Late last month, we reported an unexpected surge in DDR4 DRAM chip spot-pricing, just as leading memory chipmakers in Taiwan and South Korea announced plans to phase out the standard, leaving behind residual inventories to deal with leftover demand. It turns out that the nearly 1 decade-long market presence of the DDR4 standard, beginning with the 2013 6th Gen Intel Core "Skylake" processor, and continuing on until 14th Gen Core "Raptor Lake Refresh," along with AMD Ryzen Socket AM4 along the way, meant that there are simply too many devices out there with DDR4 memory and users looking for upgrades.

Digitimes now reports that South Korean memory chipmakers such as SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics, have put on hold their phase-out plans for DDR4 chips, and may continue supply until they see spot pricing sufficiently falling behind that of DDR5. At the same time, the two will be walking a tight rope with supply to ensure they don't end up with bloated inventories.