Samsung and SK Hynix spend billions more on DRAM production to feed the never-ending hunger for AI servers

A promotional image for Samsung's latest HBM3E memory chips, showing a generic image on the left and a stylised render of the internal structure in a chip on the right.

For as long as it has been running, the DRAM industry has been going through cycles of increased production and then scaling it back to boost profits. But now the two largest manufacturers are set to spend billions of dollars to significantly increase RAM chip output, all to meet the neverending demand for AI computers.

Samsung and SK Hynix manufacture all kinds of DRAM, be it DDR4 or DDR5 to go into your PC's motherboard, as well as GDDR6 (and now GDDR7) for your graphics card. But when it comes to the mega-processors, like AMD's Instinct MI300 and Nvidia's H100, the memory of choice is so-called High Bandwidth Memory (HBM).