SK Hynix CEO sees memory chip shortage lasting until 2030

mey

No projections/information/analysis. The statement from someone with a vested interest in this demand lasting an extended period of time (including the statement that demand will continue past 2030).

catigula

Aren't they printing unlimited money from this? I'm sure the chip shortage lasts as long as they're capable of extending it without falling to competitors. That's the problem with monopolies.

PowerElectronix

He could just have said "lasting forever and ever". It's ram chips, the bottom of the barrel of semi manufacturing. If you get high prices for long enough, everyone is gonna jump into the market.

drob518

New title: SK Hynix CEO is desperate for memory chip shortage to last until 2030 or longer Fixed it for you.

alephnerd

Honestly surprised by the degree of skepticism about this on HN. The rack assemblers like Dell, HPE, Supermicro, and Lenovo have 18 to 24 month backlogs on deliveries at the moment, and even the neoclouds have 6-9 month backlogs to onboard customers onto their SaaS platforms, and 12-24 month backlogs for delivering bare metal. All those require memory. Also, 2030 is barely 3 years away from now as 2027 is around the corner. Yes we are ALL old now. Using priors from 2015-2019 today is the equivalent of thinking your experience in 1995-1999 should inform decisions made in 2008-2013.

fakedang

Memory chip shortage lasting *until China floods the market with their cheaper but rigged chips. FTFY. At the rate China's moving on this, it won't be long till they get a stranglehold on the consumer chip market.

marcosscriven

What are the limiting factors here? Clearly it’s the fabrication of RAM/HBM chips. But if the margin is so high, why can’t other fabs like CPU fabs be used? I assume they’re not as CPU prices are going down. Or are they radically different and not easily reconfigured?

Taqas

Given economy of scale, on the long-term can we expect lower than 2019 RAM prices?

nashashmi

Given the possibility of setting up new memory fab plants takes 10 years, given that data companies are spending money on power plants based on power consumption forecasts, but are not spending on memory fab plants, I take it that data companies are seeing the current memory makers as sufficient for their needs. Meaning if the avg consumer is going to buy memory, they are going to have to fork a whole lot more money than they did before, because they will be paying the price of profit generating data companies. The next phase of improvements will have to be in consumer software to be more memory efficient. Gone are the days of electron apps and other memory intensive systems of programming./

vikramkr

That's like 3 and a half years away? I can see that - fabs don't get built overnight and bubbles aren't under any obligation to pop on a timeline. Wild that 2030 is not that far away. Sometimes it feels like we never left 2020.

glimshe

In other news, Exxon sees growing oil demand in the foreseeable future.

cute_boi

I just hope CXMT wins this rat race. These monopolies sucks.