Billions Poured Into Memory Chips And Still Not Enough
The world is in a serious memory crunch and two of the biggest players in the industry, SK Hynix and Micron, are throwing enormous amounts of money at the problem. That might sound like distant corporate news but it has a very real impact on anyone building a gaming PC, buying RAM or SSDs or keeping an eye on GPU prices.
SK Hynix has announced a massive investment of around 19 trillion won, or 12.9 billion dollars, into a brand new advanced chip packaging facility in Cheongju, South Korea. This plant is mainly aimed at producing high bandwidth memory, the super fast memory used in modern AI accelerators and some top end GPUs.
Construction is due to start in April and is not expected to be finished until late 2027. That means it will not be helping supply in the short term. It also follows an even bigger commitment from SK Hynix to build four new memory fabs worth over 500 billion dollars, with the first again targeting around 2027.
In simple terms, the memory makers are racing to build new factories, but the new capacity will not arrive any time soon. For PC gamers, that means we are not out of the woods on high memory prices.
AI Data Centers Are Eating All The Memory
So why is there a memory crisis at all? According to SK Hynix and industry watchers, the main driver is AI. Training and running large language models and other AI workloads needs huge amounts of high bandwidth memory and standard DRAM. Data centers are ordering chips as fast as manufacturers can make them.
Chey Tae won, chairman of SK Group, summed it up at the SK AI Summit in Seoul. He said that the industry has entered an era where supply is bottlenecked. Memory chip orders are coming in from many companies and the challenge is how to meet all of that demand.
High bandwidth memory is especially important here. SK Hynix is one of Nvidia’s key suppliers for the HBM used in AI accelerators. These accelerators power the racks of GPUs you hear about in AI servers. When AI companies are willing to pay premium prices and sign long term contracts, chip makers naturally prioritize them over lower margin consumer RAM and SSD products.
SK Hynix expects the AI focused memory market to grow about 30 percent per year between 2025 and 2030. That is an enormous growth curve, and it explains why new factories are aimed first at AI and data center products rather than traditional gaming or desktop memory.
Micron’s Megafab And The Shift Away From Consumer RAM
SK Hynix is not alone. Micron is planning its own giant leap with a historic megafab in New York State. The company is set to invest around 100 billion dollars in what is expected to be the largest semiconductor manufacturing facility in the United States. The project will begin once environmental reviews and permits are approved.
This is part of a broader strategy shift. Micron previously shut down its well known Crucial consumer memory brand to focus on supplying AI data centers. That move was a clear signal that the most profitable future is in high volume, high margin enterprise and AI products rather than consumer RAM kits.
Interestingly, Micron has since launched the Micron 3610 PCIe 5.0 NVMe SSD, which suggests it has not completely abandoned consumer storage. Still, the main direction is clear. The real growth and investment are aimed at AI and data center markets, not at making budget DDR5 kits cheaper for PC builders.
Micron’s CEO Sanjay Mehrotra framed the New York megafab as a key step for both Micron and the United States. As the global economy moves deeper into the AI era, leadership in advanced semiconductors is seen as a foundation for future innovation and economic power. He also highlighted Micron’s role as the only United States based manufacturer of memory.
What This All Means For PC Gamers And Builders
With tens of billions of dollars flowing into new memory capacity, you might hope that RAM and SSD prices will fall soon. Unfortunately, that is unlikely in the near term.
- Most of the new facilities will not be ready until around 2027 or later.
- They are primarily geared toward high bandwidth memory and data center products.
- AI demand is growing even faster than capacity is being added.
Industry observers now expect the memory supply crunch and elevated DRAM prices to potentially run into 2028 and beyond. For gamers and PC enthusiasts, that has a few practical implications.
- Do not expect a return to the rock bottom RAM prices we saw in some previous years any time soon.
- Planning a build or upgrade might mean locking in RAM and SSD deals when you see a reasonable price instead of waiting endlessly for a big drop.
- High end GPUs that rely on advanced memory technologies can also feel the impact of tight supply, since memory is a big part of their bill of materials.
On the positive side, all this investment does mean the memory ecosystem is not standing still. Over the next several years we should see faster and more efficient memory technologies filter from data center products down to mainstream hardware. That could mean better bandwidth and capacities for future gaming rigs, even if prices remain higher than we might like.
For now though, AI is the main customer and it is outbidding traditional PC markets. If you are building or upgrading a gaming PC, it is worth keeping an eye on memory and SSD price trends and being realistic about what the AI gold rush means for your next set of components.
Original article and image: https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/memory/in-a-bid-to-meet-the-memory-supply-crisis-head-on-sk-hynix-announces-it-will-invest-nearly-usd13-billion-into-fresh-ai-packaging-facility/
