I was under the impression that the underlying memory chips are the ones we have a shortage of, and HBM is just one way to package them?
I was under the impression that the underlying memory chips are the ones we have a shortage of, and HBM is just one way to package them?
minfapper@piefed.social 9 hours ago
what we actually have a shortage of is the underlying memory chip fabs. That is, the machines that can take the silicon and stamp them into DRAM/HBM/whatever else you need.
So, once the bubble pops and enough of those free up to (potentially) resume manufacturing DRAM sticks at the rate they were back in 2025, we’ll get regular inventory again, but there won’t be a surplus.
You can’t pluck out the silicon from an already built chip and shove it in another, unfortunately 😅, and I don’t think anyone will be able to build an adapter that lets you plug HBM into DRAM slots because they’re architecturally just different enough for that to be infeasible.
So that will leave all those AI machines as scrap the hyperscalers have to deal with, but won’t help the rest of us.