According to Nikkei, a procurement team from Terafab, the chip venture between Tesla and SpaceX, visited Japan and walked local equipment makers through what it plans to buy. The targets it reportedly shared are gigantic: 1 million wafers per month from 2032 onward, with around 700,000 of those going to memory chips and 300,000 to logic. Nikkei's headline puts that at 40 times the output of Japan's Rapidus. The same split first surfaced in a Jiji Press report last month, which said a single Texas plant would handle both memory and logic, with a pilot fab completed as early as July 2027. Intel is reportedly helping with logic using its 2 nm and 1.4 nm-class technology, while a Taiwanese company has been floated as a technology partner for memory. That could be Nanya, though nothing is confirmed.

For context, Samsung's entire DRAM output was estimated at 650,000 to 700,000 wafers a month late last year, while SK hynix was at about 550,000 earlier this year and hopes to reach roughly 1 million by 2030 or 2031. It isn't clear whether Terafab's memory figure covers DRAM alone or also includes NAND, so the Samsung comparison is a loose one. Musk has also been careful with his own dates. On an October SpaceX call, he put "big error bars" on reaching volume production by Q3 2028, with a first SRAM test chip planned for mid-2027 at Terafab's Austin research lab.

PCs with 32 GB and 64 GB of RAM are becoming less common, at least in the latest CPU-Z Validator statistics. According to Doc TB, one of the developers behind CPU-Z, this is the first time RAM capacity on PCs has declined year over year. 32 GB is still the most popular configuration at 37.2% of validations, though its share is down 2.5% compared to a year ago. 64 GB took a much bigger hit, falling 18% to 7.3%. Lower capacities are moving the other way, with 16 GB up 12.9% to 33.0% and 8 GB up 5.5% to 11.0%, while 96 GB and 128 GB setups dropped by more than 26% each. Memory type tells a similar story, with DDR4 now making up 54.5% of validations, up 6.0%, while DDR5 slipped 2.9% to 32.9%.

Of course, these figures only cover systems that users actually submit to the validator over the last three months, so they aren't a full picture of the PC market. Steam's September survey, for example, showed 32 GB overtaking 16 GB as the most common configuration among gamers, but that promptly flipped with the October survey. Still, the timing makes sense. Memory prices have climbed sharply this year, and Team Group expects the worst of the shortage to land between Q4 2026 and Q2 2027. DDR4 platforms may also get a second wind, with DDR4 motherboards getting released for unannounced LGA1700 processors expected in early 2027. It looks like plenty of people are sticking with older DDR4 systems or settling for 16 GB instead of paying current prices.

Nintendo isn't considering another price increase for the Switch 2, at least for now. Speaking at the company's financial results briefing on November 5, president Shuntaro Furukawa said there hasn't been any major change in the memory situation and that Nintendo is still able to secure "sufficient quantities," according to Reuters. That's welcome news for anyone still on the fence, since the console has already gone up once this year. Nintendo announced a $50 price hike back in May, which took the US price from $449.99 to $499.99 on September 1, while the Japanese model went from ¥49,980 to ¥59,980 and the European My Nintendo Store price climbed from €469.99 to €499.99.

The comments seem to arrive as Switch 2 hardware sales are slowing down. Nintendo shipped 2.67 million units between July and September, down 41% from a year earlier, though the console has now reached 26.35 million units overall and is still ahead of where the original Switch was at the same point. Nintendo has kept its forecast of 16.5 million Switch 2 units for the fiscal year ending March 2027. Of course, "not considering" isn't the same as a promise, so it's best not to treat this as a price freeze. Sony said much the same thing this week, noting that it has already agreed on memory volumes with suppliers for its next fiscal year. Elsewhere, hardware keeps getting pricier, with NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 50-series reportedly set for price hikes of up to $500, but at least Nintendo is staying put for now.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman thinks the DRAM sitting inside personal computers would be better used in data centers. He made the comments on the Cheeky Pint podcast, hosted by Stripe co-founder John Collison, in an episode released on October 29. The two were discussing the memory supply chain when the topic turned to local inference, meaning running AI models on your own hardware instead of the cloud. Here's what Altman said, at roughly the 29-minute mark:

Sam Altman, OpenAI CEOA lot of people want local inference. And somehow, they assume that the problem is solved now. Because, we are going to have open-source models. We're going to be able to run them on our computers. And so we're not going to need all the stuff in the data center. But from a global allocation perspective, actually, it's quite terrible to have everybody have a bunch of the world's limited supply of DRAM sitting in their own computer. And, being used 5% of the time. You want maximum utilization in the cloud if you're trying to deal with this very supply constrained environment. And somehow everyone's... many people's intuition is the opposite of that.

Microsoft has released one of the most significant updates to its DirectX Raytracing (DXR) since its debut in 2018. This update officially introduces clustered geometry and partitioned top-level acceleration structure (PTLAS). With clustered geometry, Microsoft envisions scenes where all animated and generated geometry is broken down into simple, reusable clusters of triangles. Typically, scenes repeatedly build large bottom-level acceleration structures, which incur additional compute costs. By using clustered geometry, ray tracing can utilize full detailed geometry used for standard rasterization instead of proxies, ensuring that ray-traced shadows and reflections match the currently visible scene.

In open-world games, using a top-level acceleration structure (TLAS) can lead to massive VRAM and compute demands. To address this, DXR now introduces partitioned TLAS (PTLAS), allowing ray tracing to focus on changes in a specific region while retaining acceleration-structure data elsewhere. Clustered geometry and PTLAS can be used together or separately, with no limitations. Below image is NVIDIA's sample of clustered geometry in action, visualized in three stages: default, clusters, and triangles applied.Benchmarks follow.

SK hynix reported its latest Q3 2026 quarterly results with a record $78.129 billion in net revenue. However, the company also shared a market outlook, highlighting its long-term supply agreements and plans for expansion with new fab capacity and facilities under construction. For the consumer market, the outlook is grim as SK hynix expects memory demand to continue outpacing supply through 2030. The main supply constraint is the complexity of leading-edge semiconductor nodes and the lengthy lead times for fab construction, which take years to translate into regular mass production volumes.

Despite sustained demand, pricing is also on an upward trajectory, with the average selling price of memory modules in Q3 increasing by over 20% compared to Q2. This is concerning, as it suggests that the prices of consumer electronics devices might jump by more than 20% once memory inventory is depleted. Although SK hynix expects a decrease in PC and smartphone shipments, this will be offset by a strong rollout of AI data centers. About 14 major customers, including most hyperscalers, have signed 5-year long-term agreements, which will account for over 50% of total capacity sold for 2027 and 2028.

KLEVV, the leading consumer memory and storage brand introduced by Essencore, today unveils the all-new CRAS V RGB PRIME DDR5 Gaming/OC Memory. Purpose-built for elite gaming rigs and demanding creative workloads, this new premium memory unleashes ultra-low CAS latency down to CL26 at 6000 MT/s and blazing overclocking speeds of up to 8000 MT/s at CL38, dressed in a striking black-and-gold finish and armed with dual-platform overclocking support for gamers, PC builders, and performance enthusiasts who demand nothing but the best.

With the rapid growth of high-resolution and high-frame-rate video production, sustained write stability has become just as important as transfer speed for memory cards. Designed for demanding 8K imaging applications, the Team Group ACE 8K MicroSDXC Memory Card delivers stable sustained write performance to support 4K 120 FPS recording and high-bitrate video capture. By reducing the risk of recording interruptions caused by insufficient write speeds, the ACE 8K enables creators to fully explore the possibilities of 8K capture while preserving every memorable moment.

Engineered for reliability and consistent performance, the Team Group ACE 8K MicroSDXC Memory Card features UHS Speed Class 3 (U3) and Video Speed Class 30 (V30) ratings, delivering read speeds of up to 160 MB/s and write speeds of up to 110 MB/s. Advances in high-efficiency video compression technology allow 8K video to maintain high image quality while using storage more efficiently. With its V30 rating ensuring a minimum sustained write speed of 30 MB/s, the ACE 8K supports 8K recording applications with compatible write-speed requirements. It has also been tested with the DJI Avata 360 drone and DJI OSMO ACTION 6 action camera, demonstrating stable performance for high-quality video recording and providing creators with a reliable storage solution for demanding imaging applications.

It looks as though the upcoming Intel Nova Lake-S CPU family will launch soon, headed-up by a 28-core Core Ultra 9 CPU. A new PassMark benchmark spotted by VideoCardz now purports to show expected performance of that 28-core Nova Lake-S CPU in two separate benchmark runs. The CPU, which is listed as "Nova Lake Client Platform," with the motherboard model giving it away as "NVL-S Embedded CRB 1 Fab2 Board," appears alongside an eight-core NVL-S CPU, and both CPUs achieve decent scores in the single-threaded performance benchmarks.

According to the PassMark database scores, the eight-core NVL-S scores up to 5,085 points, while the 24-core variant tops out at 5,210 points. Meanwhile, the 28-core—ostensibly the Core Ultra 9 4970K BFC—scores as high as 61,509 points in the multithreaded CPU test, and the eight-core variant, likely a Core Ultra 3 or 5 CPU, scores 23,478 points. If these PassMark scores are accurate, this puts the Core Ultra 9 4970K BFC at around 85% of the performance of an AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D in multicore performance, while the CPU beats out the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K on single-threaded performance but misses out on matching the outgoing Intel chip by 5,721 points or around 8.5%.

Given ASUS's recent history with warranty repairs, it's likely unsurprising to some to learn that the company has been embroiled in yet another RMA drama. This time, a Reddit user who goes by u/Thriceinabluemoon posted in r/ASUS about their experience sending a 2023 ASUS Zerphyrus G14 in for repair under an extended warranty and receiving the laptop back without its 16 GB SODIMM RAM stick. While this in itself would be a frustration, ASUS customer support in the Netherlands, where the laptop and extended warranty were purchased and serviced, "won't even recognize that the additional RAM came with the product," never mind correcting the issue.

The redditor explains in the comment thread on the original post that the laptop was purchased with 32 GB of RAM—16 GB soldered and 16 GB installed in a SODIMM slot—and it's that same SODIMM stick it was purchased with that has gone missing during the repair process. They have since contacted ASUS, providing the receipt as evidence that the laptop was purchased with 32 GB of RAM pre-installed and have yet to hear back from support with a resolution.

Michael Dell doesn't think the memory shortage is anywhere near over. Speaking with The Wall Street Journal, Dell's chairman and CEO said things will get worse next year, as the AI data center buildout keeps soaking up DRAM and HBM supply. According to him, the bottleneck for Dell isn't demand, since the company is sitting on roughly $95 billion worth of AI server orders it hasn't delivered yet, the largest backlog in its history. Memory is what's holding those shipments back, as AI accelerators need plenty of HBM, while the servers around them still rely on conventional DRAM.

Relief also looks quite far away. New memory fabs take around four years to build, so Dell apparently doesn't expect meaningful new supply until 2029 or 2030. That aligns with Micron's CEO, who recently said supply will be much tighter in 2027 and 2028 than it is this year. Interestingly, SK hynix's CEO said something similar, expecting the memory shortage to last through 2030. Dell is reportedly coping by buying DRAM only when final assembly is close and by locking in long-term supply agreements, though there's no word on how much of that applies to its consumer products.

Team Group Inc., a global leader in memory and storage solutions, today announced that its T-CREATE EXPERT Ai CQDIMM DDR5 Desktop Memory has won the GOOD DESIGN AWARD 2026. Designed for creators running generative AI locally, the EXPERT Ai CQDIMM DDR5 is Team Group's first DDR5 CQDIMM desktop memory to offer a capacity of 128 GB per module. Combining an independent clock driver with patented IC grading verification technology, it delivers a default data rate of 8,000 MT/s at the JEDEC-standard voltage of 1.1 V without overclocking. A two-slot configuration provides a total capacity of 256 GB, overcoming memory capacity limitations and enabling creators to reliably handle larger AI workloads for a smoother, more flexible creative experience.

Established in 1957, the GOOD DESIGN AWARD employs a rigorous, multistage evaluation process. Entries are assessed from four perspectives—human, industry, society, and time—with consideration given to design philosophy, user experience, and long-term value. For multiple consecutive years, Team Group has received this award recognizing outstanding designs that improve people's lives. The EXPERT Ai CQDIMM DDR5 continues T-CREATE's minimalist design approach, balancing aesthetics with practical functionality. By integrating creators' needs for high performance, low power consumption, and large capacity into its design, it offers a desktop memory solution tailored to local AI computing. Recognized by an international panel of design experts, the EXPERT Ai CQDIMM DDR5 demonstrates Team Group's expertise in addressing creators' needs through technological innovation.

XCENA, a fabless semiconductor company developing next-generation memory infrastructure for the AI era, demonstrated its CXL-based memory solutions for AI inference demonstrations at OCP Global Summit 2026, addressing AI inference's growing memory requirements and data-movement burden. The event was held Oct. 12-15 at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center. The demonstrations address two of the biggest constraints on AI inference: growing memory requirements and the cost of moving data.

XCENA showed two AI inference use cases built on MX1, its Compute Express Link (CXL)-based computational memory solution.

Marvell Technology, Inc. , a leader in data infrastructure semiconductor solutions, today announced the second-generation Marvell Structera X 3406 and Marvell Structera X 3506 CXL memory expanders, designed to help cloud, enterprise and AI infrastructure providers build more efficient, scalable and higher-performance systems for the next era of AI and computing. Designed to address the evolving needs of leading hyperscale datacenters, Structera X addresses the most demanding data center workload requirements.

AI and ML workloads are rewriting the rules of data center design. Growing LLM sizes, expanding context windows and growing KV-cache requirements are driving unprecedented memory demands that traditional server architectures simply cannot meet. Memory is a critical constraint of AI performance and infrastructure efficiency.

AMD has detailed the IBS Memory Profiler, a little-discussed hardware feature in its upcoming Zen 6 processors. AMD engineer Bharata Bhasker Rao presented it at the Linux Plumbers Conference (LPC) 2026 in Prague on October 5. Instruction-Based Sampling (IBS) is AMD's existing profiling hardware, and Zen 6 adds a separate, lighter instance that only samples data memory accesses. Each sample hands the kernel the physical address of the access and shows whether the data came from DRAM or external memory such as CXL. That matters on tiered-memory servers, where Linux has to find frequently used ("hot") pages on slower CXL memory and move them to DRAM. AMD's EPYC 9006 "Venice" chips support memory expansion via CXL 3.1.

Linux currently finds those pages by scanning page tables and trapping page faults. AMD wants to feed the profiler's samples into pghot, a proposed kernel subsystem for hot page tracking. The results, however, are a mixed bag. On a test system with 256 logical CPUs and 256 GB of CXL memory, XSBench ran at 4.57x over a no-tiering baseline against 1.18x for the current method, and Graph500 hit 3.17x against 2.34x. Redis saw no gain, and NAS BT landed slightly behind. Per-folio promotion cost fell from 26.1 to 15.8 microseconds in an overhead test, though that benchmark finished about 5% slower. These are AMD's own numbers, and the slides list no virtualization support for the profiler. The pghot patches are still in development, and EPYC Venice is in production with cloud deployments expected later this year.

Following what appears to have been a series of unfortunate events that led to a roadside laptop find resulting in confirmation that Microsoft will be launching a 20-core NVIDIA RTX Spark Surface Laptop, we now appear to have confirmation that Microsoft will also be launching a Surface Laptop Ultra on the other end of the Spark spectrum. According to Windows Central, Microsoft will reveal the full RTX Spark Surface line-up on October 7 at a special event in San Francisco.

Alongside the 20-core variant, the Windows Central report claims that Microsoft will launch a Surface Laptop with NVIDIA's 18-core RTX Spark. It is also claimed that the 18-core SKU will start with 24 GB of unified memory, while the 24-core version will start with 32 GB of memory. There will reportedly be a performance demonstration that shows off how the new Arm SoC delivers the same level of performance on battery life as it does when plugged into the wall.

Chinese NAND flash maker YMTC apparently expects the global memory shortage to last another three years. The claim comes from a profile of the company published by The Wire China, in which a YMTC employee, speaking anonymously, shared the outlook. The same employee said YMTC has raised prices for its chips and shifted capacity toward higher-margin products. The excerpt was shared on X by @jukan05, who read it as a NAND forecast, although the employee's wording covers memory in general. Three more years would put the end of the shortage somewhere around late 2029. This is one unnamed employee's words, of course, and not public guidance from YMTC.

That 2029 prediction is well past TrendForce's estimate, which has NAND flash supply loosening in the second half of 2027 as new capacity comes online. It sits closer to Micron's view, with CEO Sanjay Mehrotra saying last week that supply will be much tighter in 2027 and 2028. The shift in capacity matters too, especially for regular PC builders. Counterpoint Research ranked YMTC fourth in NAND bit shipments in Q2 with a 14% share, yet only fifth in revenue, since its product mix leans toward consumer applications. Moving capacity to higher-margin chips could leave less for consumer SSDs, even as YMTC works to double its wafer output with new fabs. Nevertheless, readers planning a storage upgrade shouldn't count on prices dropping anytime soon.

Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra says memory and storage supply will likely be much tighter in 2027 and 2028 than it was in 2026. He made the remarks during Micron's fiscal Q4 2026 earnings call on September 30, where the company reported record quarterly revenue of $54.2 billion. Here's what he said:

Industry demand has strengthened since our last earnings call, and we expect memory and storage supply-demand conditions to be much tighter in fiscal 2027 and 2028 than they were in 2026. AI is becoming super intelligent, and memory enhances this intelligence and the competitiveness of our customers' platforms. Even with additional industry DRAM clean room space plans with robust demand trends, including new upside requests from customers, we do not have line of sight to when supply and demand will return to balance.

TrendForce's latest memory industry research reveals that DRAM suppliers continue to prioritize advanced-process capacity for high-performance server products in 4Q26, keeping the overall market undersupplied. However, the pace of contract price increases is expected to moderate, with conventional DRAM prices projected to rise 10-15% QoQ.

Meanwhile, the NAND Flash market is seeing a divergence between accelerating AI demand and weak consumer demand, although prices are still rising across segments. Overall NAND Flash contract prices are projected to increase 15-20% QoQ.

XMG has announced on Reddit another round of laptop price increases, with most affected models going up €100 to €150. The new prices took effect on September 18 through the company's bestware store. Memory remains the biggest factor as DDR5 SO-DIMM prices for laptops have risen nearly sixfold compared to mid-2025. Also, desktop DDR5 modules and SSDs prices have followed a similar trajectory. XMG says that now it's no longer just the memory. GPU chips, GDDR7 video memory, Intel and AMD laptop CPUs, and PCBs are all costing more. Due to the conflict in the Middle East and rising fuel prices, air freight costs are higher, while sea freight through the Red Sea and Suez Canal now comes with higher insurance costs.

The XMG APEX 16, CORE 15, CORE 16, FUSION 16, NEO 16, and several PRO models are up €100. The APEX 16 MAX, APEX 17, FOCUS 17, and FUSION 15 went up €150. The SCHENKER KEY 18 Pro saw the largest single adjustment at €300. The RTX 5090 Laptop GPU upgrade is now €120 more expensive across the NEO 16 and SCHENKER KEY 18 Pro. A couple of RTX 5070 upgrade prices were trimmed slightly, though XMG notes the overall system cost is still higher than before. XMG EVO, SCHENKER CONNECT, ELEMENT, and SCHENKER WORK models are not affected this round. The company says the price adjustments are a direct result of rising costs, not a margin expansion, and commits to lowering prices again if component costs drop.

Prominent AMD leaker Kepler_L2 says the chips for both the PlayStation 6 and Microsoft's Xbox Project Helix have taped out. Posting on the NeoGAF forums, he also put the PS6 at 40 TFLOPS and the Xbox Helix at 56 TFLOPS, which works out to roughly 40% more for Microsoft's machine on paper. Kepler was replying to a thread claiming the PS6 would hit 80 TFLOPS, which he dismissed before giving the new figures. Earlier estimates had put the PS6 at 34 to 40 TFLOPS, so 40 sits at the top of that range.

TFLOPS is only peak throughput, though. Kepler himself argued in the thread that TFLOPS is just a measure of FMA throughput and shouldn't be "normalized" across architectures, so these numbers probably can't be compared directly to PS5 or Xbox Series X ratings. Memory bandwidth, ray tracing hardware, and clocks all matter too, so 40% more TFLOPS likely won't translate into 40% more frames. Of course, this is just a leak, and Sony, Microsoft, and AMD have not confirmed any of this.

Micron has reportedly discontinued its 2 GB GDDR7 memory chips, the same modules used on several GeForce RTX 50 series cards. Spotted by UNIKO's Hardware, Micron's 28 Gbps D8FHL chip (MT68A512M32DF-28:A) is now listed as end of life on the company's own website. Every 2 GB GDDR7 chip in Micron's catalog, both the 28 Gbps and 32 Gbps variants, now carries the same EOL status, leaving 3 GB modules as the only option going forward.

Micron only started supplying GDDR7 to NVIDIA in a meaningful way earlier this year, and its chips were never the primary source for RTX 50 cards. Samsung and SK Hynix still cover the bulk of the supply, so this shouldn't cause an immediate shortage. Still, losing even a partial supplier during an already tight memory market isn't reassuring, and it says something about where these companies would rather put their manufacturing capacity these days.

AMD has detailed a new ray tracing technique called tetrahedral cages, and according to a blog post on the company's GPUOpen developer site, it can cut BVH memory use by roughly 47x while speeding up BVH updates by around 90x. AMD demoed the tech on a large scene with about 25,000 independently animated plants, running at 60+ FPS at 1080p on a Radeon RX 9070 XT. In a conventional setup, every uniquely animated object needs its own acceleration structure updated every frame, which gets expensive fast in dense scenes. AMD says the same demo would normally require up to 80 GB of GPU memory and over 300 ms per frame for BVH updates using standard methods. With tetrahedral cages, that dropped to about 1.7 GB of memory and roughly 3.3 ms per frame.

The trick is that instead of animating the dense mesh directly, AMD wraps it in a much simpler deformable cage. The dense geometry and its BVH stay static and reusable, and only the cage itself needs to be animated each frame, so update cost scales with the cage's complexity rather than the triangle count. The tradeoff is losing per-vertex animation control, which is why AMD is positioning it for grass, foliage, and other dense but not individually detailed objects. AMD says the technique can be combined with Microsoft's DirectX ray tracing too. Still, this is only a research showcase in its current state, and there's no word yet on when or if it might show up in games.

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 currently ships with 2 GB GDDR7 modules, but even 3 GB modules have seen limited adoption due to their high cost. However, that could change soon. According to Weibo leaker Golden Pig Upgrade, memory manufacturers are reportedly planning 4 GB and 6 GB GDDR7 chips for a 2027 to 2028 window, a jump that could reshape how much VRAM budget and mid-range GPUs can carry without needing a wider memory bus. A 128-bit card using four memory packages currently tops out at 8 GB with today's 2 GB chips. Move to 4 GB chips and that same card could hit 16 GB, or 24 GB with 6 GB modules. Scale that up to a 256-bit interface with eight packages, and you're looking at 32 GB or 48 GB respectively, without touching the PCB layout or bus width. Of course, going the other way is possible too, a narrower memory bus combined with higher density, faster memory chips, can lead to similar bandwidth, with lower relative cost.

This would matter most at the low end, where narrow 128-bit buses have made generous VRAM capacities either awkward or expensive to pull off. Videocardz, citing supply chain sources, notes that today's 3 GB GDDR7 chips are already unusually expensive due to extreme demand, and that cost has reportedly contributed to delays around the rumored RTX 5050 9 GB and the RTX 50 Super refresh. If 4 GB chips end up cheaper to produce at scale, they could become the more practical choice for mainstream cards, while 6 GB modules might make more sense for workstation and other high-memory GPUs first. It's worth noting that the leaker's timeline only points to sometime in 2027 or 2028, so there's no confirmation this lines up with NVIDIA's RTX 60 series or AMD's next Radeon generation specifically.

Goodram is expanding its gaming-focused RIVAL series with RIVAL Charge DDR5 memory. The new DIMM modules are designed for computers based on DDR5 platforms, including both new systems and upgraded configurations. The series includes variants with speeds of up to 6800 MT/s and latencies starting from CL30, as well as kits with a total capacity of up to 64 GB.

Gaming today is about more than just the game
A game, Discord, a browser with multiple tabs, gameplay recording, streaming and system monitoring—in a modern gaming configuration, RAM rarely serves just one application.