Memory maker SK Hynix CEO Kwak Noh-|Jung has indicated that the ongoing memory shortage is likely to have its “worst year” in 2027, but that there will still be supply problems for a while yet. In fact, he added that the crunch could last until 2030.
Talking to Reuters at the debut of SK Hynix on the Nasdaq stock exchange, Kwak Noh-Jung said “we forecast that next year [2027] will be the worst year in the industry’s history from the supply perspective.” However, he added that “we still forecast that customer demand will remain higher than our supply capacity even beyond 2030.”
This remark comes hot on the heels of SK Hynix’s record-breaking US ADR listing, which raised $26.5 billion – the largest-ever US share sale by a foreign company, surpassing Alibaba’s 2014 debut. These claims correlate with previous comments from the other big memory players, Samsung and Micron, whose executives expect tight supply for memory to last beyond 2027, be it HBM, DRAM, or NAND.
For instance, Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra indicated that the company is only able to supply 50% of its customers’ demand in an interview with CNBC TV (shown below), despite its focus on key customers.
The culprit us, you guessed it, AI datacentres and their insatiable thirst for HBM. As well as requiring advanced and costly manufacturing processes, HBM also consumes more wafer capacity than DDR5, as it consists of multiple vertically-stacked DRAM dies. For example, an HBM3E stack can contain 16 DRAM dies, meaning it requires the same wafer capacity to produce as 16 conventional DDR5 DRAM chips.
Unfortunately, we can’t even count on the newcomer from China, CXMT, to cover high demand from the consumer segment, due to its comparatively lower production capacity and high chip prices. So, brace yourselves, the storm looks as though it’s getting worse for all consumer electronics devices, be it PCs, smartphones, or consoles.
