For anyone who was under the mistaken impression that the RAM situation would get better in 2027, I’m afraid I have some bad news:

https://www.digitimes.com.tw/tech/dt/n/shwnws.asp?CnlID=1&id=0000763847_DVY7YHX65GMLYZ6UQEEMP

The article says the memory market is currently undergoing a structural shift. If you’ve been following my posts, this shouldn’t come as much of a surprise.

The headline roughly translates to:

Memory production for all of 2027 is already sold out. Buyers are keeping quiet because they’re afraid they might not get enough themselves.

According to DigiTimes, the 2027 production capacity of the three major DRAM manufacturers, Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron, has essentially already been allocated.

And China isn’t going to save us either. Even Apple just hit a wall there:

https://www.techpowerup.com/351401/tsmc-sits-on-usd-1-billion-of-apple-chips-as-it-waits-for-dram

This affects both regular DRAM and HBM. The situation with NAND is a little less extreme, but even there, large chunks of 2027 production are already being reserved.

So we’re moving from

“RAM is getting scarce.”

to

“The big customers aren’t buying memory chips anymore. They’re reserving factory capacity years in advance.”

DigiTimes paints a pretty vivid picture: some buyers are deliberately keeping quiet about just how aggressively they’re reserving capacity, because they’re worried that too much attention will bring even more companies into the bidding and leave them with a smaller share.

Memory manufacturers are increasingly signing three- to five-year LTAs, Long-Term Agreements, with their major customers. Large cloud and AI companies use these deals to secure fixed volumes or production capacity. On top of that, manufacturers are sometimes demanding advance payments or deposits to reserve that capacity.

Interesting times ....