Three top memory makers added more than $1 trillion in value since August: Samsung, SK Hynix, Micron | Bloomberg

BBG: Few sectors have been transformed by that headlong rush more than global memory. In the three years since ChatGPT, Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron have diverted the bulk of their manufacturing, research and investments toward the HBM used in AI accelerators from Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. That means less plant capacity to make plain-vanilla DRAM for basic electronics like phones.

The three companies are prioritizing HBM over DRAM because of simple math.

For every Nvidia AI accelerator that the hyperscalers buy, these companies also need high-bandwidth memory, or HBM, to power their efforts. Such chips are made up of intricately packed DRAM, often stacked in layers of eight or 12. Nvidia’s latest Blackwell comes with 192 gigabytes of RAM, or six times the amount that a powerful modern PC would need. An integrated AI server system dubbed the NVL72 boasts 72 Blackwell chips and 13.4 terabytes of RAM. Each NVL72 rack-scale system sold uses enough memory for a thousand high-end smartphones or a few hundred beefy PCs.