In summary:
- SK Hynix is investing $13 billion in a massive 57-acre High Bandwidth Memory facility, but PCWorld reports it will exclusively serve industrial AI data centers, not consumer needs.
- The new plant won’t become operational until 2030, offering no relief for current memory shortages and skyrocketing RAM prices affecting consumers.
- Industrial AI demand is creating severe memory supply constraints expected to persist for up to six years across the electronics industry.
The three biggest memory producers on the planet are Samsung, Micron, and SK Hynix. The latter just announced that it’s investing 19 trillion Korean won, approximately $13 billion USD, into a gigantic new memory fabrication facility. But if you’re hoping it’ll make RAM for PCs or graphics cards, keep on hoping: this facility is exclusively making High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) for industrial hardware.
According to SK Hynix’s press release (machine translated), this massive investment is supported by the local governments in the North Chungcheong Province. With a planned total area of approximately 231,000 square meters or 57 acres, the facility would be more than triple the size of a professional football stadium, and approximately eight times as expensive as the Burj Khalifa skyscraper.
As “AI” data centers continue to be planned and constructed, putting strain on electricity and other resources, industrial demand for memory far outstrips current output. The result is a memory supply crunch that has sent prices skyrocketing across the entire electronics industry, from the biggest companies to the smallest customers. Micron has flat-out killed Crucial, its direct-to-consumer memory seller. And Samsung has struggled to fulfill orders to its own consumer electronics division, as the semiconductor business prioritizes more profitable orders from data center suppliers.
Unfortunately, chip fabrication plants take years to get up and running. Even if the HBM memory supplied by this new mega complex could ease the production crunch and open up manufacturing capacity for consumer-grade RAM elsewhere, it’s likely that it won’t be built and getting chips out before 2030. Industry commenters say that one to two years of constrained memory supply is the absolute best-case scenario, with some estimates saying that the current situation may take six years or more to resolve.
Author: Michael Crider, Staff Writer, PCWorld
Michael is a 15-year veteran of technology journalism, covering everything from Apple to ZTE. On PCWorld he's the resident keyboard nut, always using a new one for a review and building a new mechanical board or expanding his desktop "battlestation" in his off hours. Michael's previous bylines include Android Police, Digital Trends, Wired, Lifehacker, and How-To Geek, and he's covered events like CES and Mobile World Congress live. Michael lives in Pennsylvania where he's always looking forward to his next kayaking trip.