Tesla has approached Samsung to expand its GDDR6 memory supply, which could lead to DRAM shortages for PlayStation 5 & Gaming GPUs.
Sony PlayStation 6 & Many Current-Gen Gaming GPUs Rely on Samsung's GDDR6, But Tesla Is Now Going After The DRAM For Its Own Use
Samsung is one of the leading manufacturers of the GDDR6 memory solution, which is primarily used in graphics applications such as GPUs, SoCs, and AI solutions. Although NVIDIA has moved to the GDDR7 standard, GDDR6 still makes up the bulk of the volume with several current-gen products leveraging the DRAM standard.
Now, Samsung is looking to quadruple its GDDR6 DRAM supply to Tesla, starting this month, reports EDaily. The news outlet states that Tesla has been struggling to secure memory supply for its automotive infotainment and autonomous driving systems, which has led Samsung to ramp up the production of GDDR6 memory.
The Korean semiconductor firm has already increased the production of its 8Gb GDDR6 DRAM, which is being supplied to Tesla, by four times the production output. Tesla originally asked Samsung to increase the supply by more than five times, so the full demand is still not fulfilled, and we can see the GDDR6 lines put into further stress going ahead.
Tesla's latest request for increased production is evidence that even leading Big Tech firms are struggling with memory supply. With commodity DRAM and other memory supply shortages becoming widespread and prices surging, preemptive action was unavoidable. According to market research firm TrendForce, the spot price of GDDR6 8Gb (1GB) stood at $12.335 as of the 13th of this month. Compared to $2.846 on October 20 of last year, the price has more than quadrupled in just six months.
Machine Translated via EDaily
The pricing of GDDR6 has already seen a sharp rise as demand grows. Trendforce reported a spot price of the same 8Gb GDDR6 memory around $3 back in October. The spot price has now surged beyond $12, a 4x increase in just six months, which is shocking but not unexpected. Samsung also wants to retain higher profits by not increasing production aggressively, and has already trimmed down its GDDR6 lineups, only keeping the profitable SKUs in its production lines.
This would end up being bad news for Sony's PlayStation 5 console and several consumer graphics cards that rely on GDDR6 memory. AMD and Intel's current generation lineups for gamers, pros, and AI still use GDDR6 memory, which is being sourced from various manufacturers, including Samsung.
GPUs such as Intel's Arc B-Series and Arc Pro B-series, AMD's Radeon RX 9000 series, and NVIDIA's RTX 40 series all feature GDDR6 memory. NVIDIA is also bringing back some older GPUs for entry-level segments to address the pricing crisis, but GDDR6 demand going up isn't going to make things better.
With the GDDR6 supply surge, consumers will either face higher prices for existing products or severe shortages.
News Source: DigiTimes
About the author: A Software Engineer by training and a PC enthusiast by passion, Hassan Mujtaba serves as Wccftech's Senior Editor for hardware section. With years of experience in the industry, he specializes in deep-dive technical analysis of next-generation CPU and GPU architectures, motherboards, and cooling solutions. His work involves not only breaking news on upcoming technologies but also extensive hands-on reviews and benchmarking.
Follow Wccftech on Google to get more of our news coverage in your feeds.
