According to TrendForce, due to the improvement in supply and demand, rising demand, and the impact of HBM memory, it is estimated that the revenue growth of DRAM memory and NAND flash memory will reach 75% and 77% respectively in 2024. Toptai advises customers to prepare stocks rationally.
DRAM memory revenue will continue to grow to 51% in 2025, with revenue reaching US$90.7 billion and US$136.5 billion in 2014 and 2015 respectively, setting new historical records.
Due to the growth in demand, the average DRAM price will increase by 53% and 35% in 2024 and 2025 respectively.
Samsung, on the other hand, recently reported its Q2 revenue as the AI boom boosted earnings in its semiconductor division; and with a 50% production cut and price increase in April 2023, Samsung achieved its fastest profit growth since 2010.
Profit revenue reached 10.44 trillion won, equivalent to 54.91 billion yuan, and the profit growth rate reached 1458%.
Let’s first look at the DRAM market share in Q1 2024. Samsung leads the way with a share of 43.9%, making it a real indicator of the memory market.
HMB memory is mainly used in graphics cards. The typical consumer graphics cards we have seen before are AMD’s Vega 64 and Vega 56.
It can be seen that compared with traditional GDDR video memory, HBM can obtain a larger bit width through a three-dimensional stacking method, thereby greatly improving the video memory bandwidth.
In recent years, AI has a huge amount of computing power, so high-bandwidth video memory is essential. NVIDIA’s latest graphics card for AI computing, the H200, uses HBM3E video memory.
NVIDIA increased its investment in the field of AI in 2022 and has a monopoly leading in AI. Now most of its energy and production capacity are on AI.
The increase in HBM demand and production capacity has squeezed the production capacity of traditional storage particles, thus making the production capacity in other DRAM areas tight.
In July, Samsung had the largest strike, with 6,540 employees, including 5,211 semiconductor-related positions. Such a scale is bound to have a significant impact on production.
Samsung Electronics National Labor Union NSEL (the striker) announced that they will continue the indefinite strike due to the breakdown of negotiations, and the two sides are currently in a stalemate.
In summary, on the one hand, HBM in the AI industry is squeezing out traditional DRAM production capacity. On the other hand, the production capacity is blocked due to Samsung’s strike. The price of consumer-grade storage particles will soar, thus affecting the price of memory. The rise in chip prices in the second half of 2024 has become an inevitable trend.
