Samsung Electronics' and SK Hynix's storage semiconductor inventory has dropped to less than 10 days of supply, and the market is worried that the available inventory may run out next year. Analysts say the memory chip market is about to face a serious supply shortage as investment in artificial intelligence infrastructure expands at an unprecedented rate. The core factor exacerbating the supply shortage is a shift in production capacity to the next generation of high-bandwidth memory HBM4. The wafer production capacity required to produce HBM4 is approximately three times that of general purpose DRAM. In a situation where wafer production capacity is limited, large-scale expansion of HBM4 production will inevitably squeeze the usable production capacity of traditional DRAM. KB Securities estimates that next year the bit demand for DRAM and NAND flash memory will be more than 10 percentage points higher than supply. As of the third quarter, the memory chip inventory of Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix was less than 10 days of supply. Kim Dong-won, head of research at KB Securities, said, “This is not just a simple recovery in demand; the market may completely run out of saleable supplies.” He added, “AI servers will not only consume HBM, but will also consume large amounts of server DDR5 and enterprise-grade SSDs, which could cause historic supply shortages.”

Samsung Electronics' and SK Hynix's storage semiconductor inventory has dropped to less than 10 days of supply, and the market is worried that the available inventory may run out next year. Analysts say the memory chip market is about to face a serious supply shortage as investment in artificial intelligence infrastructure expands at an unprecedented rate. The core factor exacerbating the supply shortage is a shift in production capacity to the next generation of high-bandwidth memory HBM4. The wafer production capacity required to produce HBM4 is approximately three times that of general purpose DRAM. In a situation where wafer production capacity is limited, large-scale expansion of HBM4 production will inevitably squeeze the usable production capacity of traditional DRAM. KB Securities estimates that next year the bit demand for DRAM and NAND flash memory will be more than 10 percentage points higher than supply. As of the third quarter, the memory chip inventory of Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix was less than 10 days of supply. Kim Dong-won, head of research at KB Securities, said, “This is not just a simple recovery in demand; the market may completely run out of saleable supplies.” He added, “AI servers will not only consume HBM, but will also consume large amounts of server DDR5 and enterprise-grade SSDs, which could cause historic supply shortages.”