Micron and Samsung Project Memory Shortages for Next Few Years

Top executives from Micron and Samsung warned this week that memory shortages are expected to continue for the foreseeable future.

In a recent investor meeting, Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra stated that the demand for the company’s memory products will surpass the available supply in the coming years.

Although Micron no longer focuses on consumer RAM sales, Mehrotra’s remarks specifically address the business-to-business sales of high-bandwidth memory (HBM) for AI and DRAM for servers. Nevertheless, the impact of this shortage will be felt in the consumer electronics market as well, with manufacturing prioritizing memory for AI and servers, leading to limited availability for consumer devices.

“The supply and demand dynamics will only become more challenging,” according to Mehrotra. Source: Seeking Alpha.

Micron is set to open a new clean room for memory production in 2028, yet Mehrotra anticipates that the supply will continue to be constrained.

According to Mehrotra, “Even after the initial wafer production in the clean room, the production ramps up gradually. This gradual increase is crucial for enhancing production capacity. The transition of HBM from 3E to a higher mix of 4E and 4E is causing challenges in supply growth due to current trade ratios. Additionally, future node migrations are projected to yield less productivity gains per wafer.”

As per the CEO, 75% of Micron’s memory production for 2027 is already allocated, with most of the ongoing sales negotiations focused on 2028. Furthermore, the demand for HBM surpasses that for Micron’s DRAM products.