Memory executives expect RAM shortage to continue through 2028

Micron and Samsung executives this week said the memory shortage will continue for at least the next couple of years.

Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra expects demand for the firm’s memory to exceed its available supply over that period, he told investors last night.

Micron no longer sells consumer RAM, and Mehrotra’s statements refer to Micron’s business-to-business sales of high-bandwidth memory (HBM) for AI and DRAM for servers. However, his comments also have implications for consumer devices. Manufacturing capacity is prioritizing memory for AI and servers, limiting the supply of memory manufactured for consumer devices.

“Overall, supply-demand environment is only getting tighter,” Mehrotra said, per a transcript from Seeking Alpha.

Micron plans to open new clean rooms for memory manufacturing in 2028, but Mehrotra expects supply to remain limited.

“Even after they are built, even after first wafer output, production ramps up only gradually in the clean rooms,” he said. “That’s just the nature of what it takes to bring up production, and with HBM going from 3E to a greater mix of 4 and 4E, and with the trade ratio that exists, that … creates headwinds with respect to supply growth. Node transitions of the future give less productivity gain per wafer as well.”

Seventy-five percent of Micron’s memory output for 2027 is already accounted for, and most of the company’s current memory sales discussions are about 2028, the CEO said. Additionally, demand for HBM is surpassing demand for Micron’s DRAM.