Micron CEO: RAM Shortage Will Persist Through 2028
Memory executives expect RAM shortage to continue through 2028
Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra told investors that memory demand will outstrip supply for at least two more years, with 75 percent of 2027 output already sold and most current negotiations focused on 2028. Samsung's Kim Taewoo expects HBM to consume nearly 30 percent of DRAM wafer capacity next year, squeezing consumer device memory and driving up prices for PCs, smartphones, and consoles.
Overall, supply-demand environment is only getting tighter.
- bunderbunder
Oracle's recent force majeure invocation shines a spotlight on what seems to be an endemic problem: datacenter builders have been signing commitments to bring a certain amount of capacity online by a certain date, without first conducting sufficient due diligence about whether they would be able to secure all the resources needed to meet those commitments.
This means they are now caught in a mad scramble to source all sorts of stuff, including RAM, potentially as a matter of life and death.
What's less clear to me, though, is whether datacenter builders will be able to make good on these purchase agreements. It seems these projects have every opportunity to fail, and the path to success keeps getting narrower. What are the odds that chip manufacturers ultimately get caught holding a bag of chips that nobody can buy in one hand, and a bag of IOUs from bankrupt customers in the other?
- Roark66
The real problem is not that they are buying all the hardware, but that they are buying it and keeping it in bloody warehouses without bringing it online. Because they haven't got DC capacity for it.
Has anyone else here been trying to rent some cloud gpus for reasonable money? I have. I have signed up to a dozen "providers" that advertise everything from tesla cards to b200 only to find stuff is either out of capacity or double/triple the price.
- konaraddi
Discussed yesterday
- Magi604
Was at the computer store yesterday and the RAM I bought for $130 last year is now over $800.
- mmmBacon
Remember when software was eating the world? The gravy train ran out on commodity hardware and now we are paying the price for almost 3 decades of underinvestment.