Samsung DRAM Inventory Falls Below 10 Days of Supply

Samsung Electronics Co. (KRX: 005930) and SK Hynix Inc. saw finished memory inventory fall below 10 days of supply on 7 September, according to a TechTimes report, a level described as unseen in previous memory shortage cycles.

The two companies together account for roughly 64% of global DRAM revenue, so the figure is a reasonable proxy for the market as a whole. Memory suppliers normally carry weeks of buffer stock precisely so that a demand spike does not immediately reach downstream customers.

The cause is wafer allocation rather than any manufacturing failure. Capacity is being directed toward HBM4 stacks for the next generation of AI accelerators, which carry higher margins than standard DRAM. That leaves conventional server and desktop memory competing for a smaller pool of wafers.

Samsung's position in that shift is established. The company began mass production of HBM4 in February using its sixth generation 10nm class DRAM process, and shipped HBM4E samples to customers in May.

At SEMICON Taiwan on 1 September, Jangseok Choi, corporate vice president of memory product planning, said Samsung is targeting twice the performance and 20% higher performance per watt for HBM5 against HBM4E, with a 20% reduction in thermal resistance. The HBM5 base die is expected to move to a 2nm process from the 4nm used for HBM4 and HBM4E.

For buyers of server memory the practical consequence is continued price pressure and constrained availability on conventional DDR4 and DDR5 modules, with no clear easing expected before 2027.

Tech Seller USA supplies Samsung enterprise memory and SSDs, alongside a wider range of registered ECC server memory with exact OEM part numbers.