At Nvidia's Request, Evaluating Production of 3D DRAM
US tech media The Information reported that TSMC, at Nvidia's request, is considering entering the advanced memory sector and has recently begun evaluating a plan to manufacture 3D DRAM. Possible options include building a memory fab or acquiring an existing facility and converting it into a manufacturing plant. TSMC has not yet decided whether to invest, the investment amount, or when production would begin. The 3D DRAM technology TSMC is evaluating vertically stacks memory cells to increase storage density, a structure distinct from the high-bandwidth memory technology specialized in by Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, which stacks DRAM chips to increase data transfer speeds.
Korean Media Warns TSMC Could Control Supply Chain
South Korea's Seoul Economic Daily noted on the 7th that if TSMC successfully produces memory, it would mean a single company could handle all operations from GPU and memory manufacturing to packaging, allowing TSMC to control the entire supply chain without relying on external memory suppliers, posing a severe challenge to Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix. Currently Nvidia's GPUs are produced by TSMC, while the high-bandwidth memory they carry is supplied by SK Hynix, Samsung and others. Over the medium to long term, producing memory in-house would further strengthen TSMC's influence in the AI chip supply chain, potentially leaving Korean memory makers facing competitive challenges and hurting their bargaining power.
AI Demand Drives Memory Shortages and Price Hikes
Benefiting from continued expansion of AI demand, the memory market faces supply shortages, with severe shortages of memory chips already driving memory prices sharply higher, prompting chip design companies to actively seek additional supply sources. The chip industry has long been clearly divided, with Taiwan dominating foundry services and South Korea dominating memory production. TSMC has already built overwhelming competitiveness in foundry, but has not yet directly entered memory production. By contrast, Samsung and SK Hynix have accumulated extensive technology and mass-production experience in DRAM and high-bandwidth memory. If TSMC enters memory, existing customers could obtain memory and foundry services from a single supplier, and TSMC expanding its customer offering from foundry and advanced packaging to memory would be another risk for Korean makers.
Technical Hurdles Remain, Short-Term Landscape Hard to Shake
However, Korean makers' positions are unlikely to be shaken in the short term, as vertically stacking memory cells still has technical hurdles to resolve, and it may take several years to achieve stable yields and a mass-production system. And Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix and US-based Micron are also developing the technology, making it difficult for TSMC to quickly narrow the technology gap.