You may soon see laptops with 8GB of RAM everywhere, as manufacturers will likely make configurations with more memory very expensive.

Storm clouds are gathering over the supply chain: the long awaited DRAM shortage has hit the PC industry hard. And the consequence is something many of you are probably viewing with concern.

Indeed, the current high RAM prices will also have a significant impact on laptop prices next year. Analysts from the famous Taiwanese company TrendForce arrive at predict that laptops with just 8GB of RAM could become the norm again, even at higher pricesno longer belonging to the past.

AI is to blame

By far the biggest driver of price increases is the growing demand for memory for AI servers and data centers. AI accelerators and server GPUs require high bandwidth memory (HBM). To meet this demand, major memory manufacturers (Samsung, SK Hynix, Micron) have shifted much of their production capacity from traditional DDR/LPDDR RAM to HBM memory.

It is clear that HBM is significantly more profitable. Additionally, many AI servers also consume large amounts of chips. LPDDR5X and modern DDR5 RAM.

Because these components are produced on the same manufacturing lines as RAM for PCs and laptops, prioritizing large customers (cloud providers, AI companies like OpenAI) considerably reduces the supply available on the consumer market. There are reports that Individual AI companies purchase up to 40% of global AI production…

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