DDR4 fab capacity should have stayed constant as DDR5 was brought online.
The mechanism that powers that is usually the top tier brands selling their used fab equipment to China who then keep mass producing the legacy DRAM while fabs in Korea are converted to manufacture the new standard.
Instead all of those machines have been warehoused because Korean firms fear US sanctions/punitive tarifs if they were to offload that equipment to China.
So what has happened is DDR4 capacity has actually shrunk massively when it shouldn't have, DDR5 capacity was only barely meeting demand and then huge deals were cut that cornered the market.
Tarifs wouldn't help DDR5 a huge amount but without them DDR4 would be dirt cheap right now.
alt Hacker News
They are indirectly.
DDR4 fab capacity should have stayed constant as DDR5 was brought online.
The mechanism that powers that is usually the top tier brands selling their used fab equipment to China who then keep mass producing the legacy DRAM while fabs in Korea are converted to manufacture the new standard.
Instead all of those machines have been warehoused because Korean firms fear US sanctions/punitive tarifs if they were to offload that equipment to China.
So what has happened is DDR4 capacity has actually shrunk massively when it shouldn't have, DDR5 capacity was only barely meeting demand and then huge deals were cut that cornered the market.
Tarifs wouldn't help DDR5 a huge amount but without them DDR4 would be dirt cheap right now.