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Tuesday 2 December 2025
Samsung Electronics to maintain quarterly DRAM supply negotiations amid rising memory costs
Samsung Electronics' Device Solutions (DS) division will continue negotiating mobile DRAM supplies on a quarterly basis with its Mobile eXperience (MX) division, despite ongoing memory shortages and surging prices, according to reports from the Seoul Economic Daily and Nate. This approach aims to enhance DS's profitability but increases cost pressures on the MX division ahead of the Galaxy S26 series launch.
Tuesday 2 December 2025
Samsung, SK Hynix lead HBM market, capitalize on Google's TPU push
Google's expanding investment in custom AI accelerators is reshaping the high-bandwidth memory market and lifting Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix as demand for tensor processing unit-based systems rises in data centers.
Tuesday 2 December 2025
AI drives Samsung's 2026 operating profit toward KRW100T
Artificial intelligence (AI) is fueling a DRAM supercycle, prompting South Korean securities firms to continuously raise their forecasts for Samsung Electronics' operating profit in 2026. Some projections now approach KRW90-100 trillion (approx. US$61.3-68.1 billion).
Tuesday 2 December 2025
Samsung restructures research and memory teams to reclaim HBM market share
Samsung Electronics is undertaking one of its most significant internal restructurings in years as the company pushes to strengthen its artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities and regain momentum in the fast-growing HBM memory market. The overhaul includes converting its flagship research arm, the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology, into a lab-based system and consolidating memory development teams under a new organization led by senior engineering executives.
Monday 1 December 2025
Micron reportedly plans new Hiroshima fab to reduce reliance on Taiwan production
Micron Technology is reportedly planning to invest JPY1.5 trillion(US$9.6 billion) to establish a new high-bandwidth memory (HBM) manufacturing facility at its Hiroshima campus, according to Nikkei. The initiative aims to increase production of advanced chips designed for artificial intelligence (AI) systems and to lessen the company's dependence on Taiwan amid growing concerns over global supply chain vulnerabilities.
Monday 1 December 2025
CXMT narrows DRAM gap; market impact may be smaller than expected?
China's memory manufacturer CXMT, backed by government support, shifted to high-end technology development from 2025 and has introduced multiple next-generation DRAM products within a year, with performance approaching Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix.
Monday 1 December 2025
Samsung and SK Hynix to unveil next-gen memory tech at ISSCC 2026
At the upcoming International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) 2026 in February, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix are set to unveil significant advances in high-performance memory. Samsung plans to showcase a redesigned 6th-generation high-bandwidth memory (HBM4) delivering 3.3TB/s of bandwidth, while SK Hynix will introduce its latest high-speed LPDDR6 and GDDR7 products.
Monday 1 December 2025
December memory prices surge as the real crunch lies ahead
Global memory supply has tightened so abruptly that December contract prices for major DRAM and NAND products have surged as much as 80 to 100 percent, according to Team Group General Manager Gerry Chen. He said the market is only entering the early phase of a multiyear shortage and that the real crunch will emerge in the first half of 2026 once distributors finish clearing inventory.
Monday 1 December 2025
Samsung's HBM3E performance leap propels it to become primary supplier of Google's Ironwood TPU
Media reports show that Google's Ironwood TPU is equipped with HBM3E from Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix. According to the Korea Economic Daily, Samsung supplied over 60% of the total HBM delivered to Google via Broadcom in 2025. This was possible by a redesign of the DRAM used in HBM, which boosted HBM3E performance.
Monday 1 December 2025
TSMC reportedly set to take over base-die production in HBM4E generation

Micron said in its latest quarterly results that it will work with TSMC to produce base logic dies for both standard and custom HBM4E memory. The disclosure highlights a significant shift in how next-generation high-bandwidth memory may be built, as foundries, rather than DRAM makers, begin handling the foundational logic layer of advanced HBM stacks.

Monday 1 December 2025
Weekly news roundup: China phone makers pull back as Huawei advances chip tech, Nvidia strengthens Taiwan ties
These are the most-read DIGITIMES Asia stories in the week of November 24 to November 30, 2025.
Sunday 30 November 2025
Samsung reportedly nears December verdict on Nvidia HBM4 tests
Samsung Electronics is reportedly nearing the final stage of qualification tests for its HBM4 memory chips with Nvidia, with a December decision that could mark one of the company's most significant comebacks in the high-end memory market in recent years, according to South Korean outlet Newdaily. At the same time, reports from ZDNet Korea and The Korea Herald say Samsung has overhauled its memory development organization to stabilize HBM production and challenge SK Hynix's lead.
Saturday 29 November 2025
CXMT's high-end DRAM push narrows China's gap with South Korea to one year
China's leading DRAM maker CXMT has unveiled new DDR5 and LPDDR5X chips with performance now viewed as comparable to Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix. The launch has unsettled South Korea's memory sector, especially since CXMT reached this level in under a year after pivoting from low-cost DRAM to premium development in early 2025.
Friday 28 November 2025
Samsung races to seal HBM4 deal with Nvidia, targets early 2026 shipments
Samsung Electronics is reportedly nearing a deal with Nvidia on 2026 HBM4 pricing, aiming to match SK Hynix's rates as the company accelerates capacity expansion and reorganizes its DRAM development teams to regain momentum in the premium AI memory market.
Friday 28 November 2025
AI workload surge creates opening for alternative memory and chiplet technologies, expert says
The rapid expansion of artificial intelligence (AI) workloads is forcing a fundamental redesign of data center infrastructure, driving historic memory shortages and opening a rare market window for alternative memory technologies, according to Chuck Sobey, founder of ChannelScience and general chair of the Chiplet Summit.
Friday 28 November 2025
DRAM and NAND spike 100%+: triggering 2025's toughest pricing crisis for electronics makers
A global surge in memory prices is disrupting the electronics supply chain, creating what manufacturers describe as 2025's toughest pricing season. DRAM and NAND costs are rising at record speed, pressuring margins across smartphones, PCs, home NAS devices, and industrial touch terminals.
Friday 28 November 2025
Meta and Nvidia reportedly push to integrate GPUs into HBM for AI boost
To enhance artificial intelligence (AI) performance, Meta and Nvidia are advancing plans to embed GPU compute cores directly into the base die of high-bandwidth memory (HBM). This innovation blurs the lines between memory and system semiconductors, presenting new opportunities and challenges for South Korea's semiconductor industry.
Friday 28 November 2025
Exclusive: CSPs lock in memory capacity with two-year LTAs through 2028
Explosive AI demand is accelerating a historic global memory chip shortage, with major cloud service providers (CSPs) securing multi-year long-term agreements (LTAs) to guarantee supply through 2027 and 2028. Industry sources reveal that nearly all memory production capacity for 2026 has been pre-booked, confirming an unrelenting shortage throughout the year.
Friday 28 November 2025
Chinese smartphone makers face cost pressures, plan product cuts or price hikes
Amid surging demand from artificial intelligence (AI) servers and high-end personal computers, prices of DRAM and LPDDR5 memory have soared, placing heavy cost pressures on budget smartphone makers worldwide. South Korean industry insiders warn that the "low-price strategy" that once fueled rapid expansion in the smartphone market may be losing its effectiveness.
Thursday 27 November 2025
SK Hynix reportedly to debut industry's fastest 48Gbps GDDR7 memory at ISSCC 2026
SK Hynix is reportedly set to unveil the fastest graphics double data rate 7 (GDDR7) memory with a data rate of 48 gigabits per second (Gbps), aiming to boost its competitiveness in the high-performance graphics and artificial intelligence (AI) memory sectors. The move is seen as a strategic effort to outpace Samsung Electronics in speed performance.
Thursday 27 November 2025
Samsung poised for memory and foundry gains as Google TPU push accelerates
Google's push to expand its in-house Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) platform is drawing fresh attention across the semiconductor sector, and analysts say Samsung Electronics could emerge as one of the biggest beneficiaries. If Google succeeds in building a broader AI ecosystem anchored by TPUs, Samsung stands to gain in both memory shipments and contract chipmaking.
Thursday 27 November 2025
Anpec experiences spillover effects from memory price increases
Power management IC (PMIC) supplier Anpec Electronics held its investor conference on November 24, 2025, stating that multiple product lines for 2026 have already passed the design-in stage and are about to enter mass production. Although the 2025 comparison base is already relatively high, the company still hopes to achieve double-digit growth in 2026.
Wednesday 26 November 2025
SK Hynix drives 65% of SK Group's exports as 2025 totals near record

Buoyed by surging semiconductor exports at SK Hynix, the SK Group is on track to post a record-breaking KRW120 trillion (approx. US$81 billion) in exports in 2025, underscoring the company's growing dominance in South Korea's trade performance. SK Hynix alone now accounts for roughly 65% of the conglomerate's outbound shipments.

Wednesday 26 November 2025
0.18-micron tech makes a comeback in IC design research
While TSMC is actively building and expanding 2nm fabs and MediaTek's chips are advancing to the 3nm process node, the long-overlooked 0.18-micron technology is unexpectedly making a comeback. IC design industry experts state that 0.18 microns and even 28nm are mature processes still widely used in China. More importantly, 0.18 microns offers extensive room for innovation and has become a sweet spot for academic paper publications.
Wednesday 26 November 2025
Micron to expand advanced DRAM development at Hiroshima site
Micron Technology announced plans to expand its DRAM memory development at its Hiroshima facility, with significant backing from the Japanese government. This move aims to boost output for high-performance and AI chip applications, according to Nikkei.
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