data from Korea's Trade […]

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SK Hynix is leveraging advanced packaging technologies such as Intel's EMIB for its next-gen HBM solutions, which will eventually enter the 3D packaging stage. Scaling HBM Comes With Big Challenges & SK Hynix Is Leveraging Advanced Packaging Solutions To Address Them As It Ventures Into The 3D Era At Hot Chips 2026, Jaesik Lee (VP Package Engineering at SK Hynix) presented the "Advanced Packaging for High-Bandwidth Memory" brief, which talks about how the company plans to leverage advanced packaging tech to accelerate its HBM roadmap. The company started by presenting how HBM is currently built. The HBM structure consists of […]

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SK hynix has turned into a massive financial juggernaut on the back of the relentless demand for HBM and the corresponding shortages on the legacy DRAM and NAND front. Now, just a few days after the memory giant rolled out a titanic stock buyback program, it has reportedly agreed to an employee compensation package laden with bells and whistles, including a carve out for its employees' aunts and uncles. SK hynix's tentative pay package includes a wage increase, downside protection for equity awards, and an increase in pension support, shift-work allowance, housing loan limits, promotion rates, meal support, bereavement support, […]

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A seismic shift in the DRAM industry has enabled major players like Samsung, SK hynix, and Micron to move away from their volatile and razor-thin margins and enforce a more stable business model that involves locking in long-term supply contracts and strict price floors through 2030. One analysis reveals that these manufacturers are sitting on $38 billion worth of deals, holding immense leverage over customers, but this position of power won’t last forever. Samsung, Micron, and SK hynix have set up a financial position that won’t last forever as time moves on The DRAM supply to a multitude of customers […]

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NVIDIA's Rubin Ultra & Vera chips are subject to various "downgrade" rumors, but the company says that it is part of its optimization strategy. NVIDIA Rubin Ultra AI Chips & Vera CPUs Feature Optimized Memory Configurations For Performance & Scale Recently, there has been lots of online chatter surrounding NVIDIA's Vera, Vera Rubin, and Rubin Ultra platforms. Most of the discussion is centered around rumors of a potential downgrade that will cut the memory subsystem on these chips significantly. Now, rumors surrounding downgrades, down-spec, and delays aren't new for NVIDIA chips. There have been similar stories in the past during […]

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One would ordinarily think that the US government would approach its relations with China as a strategic conundrum that is to be to sifted through, not bludgeoned; but then this might be a herculean task for an administration that has shown no such inclination or capacity, with its make-up-as-you-go-along stratagem - replete with hefty ad hocism - now producing a bevy of unintended consequences, such as Samsung and SK hynix choosing to populate their China-based fabs with Chinese equipment to insulate those facilities against future US export controls. Samsung and SK hynix are testing chipmaking tools from China's AMEC for […]

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Buckle up as the ongoing memory- and HBM-related bottleneck is about to get materially decongested, thanks to SanDisk's initiative to develop High-Bandwidth Flash (HBF) in concert with SK hynix, which should eventually lead to a bifurcation in tasks that are currently performed solely by the HBM. HBF can offer read bandwidth that is orders of magnitude higher than what a JEDEC HBM4 offers, but suffers on write endurance Before discussing the HBF standard, let's first go over the memory wall issue that often comes up with HBM. HBM and the memory wall issue An AI model with 100 billion parameters […]

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As AI accelerators face severe performance disparity between High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) and SSDs, SK hynix and SanDisk have collectively introduced a solution that aims to resolve the performance gap with a new standard called High Bandwidth Flash (HBF). Both memory manufacturers aim to create an ecosystem where various enterprises can develop compatible products. HBF specifications allow for up to 512GB in a single configuration that stacks NAND dies in eight or 16 layers In a nutshell, HBF possesses attributes that allow it to be positioned between HBM and enterprise SSDs. Similar to HBM, HBF relies on multiple memory dies […]

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Chinese memory chip manufacturer ChangXin Memory Technologies, or CXMT, is reportedly closing in on mass-producing LPDDR6 memory chips. CXMT is a frequent feature of media coverage due to the ongoing shortage in the memory market, which, despite its limited global presence, has been speculated to disrupt the role of Samsung and SK hynix in the industry. The firm's IPO created fireworks as it became the latest in Asia and saw the shares surge by a whopping 466% to close at CNY49 after opening at CNY8.66 per share. CXMT's LPDDR6 Memory Chips About To Complete R&D Verification, Says Report Today's report […]

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AI customers of various forms have given Samsung and SK hynix new opportunities to reach staggering heights through insatiable DRAM demand. However, these gateways can also become perilous pitfalls if companies aren’t careful, which is why both memory manufacturers had to overhaul their entire business models to withstand those recession cycles. Here’s how they did it. Securing LTAs (Long-Term Agreements) is one thing, but Samsung and SK hynix have insulated themselves from demand fallout The memory industry has historically been extremely vulnerable to those aggressive “boom-and-bust” cycles, and Samsung is no stranger to those back-breaking losses. Now, with the Korean […]

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It seems hell hath no fury like a commodity DRAM chip spurned. As HBM continues to hog DDR wafers, the supply of DRAM might plummet as much as 70 percent in 2027, according to the CEO of Apacer, which echoes recent pronouncements from the CEO of SK hynix. The CEO of Apacer expects the supply of commodity DRAM to fall off the proverbial roof in 2027, echoing pronouncements from the CEO of SK hynix, who thinks "next year will be the worst year in the industry's history from the supply perspective" According to the CEO of Apacer, C.K. Chang, DRAM […]

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Things are about to get very ugly for at least one of the so-called 'Big Three' memory players, as SK hynix has just reported a bruising miss on consensus expectations, courtesy of its heavy tilt towards AI-centric HBM. SK hynix misses Q2 2026 consensus expectations for its revenue and operating profit by 5.4 percent and 5.9 percent, respectively SK hynix has just reported $54.6 billion (79.3 trillion won) in revenue vs. a consensus estimate of $57.7 billion (83.9 trillion won). Also, the high-flying memory player has disclosed an operating profit of $41.6 billion (60.5 trillion won) against a consensus estimate […]

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South Korea's President led an AI summit in San Francisco on Friday, and the venue became an epicenter of deal-making, with at least $750 billion worth of long-term agreements (LTAs) and MOUs inked within the span of just a few hours, and was followed by a 'family dinner' attended by representatives from NVIDIA, Broadcom, Microsoft, Samsung, SK hynix, Hyundai Motor and Naver. Samsung, SK hynix, and NVIDIA secured $750 billion worth of agreements at San Francisco's AI summit Under the terms of this agreement, NVIDIA will get a "co-develop opportunity" on SK hynix's next-gen HBM, helping it secure a stable […]

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CXMT is now charging more for memory than the big three DRAM makers as demand swells in China's domestic AI markets. CXMT Benefits Big Time From DRAM Crisis By Charging Hefty Premium For Its Memory Products Most global media outlets were under the impression that CXMT was going to be the "Cheaper Alternative" to Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron, who are asking big sums of cash for their DRAM products, but that wasn't the case. In our exclusive, we reported that CXMT's advantage was not in its price, but in its supply, and that remained true; demand skyrocketed 10-fold, and […]

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At the silicon front, companies like Apple, Qualcomm, MediaTek, and Samsung have progressed tremendously in making their SoCs incredibly powerful for on-device AI, but their advancements will continue to remain stunted due to packaging and DRAM limitations. While one of these aspects has been addressed, a new report states that SK hynix is working on the second obstacle through the development of 3D-stacked DRAM-on-logic architecture on mobile phones. SK hynix is recruiting engineers to accelerate the development of 3D-stacked DRAM-on-logic architecture, removing on-device AI limitations on smartphones This next-generation memory stacks directly on top of a semiconductor chip and will […]

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Given the very juicy margins in the memory chip business right now, it's not so unthinkable that Intel might soon dip its toes, so to speak, in this red-hot sector, especially as a confluence of anecdotal evidence suggests that the chipmaker is at least thinking along those lines. Intel references its hiring of SK hynix's former CEO when an analyst brings up its Z-Angle Memory plans Two of the biggest takeaways from Intel's just-concluded earnings call relate to the 14A node's risk production now commencing in 2027, and the chipmaker's confidence in hiking its CapEx "significantly" next year, hinting at […]

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If you think the ongoing memory chipflation-led mayhem in the consumer electronics sphere is the worst it gets, the CEO of SK hynix wants you to think again, especially amid consistent reports that the memory sphere will not enter into a supply-demand equilibrium for many years to come. The year 2027 will see wafer supply grow by 12%, but half of this growth will be consumed by HBM, limiting ex-HBM DRAM bit growth to 15% against a surge in demand of 22% To wit, SK hynix CEO, Kwak Noh-jung, has just projected that tougher times lie ahead even after the […]

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As if the profits garnered from general-purpose DRAM weren’t enough for the three memory giants Samsung, Micron, and SK hynix, these companies also planned on deepening their pockets through the development of custom controllers for CXL (Compute Express Link), a next-generation technology designed to expand a server’s capacity. However, realizing that their lucrative customers won’t entertain spending a premium, the big three have reportedly abandoned development plans and are sticking with a universal input for standard DRAM. CXL controller design will now be handled by other companies, but Samsung, Micron, and SK hynix won’t pitch the idea if there’s zero […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/samsung-micron-sk-hynix-drop-in-house-dram-controllers-over-fear-of-losing-billions/