Samsung says RAM costs will likely lead to price hikes soon

Trending 4 months ago

Samsung says AI information center-fueled RAM scarcity could raise nan company's prices. Wonjin Lee, Samsung's world trading leader, sounded nan siren successful an interview pinch Bloomberg connected Tuesday astatine CES 2026. As precocious arsenic early December, Samsung told Reuters that it was monitoring nan marketplace but wouldn't remark connected pricing. So, nan alteration of tune tin beryllium seen arsenic a deliberate awesome to soften nan crushed up of an charismatic announcement.

"There's going to beryllium issues astir semiconductor supplies, and it's going to impact everyone," Samsung’s Lee said. "Prices are going up moreover arsenic we speak. Obviously, we don't want to convey that load to nan consumers, but we're going to beryllium astatine a constituent wherever we person to really see repricing our products."

Marketing image of Samsung HBM RAM against a achromatic background

Samsung appears to beryllium softening nan crushed up of an charismatic announcement. (Samsung)

The global RAM shortage is nan consequence of AI information centers gobbling up high-bandwidth memory. Memory manufacturers person shifted their output priorities to meet that demand, starring to a snowball effect wherever moreover nan low-bandwidth RAM recovered successful automobiles is affected.

"AI workloads are built astir memory," Sanchit Vir Gogia, CEO of Greyhound Research, told NPR successful precocious December. "AI has changed nan quality of request itself. Training and conclusion systems require large, persistent representation footprints, utmost bandwidth, and tight proximity to compute. You cannot dial this down without breaking performance."

It's been much than 3 years since ChatGPT launched and kicked disconnected nan AI craze. During that time, companies person hyped chatbots and different generative AI devices arsenic a exertion that will return america to nan promised land, making life easier arsenic instrumentality learning automates our regular lives. It isn't yet clear if an AI bubble is group to burst, but immoderate financial forecasters person sounded nan alarm. Regardless, it's difficult to spot really consumers and workers are getting thing but nan short extremity of nan instrumentality truthful far.

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Source engadget.com
engadget.com