The explosive growth of artificial intelligence computing has caused a global shortage of not only RAM but also SSDs. Data storage device manufacturers are talking about a production crisis due to memory chip shortages and rising product prices.
As a result, Taiwanese data storage device manufacturer Transcend, according to media reports, warned distributors about a possible shortage of SSDs. Since October, the company has not received a single batch of new memory chips used in SSDs and USB flash drives from its two largest suppliers – US SanDisk and South Korea's Samsung. Furthermore, in just one week, chip prices have doubled. The company expects to have supply problems over the next three to five months. Transcend is certainly not the largest SSD manufacturer, but chances are others are experiencing the same problem.
The reason is that chip manufacturers have switched to producing high-performance memory, which AI companies need. Alexey Boyko, analyst on telegram channel abloud62, continued:
Alexey Boyko, abloud62 telegram channel analyst:
“Memory manufacturing businesses, as a rule, are universal. That is, they do not only specialize in the production of high-speed memories for AI accelerators, but they produce all types of memory. But HBM-type memories, i.e. high-speed memories for AI computation, bring the highest profit margins to these businesses, and therefore, they are more interested in fulfilling orders for such chips than in the production of low-margin types of products than in the form of, for example, NAND flash. Accordingly, they have converted all the manufacturing capacity suitable for creating high-speed memory to it.”
That is, production of SSDs may stop – although of course, manufacturers may have some chips left in reserve. The question is how long will they last? All this will lead to SSD shortages and inevitable price increases in such cases. The scale can be roughly estimated based on what's going on with RAM prices. Roman Dushkin, General Director of “AZ Expert”, senior lecturer at the Department of Cybernetics at MEPhI National Nuclear Research University, said:
Roman Dushkin, General Director of AZ Expert, Senior Lecturer of Cybernetics Department» NRNU MEPhI:
“The price skyrocketed. An employee said: At the end of August he bought himself 20 thousand RAM. He said it was 20 thousand, “toad choke”, but he still bought it. Now he posted a photo of the market – the chip he bought for 20 thousand in August was worth more than 100 thousand. The price of the video card also increased almost 5 times. And my business colleague said: “Why do all this? Now buy video cards with all the money and sell them in a month. That's business!”
In fact, with solid state drives, i.e. SSDs, things can get even worse than with RAM. Because AI companies themselves need them in large quantities. Including storing the data sets on which the neural network is trained. For the average consumer, this only means one thing: if you need a new SSD or RAM, you better buy them now. Tomorrow it will be even more expensive. This is what the PR director of company M. told Business FM. Video – Eldorado” Sergey Kolyada:
Serge Kolyada, PR Director of company “M. Video – Eldorado”:
“In the retail market, the changes are manifesting themselves dynamically: each new batch of SSD memory and video cards has a higher purchase price, so the growth seems to be gradual and the heterogeneity is noticeable. There are still a lot of products sold at the old contract price, which is why the dynamics are different between different vendors and brands. In general, the price increase has affected RAM, SSD drives, video cards, finished PCs, servers and other We recommend that all customers planning to purchase devices with large memory capacities in the future make these purchases in the future.” near future.”
And perhaps there will be more unscrupulous sellers, including Chinese ones, who, under the guise of new SSDs, will sell drives assembled from used components on online platforms. The same thing happened with video cards during the mining boom.
