DRAM bulk prices have increased 3.5 times in half a year

Gelonghui, June 4 — According to Nikkei Chinese Edition, the prices of semiconductor memory DRAM are rising. The bulk trading price of 16GB DDR5 in April was around $35 each, about $2 (6%) higher than the previous month, marking the fourth consecutive monthly increase; half a year ago, it was traded at around $10 each, a 3.5-fold rise in six months. DDR4 prices are also steadily increasing on a quarterly basis. Based on information from more than 10 related companies, the bulk trading price of DDR4 8GB rose up to about 2 times in April–June compared to the previous quarter. In the DRAM field, Korea’s Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, and America's Micron Technology together account for over 90% of the global supply. These companies are now prioritizing the supply of stacked DRAM “High Bandwidth Memory (HBM)” needed for powering AI, thus reducing the production of general-purpose products for PCs and other uses. Compared to DDR5 and DDR4, HBM has a higher profit margin. In order to focus on HBM production, the three leading DRAM companies have successively halted or reduced DDR4 production. Currently, supply is mainly handled by Taiwanese memory manufacturers like Nanya Technology, but their output is smaller than the three giants and not enough to fill the gap. The major clients of these three companies are U.S. hyperscale cloud service providers (Hyperscalers). With the rapid adoption of AI, American companies such as Google are accelerating data center construction. U.S. research firm Omdia predicts that the global data center equipment investment will grow by an average of 17% per year, reaching $1.6 trillion by 2030.