Samsung is back with another solid-state drive, and this time it's something a little bit different. The 990 is a QLC-based 990 EVO Plus, positioned as a budget drive that can still push a lot of bandwidth. It’s a little late to the game and not quite what was rumored for the 990 QVO, but it does bring some new technology to the table. We’re always interested in seeing what Samsung puts out, and this time is no different. It should not be confused as being part of Samsung’s Pro line or, for that matter, the EVO line, so keep that in mind.

The drive has its ups and downs, but in this challenging market, and for a budget drive, that’s to be expected. Samsung is still well-regarded for its name and reliable hardware, even as there has been a massive push towards enterprise, away from the consumer side. Samsung has, in fact, given some ground in the SSD space for many years, even as it produces some of the most common OEM drives. So while this is not a Crucial situation, it’s best to jump into this review with the right expectations about what this drive is and isn’t. It’s a budget drive with full Gen 4 throughput that hits the most common capacities with sufficient performance and power efficiency. It’s not meant to be a throne-taker.

It’s also thankfully not another 990 EVO situation – that drive felt somewhat underwhelming by the time it arrived, even when pitted against budget drives – but the 990 is also not a QLC rallying call. It’s a competent drive that mostly hits the right notes, as intended. Given how scarce Samsung QLC drives have been, and how much demand its QLC flash surely has elsewhere, it can feel like Samsung is throwing consumers a bone, though it would be crass to put it that way. We instead think this is smart positioning by the company as it knows the future is with QLC and the technologies used in this flash (even if first shown two years ago at ISSCC) point firmly at an ambitious future. The 990 just lets you own a piece of that.

Samsung 990 Specifications

The Samsung 990 is only available at 1TB and 2TB capacities, with MSRPs of $269.99 and $529.99, respectively. These prices are very high, as you can get competing drives like the Crucial P310 for substantially less, and in fact even the TLC-based WD Black SN7100 costs less. But Samsung has historically launched with MSRPs well above actual market price. You should be able to get the drive at significantly lower prices after launch, but the “Samsung tax” may still apply. We’ll get into what that means throughout the review.

This limited capacity range is unfortunate, but enables Samsung to pack the flash into just one package, which reduces PCB space so that any OEM variant can be used in multiple M.2 form factors and will always be single-sided. Less than 1TB is also not enough for these denser dies if you want good performance. That leaves 1TB and 2TB as the target capacities, which also makes sense in a market where 4TB+ is getting exceptionally expensive. We’ll eventually see 2Tb dies to make single-package 4TB a reality, but that’s further along in Samsung’s roadmap.

The drive can reach 7,250 / 6,450 MB/s for sequential reads and writes and up to 850K / 1,200K random read and write IOPS. Peak performance is attained at 2TB, where you have the optimal amount of interleaving or parallelization: Sixteen 1Tb dies means four dies for each of four flash channels, the typical ceiling. However, as these are four-plane dies, you still get 32-way interleaving at 1TB with eight dies, which is enough to get good performance with just two dies per channel. Less than that is much less ideal, and more than that introduces additional overhead, especially for budget controllers. The math changes with six-plane and 2TB dies, but for this flash, 1TB is the reasonable minimum, with 2TB offering the best performance.

The drive is rated for approximately 4W of power draw across the two capacities, when looking at both reads and writes. Check our power results below to see how accurate that is. The drive is rated for 400TB of writes per TB capacity, which is high for QLC flash – we would typically see maybe 300TB, which is one-half of the TLC standard – but also indicates a very high drive writes per day (DWPD) rating. This is due to the warranty only covering three years rather than the normal five, so the amount of writes per year is significantly higher. This is atypical, so requires further explanation.

For those who live for TBW and write endurance, this illustrates why TBW often looks better on paper. Spreading 400TB over three years works out to roughly double the daily write allowance of a typical 300TBW / five-year QLC drive. Most people will never approach either number, and they will live with the shorter coverage window. However, if you intend to hammer the drive with writes to the point of exceeding TBW within the three-year warranty period, then this could be good. Although you really shouldn't use a budget DRAM-less QLC-based drive for that type of workload. However, that option exists and is rarely the case with a QLC-based drive. As a final note, the drive does support TCG Opal 2.0 for encryption.

Samsung 990 Software and Accessories

Samsung’s Magician software is the gold standard for consumer SSDs. This is an SSD toolbox with all the features you need. It displays system and drive health information, including SMART, and checks whether your drive is legitimate. You can also benchmark your drive and use any optional features, such as encryption. The software is also essential for keeping the drive’s firmware up to date, although you can also download that from the first link.

Samsung 990: A Closer Look

The 990 has an SSD controller, a single NAND flash package, and power management circuitry. There is no DRAM package present. This is a single-sided drive, which is ideal for compatibility and cooling. There is a lot of free space on the PCB, and by putting distance between the controller and flash, there is separation to mitigate component heat generation. This would also help if a heatspreader or heatsink were to be added. Without this space, the drive could be sold in a shorter form factor, which is particularly useful for OEM drives.

The label has information about the drive, such as the date of manufacture (DOM), model, serial, the PSID, and the power rating. We always caution that you not take certain drive information as being conclusive about the hardware. For example, you should not assume TLC or QLC flash from a drive’s TBW. Likewise, you shouldn’t rely on the labeled power rating – and this is done more often on M.2 2230 drives for portable devices – as any indication of drive power efficiency. Here we have 3.3V / 1.85A, which indicates potential power draw over 6W. Now, the power ratings given on spec sheets will often be average and not peak, and will be separated as read or write rather than mixed. In fact, this drive’s load power states can reach a peak of 5.90W via SMART, which is much above the rated average ~4W. We track both peak and average in our testing.

We always enjoy reviewing Samsung drives with a focus on the technicals, as the manufacturer remains a leader in many ways. The 990, in particular, requires some extra description to be fully appreciated. Simply looking at the benchmark results might make the technology seem underwhelming – to be honest, this is very much a budget drive, even taken in the best light – but that doesn’t mean Samsung phoned this one in. In fact, there are signs of deliberate design here, and some of the decisions could help sell this drive. Samsung still has to get the pricing right, of course, but what else is new?

Let’s start with the controller. The 990 is using the PiccoloQ, which is the QLC flash version of the Piccolo. The Piccolo is utilized on the 990 EVO and 990 EVO Plus, two TLC-based drives. In all cases, it’s a four-channel, DRAM-less design, which limits performance and capacity. In both cases, the controller takes up to 2,400 MT/s flash – this is more than enough to saturate PCIe 4.0 – and the interior design is the same. This means it’s a Samsung 5nm part with multiple ARM Cortex-R8 cores and a single R5 core. If the Piccolo stands out in any way, it’s that it offers a PCIe 5.0 x2 option in addition to the standard 4.0 x4 interface. This option or mode has limited usefulness, though, and nothing in the 990 would change that if enabled for the PiccoloQ.

So, not much new on the controller front, but the use of this controller at the 990’s rated speeds does give us some more information. Namely, we know the 990 EVO runs more slowly because it’s using flash slower than 2,400 MT/s, 1,600 MT/s Samsung V6P TLC, to be precise. If we look at Samsung’s V7 QLC flash, it can run at that same speed. This is why the originally speculated 990 QVO with that flash was targeted at the same speeds as the 990 EVO. Things have changed since then. This drive could have been the 990 QVO, but with the EVO and EVO Plus lines going DRAM-less this generation, we suspect the QVO tier was “promoted” to the plain 990 name, and the 990 now targets the 990 EVO Plus's specs

The evidence to back this up, which also supports the loose 990 QVO rumor, is that Samsung does have a V7 QLC OEM drive: the BM9C1. This is the cousin to the PM9C1 line with OEM 990 EVO and 990 EVO Plus (PM9C1b) variants. The BM9C1 is available down to M.2 2230 and uses the same PiccoloQ as the 990 (the QLC version of the 990 EVO/EVO Plus’s Piccolo). It’s just limited to the same speeds as the 990 EVO, as it’s running at 1,600 MT/s. We have to be careful here, though, as Samsung’s V9 QLC press release indicates a 60% I/O improvement, which, with the V9 being 3,200 MT/s, suggests a 2,000 MT/s ceiling for the V7 QLC. Since there is an OEM TLC-based drive in between the 990 EVO and 990 EVO Plus (the PM9C1a) at 2,000 MT/s, the possibility for a ~6 GB/s 990 or 990 QVO with V7 QLC existed.

Before we dive more deeply into the flash, since we haven’t seen the new Samsung QLC in a while and there is some neat tech here, let’s decode the module. “K9” tells us it’s Samsung NAND flash memory. “YYG” indicates it’s a QLC flash package with sixteen dies (HDP) in a 2TB configuration, which confirms 1Tb dies. “Y8” means it’s 8-bit, J tells us the voltage, “5” tells us the number of chips enabled and ready/busy signals, and “D” tells us the generation. With V7 being “C” and V8 skipped, this suggests V9. The second part of the code tells us how the flash is packaged and that it’s commercial / consumer-grade. While you aren’t expected to know how to read codes on your SSD, knowing how it works can be useful, especially with Samsung drives, even if it’s just a matter of trying to figure out if you have a counterfeit product.

So let’s talk about the flash. This is a 286-Layer part, technically, but is sold as 280-Layer once accounting for source/ground and dummy lines. Dummy lines are usually at stack edges, as the physics of flash can make these lines otherwise unusable. A higher layer count – Samsung’s V7 is only 176-Layer, although technically 191 layers – generally means higher bit density. Bit density is key to scaling NAND flash, which is acting as capacious, non-volatile storage media. This can be disappointing to some because it means you don’t always see any real performance scaling as the layer count progresses.

Fitting more flash into the same space can mean less room for charge in each cell, which makes it harder to optimize for performance if you’re trying to maintain the same endurance level. That is certainly the case with this flash, as the performance only manages to match that of last-generation 176-Layer QLC flash from competitors, which is why we want to go out of our way to point out Samsung’s design decisions and why it leans innovative in ways you won’t see in, say, your game load times.

For one, when we talk about the layer count difference – reported versus actual – you also get an efficiency number that is the ratio between usable and total word lines. Samsung is a leader here, with high layer efficiency. Samsung also has held off using three decks or stacks of flash and is still at two, due to having superior channel etching – it’s able to drill down more layers with a higher aspect ratio. It’s also possible to run lines through the flash itself rather than rely largely on masked steps, which sets the stage for Samsung scaling to extremely high layer counts. One issue with high layer counts is that you start losing uniformity from layer to layer, and Samsung accounts for this with optimized word line spacing, too. So, as we’ve said in the past, it often feels like Samsung is falling behind on layer count, but in reality it has a very focused strategy and the best technology in the business, and we can see this with the 990’s flash.

For the consumer, though, the 990 is a little bit weird. This is presumably 3,200 MT/s flash that is being “wasted” with a 2,400 MT/s controller. This flash has amazing bit density, but having a single sixteen-die package at 2TB is nothing new. What about performance? Samsung has made optimizations to improve performance on this flash, but nothing amazing. This QLC is only comparable to the competition in performance terms, particularly at 2,400 MT/s. Samsung is playing catch-up, but we also think this is a case of designing for enterprise rather than consumer.

QLC flash is now highly sought after in enterprise for its density, and Samsung’s optimizations all benefit that kind of environment. In fact, from a consumer’s perspective you could look at this V9 QLC as being focused on higher bit density – but no 2Tb dies – and you would largely be correct. Samsung’s V9 QLC is 86% more dense generationally and about 94% more dense than the competition’s 176-Layer QLC flash.

We’ll take a look at one new technology in the V9 QLC flash to illustrate. One important consideration is flash power interruption leading to data loss, which, without power loss protection (PLP) means you are looking at protecting data at rest. This is on the non-volatile media or flash, not the volatile memory like DRAM. When folding from the pSLC cache to the native flash, data loss is not an issue because you don’t invalidate the original pSLC copy until the write has been verified. However, when writing to native QLC, you are writing multiple pages where the upper pages will require higher levels of sensitivity for proper reading. There are different methods of writing to QLC flash, but generally multi-bit flash has multiple write passes that go from fuzzy (coarse) to precise (fine), and lower pages write faster and may be complete first. Therefore, it’s important not to ruin existing lower-page data if you lose power while still adjusting voltage for the upper pages.

Micron has a unique way of dealing with this using a differential engine that can predict values from partial shifts, but a more common method is simply to back up or buffer the values in nonvolatile flash. QLC stores four bits per cell, so a full backup means writing four bits of pSLC per cell. pSLC is used because its writes are fast, whereas QLC's upper-page writes, in particular, are an order of magnitude slower. Samsung reduces the buffer to a single parity bit by using an odd/even algorithm, creating a sensing window that’s more like TLC (8-state) than QLC (16-state). This improves performance, endurance, and bit density. Some of that performance is still lost for higher bit density. For consumers, the direct benefit is higher TBW, but we speculate the higher density is aimed more at enterprise and future flash generation products. This is in part a response to Solidigm’s floating-gate design, a different technology than charge trap, with tighter charge placement.

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Comparison Products

The Samsung 990 enters a crowded market with a lot of good options, at least in theory. If we’re looking at QLC-based drives, this means the Crucial P310 and Sandisk WD Blue SN5100 at the very top. Both of these drives perform incredibly well. Below that, we have the older wave of drives represented by the TeamGroup MP44Q. That drive in particular remains a budget favorite with a fast controller and good QLC flash.

We would put the rest below that, even though the hardware is not always worse. This would include the Biwin M350, the Kingston NV3, and the Seagate FireCuda X1070. These drives are using alternative controllers – SMI, SMI, and TenaFe, respectively – that are roughly comparable, and the flash is not particularly old, either. However, these drives tend to be more budget-focused with reduced performance and (ideally) reduced cost.

We’ve also thrown in Samsung’s 990 EVO and 990 EVO Plus for comparison. The 990 should be closer to the latter, but with QLC flash, it would be okay landing somewhere in between. On the whole, we would expect the drive also to be between the two main categories of drives – that is, above the budget ones, below the two fastest, and closer to the middle MP44Q and its MAP1602-equipped alternatives, but with Samsung’s name recognition. The technology is here to make this a reliable drive, which is also a factor to consider, but being this late to the game puts the 990 at a general disadvantage.

Trace Testing — 3DMark Storage Benchmark

Built for gamers, 3DMark’s Storage Benchmark focuses on real-world gaming performance. Each round in this benchmark stresses storage based on gaming activities including loading games, saving progress, installing game files, and recording gameplay video streams. Future gaming benchmarks will be DirectStorage-inclusive and an evaluation for future-proofing is included where applicable.

We start by looking at 3DMark because, frankly, QLC-based drives make a lot of sense for gaming. Aside from large installs and updates, you’re mostly doing reads, which do not favor TLC drives as much. While it’s true that QLC flash is still slower, often-accessed data might be left in the pSLC cache – if you leave enough space free – and QLC is also optimized for random reads. Games do involve a lot of sequential reads and often at larger block sizes than you’d expect, but as long as the drive has sufficient interleaving (it’s sufficiently large) you are going to get pretty good performance.

For 3DMark, which is a synthetic test, we might expect the drives to perform as they do under ideal, cached circumstances. This means the 990 should perform closely to the 990 EVO Plus and better than the 990 EVO, even though both of those latter two are TLC-based. It does. The 990 gets pretty close to the P310, which is one of the best QLC drives out there, aside from the Blue SN5100. We tend to look at ~45µs as a good cutoff point for all-around performance – gaming doesn’t need to be super responsive – which is roughly around the popular budget NV3. The 990 is significantly faster than that, which is all you could ask for here.

Trace Testing — PCMark 10 Storage Benchmark

PCMark 10 is an industry standard trace-based benchmark that uses a wide-ranging set of real-world traces from popular applications and everyday tasks to measure the performance of storage devices. The results are particularly useful when analyzing drives for their use as primary/boot storage devices and in work environments.

PCMark 10 performance usually, but not always, follows 3DMark. There is speculation that some drives or firmware may be optimized for benchmarks like PCMark 10, but taken within a greater suite of tests it’s still useful to get a feel for application performance. For us, that means for a primary drive – your boot or OS drive where your apps live – or for your everything drive, if you work and game on a single drive in your system. This isn’t too unusual with laptops where M.2 slots are limited.

The 990 again ends up roughly where we’d expect – above the 990 EVO, and close to the 990 EVO Plus. It’s not on the level of the P310 or Blue SN5100, but it’s clearly above the budget drives. This is a strong result with good latency. For instance, we would take the 990 over the NV3 any day, every day. On the other hand, the P310 and Blue SN5100 are frankly better drives. These two drives are better optimized and performance-oriented. The 990 is more of a gap filler that’s late to the scene.

We have to say, though, that we’re glad Samsung didn’t push out a 990 QVO that was more like the 990 EVO, even if it would have arrived earlier. Such a drive would have used older QLC flash and performed more slowly simply due to the lower interface speed.And frankly we’d rather have density-optimized flash that can run at the 990 EVO Plus level. That’s what the 990 delivers, even if it feels a little underwhelming. However, it makes perfect sense given the current market, enterprise demand, OEM demand, etc. The drive is still very fast and of a superior quality to a great many budget drives out there, and that makes it worthwhile.

Console Testing — PlayStation 5 Transfers

The PlayStation 5 is capable of taking one additional PCIe 4.0 or faster SSD for extra game storage. While any 4.0 drive will technically work, Sony recommends drives that can deliver at least 5,500 MB/s of sequential read bandwidth for optimal performance. Based on our extensive testing, PCIe 5.0 SSDs don’t bring much to the table and generally shouldn’t be used in the PS5, especially as they may require additional cooling. Check our Best PS5 SSDs article for more information.

Our testing utilizes the PS5’s internal storage test and manual read/write tests with over 192GB of data, both from and to the internal storage. Throttling is prevented where possible to see how each drive operates under ideal conditions. While game load times should not deviate much from drive to drive, our results can indicate which drives may be more responsive in long-term use.

You know our PlayStation 5 line by now: just about any drive will do. The 990 can push more bandwidth than the 990 EVO, which arguably makes it a better pick. It’s on par with, or better than, most budget drives out there. At least, for the things you will usually be doing on the PS5. It’s clear from our one bandwidth test that the drive ran out of cache, and it has the typical slow QLC flash write state. This is not indicative of real-world performance if you do normal installs/updates with mostly reads. If you are freshly installing the drive and moving a ton of games onto it, then yes, this could be an issue, but the QLC write speeds are still significantly faster than 1GbE if you’re intending only to download a ton of games at once. Otherwise, you can check the cache size in the relevant testing section.

Transfer Rates — DiskBench

We use the DiskBench storage benchmarking tool to test file transfer performance with a custom 50GB dataset. We write 31,227 files of various types, such as pictures, PDFs, and videos to the test drive, then make a copy of that data to a new folder, and follow up with a reading test of a newly-written 6.5GB zip file. This is a real-world type workload that fits into the cache of most drives.

We also see some write performance issues in DiskBench. This is dependent on cache size and speed, but for the most part should be limited by the interface speed. However, there are cases where copy speed will simply be slower, whether due to the controller or other optimization trade-offs. We can see that the 990 EVO, with TLC flash, is not exactly doing great here, and the 990 EVO Plus does much better. However, the 990 lags behind, and is very far behind the P310 and Blue SN5100.

So, we can put some of this slow speed on the Piccolo/PiccoloQ controller. To avoid getting too technical on this, we suspect it is partially architectural. This is reflected in power efficiency, as both the P310 and Blue SN5100 – with the Phison E27T and a proprietary Sandisk controller, respectively – are significantly more power-efficient than the 990 EVO, 990 EVO Plus, and as we’ll discover, the 990 as well. We also know that Samsung’s V9 QLC flash is not particularly inefficient.

As for the controller, there are reasons to design it differently. Reliability is one reason, especially if you sell a lot of OEM and enterprise drives that share the technology. Scaling is another, as you may use similar technology across your stack. You might want to optimize for a different sort of performance baseline; you may have unique endurance requirements, and you also might have to keep capacity in mind – enterprise drives, in particular, could make better use of this flash’s interface speed when scaling for capacity. Therefore, DiskBench results for our specific testing may not really be what Samsung is optimizing for, in which case the 990’s performance more or less hits expectations based on the 990 EVO and 990 EVO Plus. It just disappoints against drives like the NV3, which are otherwise inferior.

And to put a cap on it, yes, this is a consumer drive, but if you go back and read our 990 EVO review – and other recent Samsung SSD reviews, for that matter – you will see we underlined the idea that Samsung has been late to the party with less-than-leading performance recently. The fact is, Samsung has and has had bigger fish to fry, and its technology is sound but no longer looks amazing on the standard consumer benchmarks. That makes its products less relevant if you just want the fastest drive, although we’d argue there are secondary effects like drive reliability that still keep Samsung in the fight, certainly as an OEM option. It’s also true that consumer use has a lower bar – any halfway-decent NVMe drive is fast enough for daily driving – which means, sometimes you’re just buying the Samsung name.

Synthetic Testing — ATTO / CrystalDiskMark

ATTO and CrystalDiskMark (CDM) are free and easy-to-use storage benchmarking tools that SSD vendors commonly use to assign performance specifications to their products. Both of these tools give us insight into how each device handles different file sizes and at different queue depths for both sequential and random workloads.

ATTO gives us a clear image of how a drive performs over a range of block sizes. This can relate to different file sizes, for example, you probably have many files at or below 4KiB in size for various things but larger files, archives, and media files will usually be in units of MiB. Depending on what you’re using the drive for you may want to pay attention to how a drive performs within a certain range. For the quickest comparison, we show the results on a logarithmic scale and, there, the 990 shows significant dips for reads between 64KiB and 1MiB.

What you need to know is that flash is interleaved to improve performance, which means that larger I/O sizes will show higher throughput. A single, four-plane die, with modern 16KiB pages, can interleave up to 64KiB internally. If you have one die per each of four channels, that’s 256KiB. If you parallelize that over four dies per channel – which is the ideal amount and what we have with the 2TB 990 – then you reach 1MiB. While alignment here can impact performance, for example we sometimes look at six-plane flash these days, in general you will see a gradual throughput increase as you go. You’ll see this beyond 1MiB as data can and will be cached in volatile memory, either system-side or in a small cache on the drive. If you’re looking at higher queue depths, which we do with CrystalDiskMark, performance saturates even further as the controller is able to optimize data placement and retrieval with knowledge of what’s coming.

What this usually means is that QD8 is enough to get drives close together, while there will be more disparity at QD1. QD1 is much closer to real-world, as most operations will be at low queue depth, the vast majority at our below QD4 and the majority at QD1 or QD2.

We see that the 990 matches the P310 with QD1 reads, while some drives, like the X1070, do surprisingly well. We can assume that the controller plays at least a partial role here. The X1070 is a good example because, let’s be real, it’s not a drive a lot of reviewers liked. Yet, it has pretty good performance in this instance, indicating it could be a solid secondary storage drive. Fair enough. The 990 just doesn’t really have the response we like to see for that, but it’s fast enough to remain relevant. We got the impression in our X1070 review that its controller was chosen for cost savings and that was plenty for daily use, but we don’t think Samsung cheaped out on the PiccoloQ. Rather, Samsung is looking at the bigger picture, as it also sells drives with the Piccolo controller, including its OEM offerings.

Random latency seems much more important to a lot of people. We generally find that sub-50µs is one bar and another is sub-45µs. The 990 manages the former, which puts it above last-gen drives and some earlier Gen 4 drives, and budget drives like the X1070. It’s in the same ballpark as the NV3, too. It’s sufficiently far behind more popular budget drives, though, to draw our interest. In most cases you won’t notice it, but if you’re using this as your only drive and are sensitive to that, it’s not your best option. On the other hand, we think you have to balance that against pricing and some management of expectations. Any modern SSD is going to be very fast, and with current pricing it might be worth putting more weight on reliability, for example.

Sustained Write Performance and Cache Recovery

Official write specifications are only part of the performance picture. Most SSDs implement a write cache, which is a fast area of pseudo-SLC (single-bit) programmed flash that absorbs incoming data. Sustained write speeds can suffer tremendously once the workload spills outside of the cache and into the "native" TLC (three-bit) or QLC (four-bit) flash. Performance can suffer even more if the drive is forced to fold, the process of migrating data out of the cache in order to free up space for further incoming data.

We use Iometer to hammer the SSD with sequential writes for 15 minutes to measure both the size of the write cache and performance after the cache is saturated. We also monitor cache recovery via multiple idle rounds. This process shows the performance of the drive in various states including the steady state write performance.

Samsung’s TurboWrite 2.0 caching technology utilizes a fixed, static portion of pSLC combined with a much larger dynamic portion. These two zones have unique characteristics which, when taken together, ideally keep the drive feeling fast across a variety of workloads. The static portion ensures the drive always has some cache for random writes, while the dynamic portion varies with drive usage so that you always have ample cache. While the 990 EVO had 108GB total regardless of capacity, it’s more typical for Samsung to increase both caches in absolute terms as capacity goes up. This is the case with the 990 EVO Plus, which has a 216GB cache at 2TB. But we know from our 9100 Pro review that Samsung is quite capable of going with a larger cache. The general trend for consumer SSDs has been to go that way, especially for QLC-based and DRAM-less SSDs, as it better hides weak performance states.

Therefore, it’s not too surprising that the 990’s cache is pretty large. In its fastest state, it writes at almost 6.1 GB/s for over 57 seconds, for a cache in excess of 350GB. This is larger than the 2TB 990 EVO Plus’s but smaller than the 2TB 9100 Pro’s. Our suspicion is that the 990 follows the newer, larger scheme, but we’re dealing with QLC rather than TLC flash. QLC flash to pSLC is 4 bits to 1, while TLC is 3 bits to 1, so in relative terms the 990 lines up with the 9100 Pro. That’s all fine and good. As for how fast it writes, Samsung markets the 990 as having over 50% faster write performance than the 990 EVO, which is accurate simply because we’re moving from 1,600 to 2,400 MT/s, with newer flash and firmware.

Once the cache is exhausted, the drive has to write to the native QLC flash directly or fold data over from pSLC to QLC. The latter is slower but can reduce wear in some cases – folding uses predictable, sequential writes – and reduces the likelihood of errors in transmission. Considering the technology we mentioned above and how Samsung avoids problems with power loss, it makes sense that going slower is by design. In fact, given we know the expected speed of the flash – rated at 41 MB/s per die – we can reasonably assume the firmware wants this outcome. It’s not that the flash can’t handle higher speeds, even at the risk of endurance. It’s simply that for a consumer drive of this type, the response is reasonable and measured. Going faster would require reducing the cache size potentially, which tends not to be a good trade-off for this type of drive.

One interesting thing about the V9 flash is that it can operate in a pTLC caching mode. We don’t see that here. Honestly, that’s not too surprising: Solidigm’s 5-bit PLC flash effectively was designed to run as QLC/pQLC for enterprise, so it’s possible this pTLC mode was for cases where you might need that higher level of performance or endurance. After all, this is extremely dense flash even in such a mode, which points more at enterprise use.

We’ve seen QLC flash from Kioxia also optionally have this mode – and for that matter, Solidigm’s PLC can do pTLC, too – in the past, but that mode doesn’t appear to be designed for consumer use. There may be other reasons for not using it in a consumer product, such as power optimization, as consumer workloads probably benefit more from a straight pSLC and native/QLC hybrid.

Power Consumption and Temperature

We use the Quarch HD Programmable Power Module to gain a deeper understanding of power characteristics. Idle power consumption is an important aspect to consider, especially if you're looking for a laptop upgrade as even the best ultrabooks can have mediocre stock storage in terms of capacity and performance. Desktops are often more performance-oriented with less support for power-saving features so we show the worst-case for idle.

Some SSDs can consume watts of power at idle while better-suited ones sip just milliwatts. Average workload power consumption and max consumption are two other aspects of power consumption but performance-per-watt, or efficiency, is more important. A drive might consume more power during any given workload but accomplishing a task faster allows the drive to drop into an idle state more quickly, ultimately saving energy.

For temperature recording we currently poll the drive’s primary composite sensor during testing with a ~22°C ambient. Our testing is rigorous enough to heat the drive to a realistic ceiling temperature but real-world temperatures will vary due to the environment and workload factors.

Is the 990 power-efficient? Samsung markets the drive as being 38% more efficient than the 990 EVO – or that it cuts power consumption by 38% – which, technically, works with our numbers. It’s not a huge bar to hit as the 990 EVO was not very power-efficient. Even the X1070 is significantly more efficient! The 990, unfortunately, really doesn’t do well against other drives in its class, regardless of flash. We can’t chalk this up as being fully due to the controller because the 990 EVO Plus does well enough for itself.

This is actually expected since, for example, the Blue SN5100, which is using BiCS8 QLC, is less efficient than its BiCS8 TLC sibling, the Black SN7100. QLC and TLC flash of the same generation often have significant differences. TLC flash saw six planes first while QLC tends to be optimized for density. While it’s true that pSLC performance between the two is often comparable, behind the scenes the drive still has to deal with wear-leveling, garbage collection, and other maintenance with block granularity. QLC is slower, with larger blocks and pSLC taking more bits. So all else being equal, TLC often outshines it in power efficiency.

Our impression here, as is the case elsewhere in the review, is that this flash is basically V7 QLC with twice the density. Samsung uses impressive tricks to get it there; the flash is technically a bit faster and more efficient, and it has some neat changes that mostly apply to enterprise. This means you can have the 990 doing worse than the 990 EVO Plus with its V8 TLC. This is not perplexing. QLC flash is made for bit density, and Samsung intends to scale flash for a very long time. It also skipped V8 QLC for a reason. This doesn’t endear it to people wanting to buy this drive for laptops, although we assure you that this does use some cutting-edge technology, and we do think it should be very reliable. It’s just not going to be as efficient as you might expect.

Samsung is cognizant that its drives will end up with OEM variants in laptops and in many cases, shorter form factors. The 990 EVO wasn’t a great laptop drive due to its heat generation, but it works. The 990 is significantly better, so it, too, will work as a laptop drive. We think this drive deserves a heatsink in a desktop or PS5, and probably should have heatspreading of some sort anywhere else, if at all possible.

The question is, will it overheat? In our testing, we found that it got closer than we prefer to that point. Our maximum reported controller temperature was high relative to the initial throttling temperature, but a true composite value would be lower. Even so, the controller did get warm. On the other hand, our Iometer testing is far from real-world. We push our drives hard. This is not the sort of drive for a desktop replacement or high-end laptop in our opinion, although we think with typical workloads it’s perfectly fine. After all, the results here are better than the SK hynix Gold P31, which is a laptop staple. By all means, in a Gen 3 slot this thing will fly. If you’re hammering it at Gen 4 speeds, though, yeah, it’s not the coolest drive in town.

Test Bench and Testing Notes

We use an Alder Lake platform with most background applications, such as indexing, Windows updates, and anti-virus, disabled in the OS to reduce run-to-run variability. Each SSD is prefilled to 50% capacity and tested as a secondary device. Unless noted, we use active cooling for all SSDs.

Samsung 990 Bottom Line

The Samsung 990 is bound to be underwhelming for some, but none of our results should surprise. We know what this technology is and we’ve seen Samsung’s entries in recent years with the 990 EVO, the 990 EVO Plus, and the 9100 Pro. You could even put the 980 and 990 Pros into that mix. The move away from DRAM on the EVO Plus series, in particular, was a sign of the times. It’s not surprising to see the raw 990 – the 980 was TLC-based – go to QLC without the “QVO” addendum. The original speculation of the 990 QVO being a QLC 990 EVO, with the EVO itself being a surprisingly “slow” drive, was probably correct given the OEM evidence, and the 990 being a step up lets it command the 990 name by itself. To reiterate, this is exactly what we expected.

Skipping over the 990 QVO and V7 QLC flash is only sidestepping, and that’s likely because the market has changed so much over the last year or two. Bringing out a QLC-based 990 EVO equivalent just wouldn’t sell and might even make the brand look bad. It could certainly be done, and even still done, as an affordable SKU with better yields. But any 990 was going to be exactly what we got, instead. You need the faster flash to saturate PCIe 4.0 with a DRAM-less drive, and this was always going to be DRAM-less. Using a new or licensed controller with TLC flash would be weird, as it’d be going up against the existing 990 EVO Plus. Frankly, the 990 is a good 990 EVO replacement from retail and OEM perspectives, with one caveat: endurance. Samsung saves itself some headaches by reducing the warranty to three years, and as this flash is robust, it can just nudge up the TBW as a distraction.

We think that’s an important part of the message here. This flash seems designed for enterprise and has technological changes to back that up, with the main consumer benefits being the potential for increased reliability. But memory is still in high demand, and this has to be a budget part, so here comes the three-year warranty. Performance is not bad – it certainly beats earlier Gen 4 QLC-based drives and would beat the rumored 990 QVO as well. It’s just not really performance-focused. It’s also a much more efficient design, but that’s in comparison to Samsung’s own hardware. It’s merely mediocre there in the current landscape. Samsung seems to be building for the future with higher layer counts and bit density, so this lays the groundwork. A client drive seems almost like an afterthought. Users shouldn’t take that personally, but also shouldn’t underestimate this drive as it’s more than effective enough for its purpose.

In fact, in the era of Gen 3 drives returning and so many “box of chocolates” SSDs with random names and hardware, a reliable Samsung SSD is a nice option. Even with QLC flash. If you only need a budget drive to throw into a build or to upgrade an old PC, you get Gen 4 performance and a TLC-like experience for most things. We also feel this drive should be reliable and, although it runs hotter than we’d like, it’s not going to be molten like some other drives. It’s just a polished design by Samsung that fills a micro niche, and clearly it thought a response was needed. It’s not a lot different than our reaction has been to Samsung’s last few new drives, which have all been competent but largely never the strtong leader. That’s okay with us, as we can tell the manufacturer has a longer-term perspective; it just means a little less awe when you finish a build using a Samsung drive.

If you really want the best experience with a QLC-based drive, we still recommend the Crucial P310 – which is going away – or the Sandisk WD Blue SN5100. These offer incredible performance for QLC flash. Otherwise, there are some MP44Q-like drives out there that continue to be budget leaders. The 990 fits somewhere along there as a known-brand alternative. If you’re looking for Gen 5, DRAM, or TLC, then you’re also looking at a higher price tag. Frankly, QLC costs more than it should, in part due to enterprise demand. On the other hand, a modern QLC drive will provide an equivalent experience 99% of the time. The priorities are up to you. For us, the 990 is a fine primary drive for normal builds and OK for laptops, although we’d go cheaper for the PS5 and higher-end for an enthusiast machine.

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Tesla's AI5 chip is about to enter mass production at Samsung Foundry using the company's 2nm-class process technology, a principal engineer at Samsung Foundry disclosed in a LinkedIn post, as noticed by Sawyer Merritt. As it turns out, the chip has been taped out recently.

"The Tesla-Samsung Al5 chip has reached tape-out," James Kim, a principal engineer at Samsung Foundry, wrote in the LinkedIn post. "It is scheduled to be manufactured at the Taylor fab using our latest 2nm process and will soon be integrated into Tesla's newest products. It has been an honor to collaborate with the outstanding engineers at Tesla Palo Alto and Austin over the past several months."

Elon Musk demonstrated the first sample of Tesla's AI5 in mid-April and revealed that the processor will be concurrently made both at TSMC and Samsung Foundry. Apparently, AI5 implemented in a TSMC process technology reached taped out several months ahead of AI5 implemented using a Samsung Foundry.

Tesla’s AI5 processor module that Elon Musk demonstrated in April integrates a relatively compact accelerator die — roughly half a reticle in size, based on Musk's earlier remarks — alongside 12 SK hynix memory packages that appear to be standard GDDR6 or GDDR7 devices. The package relies on an organic substrate, and the memory components are labeled similarly to conventional discrete DRAM chips.

Tesla has not revealed the width of AI5's memory subsystem, but the presence of 12 memory packages points to a relatively broad external memory interface. Assuming the module indeed uses 12 GDDR6 or GDDR7 ICs, the processor would feature a 384-bit memory bus. Depending on the memory technology and transfer rates employed, this would translate into memory bandwidth ranging from 768 GB/s all the way to 1.536 TB/s.

The company has not disclosed AI5's peak compute performance, or other detailed performance specifications, but Musk has previously claimed that, in certain workloads, AI5 can deliver performance improvements of up to 40X compared to its predecessor.

Musk expects AI5 to be one of the most produced chip ever, which is why Tesla plans to use two foundries to make it. AI5 is projected to be used in Tesla cars, Tesla robots, and in Tesla's data centers.

Samsung is reportedly sampling its dedicated AI processor for next-generation AI PCs with leading PC makers, such as HP and Lenovo. The chip, codenamed Gaia, was developed by the company's System LSI business unit, and it is designed to offload AI-related workloads from the CPU and GPU, reports Chosun.

Samsung's Gaia is designed to accelerate generative AI workloads on PCs and is made using the company's 4nm-class fabrication process. The chip, which is essentially a neural processing unit (NPU), is currently being evaluated by HP in the U.S. and Lenovo in China to verify its performance and evaluate whether it makes sense to integrate Gaia into their systems due in late 2027 or early 2028.

The report does not detail how Gaia differs from NPUs that are integrated into AMD's Ryzen, Intel's Core, or Qualcomm's Snapdragon X processors as well as whether it can offer significant performance advantages. Meanwhile, the report implies that the NPU (or perhaps its derivatives based on the same architecture) could be used for Samsung's next-generation implementations of its processing-in-memory (PIM) technology.

Samsung's original PIM was designed to embed compute logic directly within the HBM memory array and reduce data movement between HBM memory modules and host processors. PIM was aimed to accelerate select workloads, but did not take off because AI and HPC GPUs became very efficient and were supported by mature ecosystems, unlike PIM.

Perhaps if Samsung's upcoming Gaia NPU gains support from hardware makers and ecosystem partners, then this will give a boost to Samsung's next-generation PIM implementation as well. However, standalone NPUs and PIM are so fundamentally different that we can barely imagine that they can share a common architecture. Yet, PIM logic can be a subset of an NPU in terms of supported instructions and data formats and they can certainly share a common software framework.

One of the interesting things to note about Gaia is that it was reportedly developed by Samsung's LSI division, the same business unit at the company that is responsible for Exynos processors, automotive solutions, connectivity chips, ISPs, DSPs, display drivers, and image sensors. Given the multi-faceted nature of Samsung's LSI unit, as well as its strategic importance for the company, Samsung must be pinning some hopes on Gaia.

We have contacted Samsung and asked for a comment about the report, but we yet have to hear back from the company.

JEDEC has released its new specification that aims to push down the pricing of the ultra-expensive HBM that powers the fastest AI processors. While the new standard will not help relieve the DRAM shortage as it uses large HBM4 DRAM devices, it can make high-bandwidth memory a bit cheaper as it enables attaching SPHBM4 memory stacks without advanced packaging and using inexpensive organic substrates.

The standard's body published the specification of SPHBM4, Standard Package High Bandwidth Memory (JESD330-4), that combines HBM4 DRAM ICs with standard packaging and a fast 'narrow' 512-bit interface. Here are the details.

HBM4 performance with a 512-bit wide interface

Although 1024-bit and 2048-bit interfaces used by HBM3 and HBM4 memory deliver unbeatable performance, their wide interfaces consume significant silicon area inside processors, they require expensive interposers, and advanced packaging technologies with limited capacity, such as TSMC’s CoWoS, for integration with host processors. The upcoming SPHBM4 memory continues to use the same HBM4 DRAM stacks as JESD270-4, but swaps the conventional HBM base die for a new SPHBM4 PHY/buffer die featuring a narrower 512-bit interface that enables mounting on standard organic substrates without using sophisticated packaging methods for integration. To offset the effect of the narrower interface, SPHBM4 supports considerably higher data transfer rates ranging from 22.4 GT/s to 46.0 GT/s.

Instead of connecting to the host processor using a 2048-bit memory interface like HBM4, SPHBM4 uses 32 independent 16-bit DDR channels organized into eight Quad Channels. Since 'Quad Channel' is a new term, let us explain how things work. Internally, an HBM4 stack contains 32 memory channels, each 64 bits wide, for a total external interface width of 2048 bits. SPHBM4 needs to 'convert' the 2048-bit internal I/O onto a 512-bit external interface, which is why it groups every four HBM4 channels into a Quad Channel. As a result, externally, a Quad Channel exposes 64 data pins (4 × 16 bits), which replace the 256 data pins (4 × 64 bits) that those four HBM4 channels would normally require. To preserve bandwidth, these 64 pins operate at four times the data rate of the original HBM4 interface.

While SPHBM4 dramatically increases I/O bandwidth, it does not make the DRAM array itself faster. The HBM4 memory core retains the same fundamental architecture and timings, including core frequency, row activation, precharge, and refresh operations, though the additional PHY is expected to introduce some latency. For example, the DRAM core runs at only one-quarter of the external interface frequency, which means 2 GHz in the case of SPHBM4 with a 32 GT/s speed bin.

The major change is the new base die, which implements a high-speed SerDes-like PHY that maps each 16-bit external channel to four conventional 64-bit HBM4 channels. As a result, SPHBM4 introduces equalization, lane training, BER requirements, and other high-speed signaling features that are unnecessary in HBM4’s slower, wide parallel interface. To support transfer rates of up to 46.0 GT/s/s per pin, each Quad Channel uses a shared command/address interface protected by forward error correction (FEC), while data transfers rely on dedicated differential write (WCK) and read (RCK) clocks, as well as ECC and error-reporting signals.

When it comes to capacity, SPHBM4 can use stacks containing 4, 8, 12, or 16 DRAM dies featuring 24 Gb or 32 Gb densities, so the largest standardized SPHBM4 configuration is a 64 GB memory stack built from sixteen 32 Gb DRAM dies, identical to the maximum capacity supported by HBM4E.

Cheap HBM at last?

The standard supports bump pitches greater than 90 µm and channel reaches up to 20 mm, which are two features that enable dropping the expensive interposer and using less-expensive organic substrate routing. However, getting rid of the interposer and CoWoS (or similar) packaging does not automatically make SPHBM4 inexpensive. SPHBM4 still requires massive HBM4 DRAM ICs, 2.5D packaging, a complex base die (which is likely costlier than the one used by conventional HBM4), and advanced package assembly with through-silicon vias. In addition, SPHBM4's narrow interface consumes significantly less die perimeter and silicon area inside processors, which makes it more attractive to companies that strive to install more compute capability and/or intend to install more memory stacks around their processors. However, we are still talking about a niche high-performance memory technology that will address select applications and will barely rival HBM4 directly.

When it comes to maximum performance, HBM4 moves the data at 8 GT/s (though most controllers and chips support higher data rates), so one HBM4 stack can offer bandwidth of 2 TB/s. HBM4E is set to up data transfer rate to 12 – 12.8 GT/s, therefore increasing peak bandwidth to 3 – 3.3 TB/s per stack. By contrast, one SPHBM4 with a 46 GT/s interface can hit 2.944 TB/s, though do not expect the initial versions of SPHBM4 to hit the maximum speed. Therefore, it is likely that HBM4, HBM4E, and C-HBM4E will maintain a performance lead in terms of bandwidth over SPHBM4 in the foreseeable future.

HBM4 latency will still probably have an edge over SPHBM4. HBM4 essentially connects to its host processor almost directly through a very simple interface. By contrast, SPHBM4 inserts a much more sophisticated PHY that performs serialization/deserialization, lane training, FEC handling, and other operations that can add a few nanoseconds of latency. This may not be a big problem for some applications, but inference benefits a lot from low latencies.

When it comes to power and voltages, HBM4 and SPHBM4 share the same DRAM core voltage because SPHBM4 reuses standard HBM4 DRAM stacks. However, I/O is different: HBM4 leaves the interface voltage up to memory vendors and allows implementations at 0.7V, 0.75V, 0.8V, or 0.9V, depending on the desired balance between power, speed, and signal integrity. By contrast, SPHBM4 standardizes the external I/O at 0.75V.

Also, HBM4 moves data over a very wide interface with many slow parallel links that tend to be very energy efficient. By contrast, SPHBM4 moves the same amount of data through one-quarter as many wires, which run roughly four times faster. High-speed data transfer tends to be less energy efficient than 'slow' data transfers over a wide interface. Keeping in mind SPHBM4's rather sophisticated PHY that converts a wide interface into a narrow interface, which is likely a power-hungry process. Nonetheless, the 4X lower number of drivers and receivers could tangibly reduce the power consumption of SPHBM4. That said, without implementation details from DRAM makers or a processor developer, it is impossible to conclude which memory type has lower power consumption.

Last but not least, SPHBM4 essentially trades manufacturing challenges that arise from using silicon interposers for an engineering challenge of developing an extremely sophisticated base die/PHY. Developing and manufacturing such a base die should not be a problem for foundries. However, it remains to be seen whether DRAM makers can design and produce SPHBM4 with decent power efficiency. After all, both Micron and SK hynix work with TSMC to build C-HBM4E and HBM4E base dies, whereas Samsung's memory division uses base dies produced by Samsung Foundry.

China factor

One interesting aspect of SPHBM4 is whether Chinese developers of AI accelerators can benefit from this technology. In theory, Chinese developers like Biren, Huawei, Moore Threads, and other blacklisted companies that cannot use TSMC's chip manufacturing or packaging services could become one of the biggest beneficiaries of SPHBM4, perhaps even more so than the U.S.

First up, a smaller shoreline directly benefits chips that are made using trailing nodes, as it enables packing more compute capability into them without sacrificing memory bandwidth or capacity. Secondly, Chinese OSATs currently do not offer CoWoS-like technologies, so eliminating the interposer and using advanced organic substrates is a benefit.

However, SPHBM4 still requires HBM4 DRAM stacks, and today, Samsung, SK hynix, and Micron are the only companies capable of producing them, while China-based CXMT can barely make HBM2E. Furthermore, building a 46 GT/s PHY is very hard and will likely be challenging for Chinese IC developers.

Nonetheless, assembling SPHBM4 packages on organic substrates is arguably more aligned with China's existing manufacturing base, so if local DRAM makers eventually develop competitive HBM4-class memory, SPHBM4 could substantially reduce one of the country's remaining infrastructure gaps.

Summary

JEDEC's SPHBM4 looks like a promising standard that can potentially address a broader range of applications than HBM4 itself due to lower integration cost. Still, HBM4, HBM4E, and C-HBM4E will maintain performance leadership, which will make them a preferable choice for flagship AI accelerators in the coming years.

South Korean President Lee Jae-myung announced a ₩1,350 trillion (roughly $880 billion) 10-year public-private plan for semiconductors, AI data centers, and robotics on June 29. At the televised address in Seoul, he was flanked by Samsung Executive Chairman Lee Jae-yong and SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won.

The ₩1,350 trillion total combines a $520 billion semiconductor program with AI data center and robotics spending, most of it corporate capital expenditure rather than direct state funding. Samsung's Device Solutions division booked ₩53.7 trillion in first-quarter operating profit and expects 2026 to out-earn its entire prior semiconductor history. Samsung and SK hynix have pulled fab completion dates forward by as much as 12 years, while the transmission lines and water pipelines that those fabs depend on remain years behind.

Gigawatts of power deficit

The Yongin Semiconductor National Industrial Complex, the Samsung and SK hynix megacluster in Gyeonggi Province, is estimated to require 15 to 16 GW at full operation, close to 25% of total Seoul-metropolitan power demand, against local supply of about 1.9 GW, according to a National Assembly Research Service report. As of a January briefing, however, about 6 GW of the roughly 15 GW the complex needs had no finalized supply plan, with Samsung reportedly needing 9 GW (6 GW secured) and SK hynix 6 GW (3 GW secured).

Power in South Korea is generated on the coasts, from nuclear and liquefied natural gas (LNG) on the east coast and renewables in the southwestern Honam region, while the fabs sit inland, near Seoul. Closing that distance falls to state utility KEPCO, which is pursuing a ₩37 trillion, roughly 1,153-km 345 kV network to move east-coast and Honam power to Yongin, targeted for 2036. KEPCO's track record on long-distance lines is problematic, though; its losses from delays on the Bukdangjin-Sintangjeong line reached ₩1.17 trillion ($810 million), and that single project took 22 years to complete, with site selection alone running past a decade.

The east-coast link that's supposed to carry about 8 GW toward the capital region has its own history of local opposition, too. The Donghaean-Dongseoul high-voltage direct current line, a 280-km run from Uljin to Hanam requiring 436 towers, has faced repeated delays, and Hanam's 2024 rejection of a KEPCO substation expansion threatened the plan outright. Meanwhile, SK hynix pulled the completion of its fourth Yongin fab forward by 12 years, from 2045 to 2033, as announced in the recent $712.5 billion SK hynix commitment, meaning fabs are arriving faster than the power lines that feed them.

KEPCO and the government plan six LNG plants inside the Yongin complex, starting at about 3 GW and scaling toward 10 GW, to bridge the supply gap until the transmission network is finished. Both Samsung and SK hynix hold RE100 commitments to reach 100% renewable electricity by 2050, and the ruling Democratic Party's own carbon-neutrality committee has demanded the LNG plan be cancelled.

Water shortages

Aside from power, a large memory fab consumes upwards of 100,000 tons of water per day, and the Yongin national complex is projected to need around 800,000 tons per day once fully built. The plan to supply this runs in phases: roughly 200,000 tons per day from about 2031, drawn from Paldang Dam surplus and treated wastewater, followed by new intake facilities and pipelines to reach 600,000 tons per day by 2034. However, SK hynix's accelerated fourth fab is now due in 2033, a year before the integrated pipeline that's being built to serve it.

Local water disputes have already delayed the buildout, with objections from Yeoju City and Hanam City stalling pipeline permits, and one groundbreaking was cancelled outright. The friction is worse for the new southwestern cluster near Gwangju, where water may prove harder to secure than power, because the Yeongsan and Seomjin river basins hold only about half the water of the Han basin that supplies Yongin. Meanwhile, existing Seomjin and Juam dam supply contracts are already fully allocated, and the four planned southwestern fabs are estimated to need around 430,000 m³ per day of industrial water. Government projections put the Yeongsan basin at an annual shortfall of roughly 219 million m³ by 2030, before any of the fabs draw a single drop.

Financed by the memory boom

Samsung reported preliminary second-quarter 2026 operating profit of ₩89.4 trillion ($58.4 billion) on ₩171 trillion in revenue on July 7, a roughly 19-fold year-on-year jump and a record for any tech company. Its Device Solutions chip division booked ₩53.7 trillion of the company's ₩57.2 trillion first-quarter operating profit, and DS president Kim Yong-kwan told a July 3 town hall that 2026 chip profit will exceed the cumulative total the division has earned across roughly 40 years in the business. SK hynix, meanwhile, posted a record ₩47.21 trillion operating profit for 2025, overtook Samsung as South Korea's most valuable listed company in June, and filed to raise about $29 billion in a Nasdaq listing whose proceeds are earmarked for Yongin, Cheongju packaging, and EUV tools.

Those numbers rest on contract prices that have run sharply higher through 2026, with commodity DRAM up around 90% in the first quarter and 50% to 60% in the second, as memory makers tilted wafer capacity toward HBM. The same dynamic underpins the government's confidence and its exposure. Bank of America has argued that fears of a memory-cycle peak are premature, noting the industrial cluster won't produce meaningful output until 2033 at the earliest. Morgan Stanley cautioned — also on July 7 — that the memory industry is nearing a peak in its rate of change, while stressing that this doesn't indicate a downturn. A plan financed by a price surge inherits the risk that the surge doesn't last until the fabs it funds come online.

The plan is ultimately the flagship of a president who took office nine months ago, in a country that removed and jailed his predecessor. Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law in December 2024, was impeached within days, and was removed by the Constitutional Court the following April. A snap election last June brought Lee Jae-myung to office, and in February this year, Yoon was sentenced to life in prison for insurrection. Industrial policy has held across the turnover, with the Semiconductor Special Act passing the National Assembly with bipartisan support in May, but its dedicated ₩2 trillion account doesn't begin operating until 2027.

South Korea caps the workweek at 52 hours, and a proposed exemption for chip R&D staff was cut from the Semiconductor Special Act before passage. Industry and the conservative opposition backed the carve-out, citing TSMC's three-shift operations and longer hours at Chinese competitors, while the ruling party and a coalition of labor organizations opposed it as corporate favoritism.

A stopgap now lets firms run R&D staff up to 64 hours per week for limited periods with labor-ministry approval. Samsung's foundry holds about 7% of the contract chipmaking market against TSMC's 72%, and SK hynix supplies most of the HBM feeding Nvidia's AI accelerators, so the plan directs its capital toward memory and leaves Korea's weaker logic position largely untouched. Lee's single five-year term ends in 2030, three years before the plan's fabs are due to reach meaningful output.

Samsung announced stellar results last night, noting a 19x quarterly increase in operating profit, allowing the firm to pass Nvidia as the most profitable in the world. Kim Yong-Kwan, president and head of corporate management, strategy, and operations for Samsung Electronics' Device Solutions (DS) division, said that the semiconductor unit's 2026 operating profit will exceed everything it has earned across roughly 40 years in the chip business at a company town hall last Friday, according to a report published Monday by Korea JoongAng Daily.

Brokerage consensus puts Samsung's full-year 2026 operating profit near 300 trillion won ($196 billion), and its second-quarter figure at about 84.6 trillion won ($55.1 billion). Samsung easily beat the consensus with $58.5 billion when it posted preliminary results on July 7, overtaking Nvidia's most recent quarterly operating profit of $53.54 billion and becoming the most profitable technology company in the world for the period, on the back of AI-driven memory demand.

Samsung's DS division booked 53.7 trillion won ($35.1 billion) of the company's 57.2 trillion won in total operating profit during the first quarter of 2026, roughly 94% of the total, which is why the division's projection sits so close to Samsung's full-year consensus.

"This year's profit will exceed the cumulative profit generated over the past 40 years since we entered the semiconductor business," Kim Yong-Kwan told staff, scoping the claim to the chip business rather than the wider conglomerate.

Samsung entered the semi space by acquiring Korea Semiconductor in 1974 and shipped its first 64Kb DRAM in the mid-1980s. SamMobile estimates the division's cumulative operating profit from 1985 to 2025 at under 300 trillion won. Samsung's smartphone, display, and appliance businesses have earned far more than that over the same period, so the record applies to memory and logic chips, not to Samsung overall.

Contract prices for DRAM and NAND have risen steeply through 2026 as AI server demand outran supply, pushing memory makers toward 40% to 50% operating margins on NAND in the first half of the year. Prices for 12 GB LPDDR5X modules have reached about $145, and Samsung is negotiating further commodity DRAM increases for the third quarter. The DS division's earnings move with those contract prices, and Samsung has told customers to expect tight supply through at least 2027.

Samsung is releasing preliminary second-quarter figures on July 7, so these record projections are still estimates. The reported profit will also absorb a profit-sharing agreement that pays chip workers 10.5% of DS operating profit as stock, worth as much as $26.6 billion this year. SK hynix is due to report its own second-quarter results on July 29, and analysts expect the two companies to post combined operating profits near 150 trillion won for the quarter.

17 plaintiffs sued Samsung, SK hynix, and Micron in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in late June, alleging the three companies, which together control roughly 90% of the global DRAM market, coordinated supply restrictions that pushed memory prices up around 700% in four years. The complaint is the third major legal assault on the DRAM industry in two decades. The first ended in criminal guilty pleas, roughly $730 million in fines, and prison terms for executives. The second collapsed in 2020; this new case must clear the same legal barrier that killed it.

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A cartel conviction, then a failed sequel

Between 1998 and 2002, DRAM makers fixed the price of memory sold to Dell, HP, Compaq, IBM, Gateway, and Apple, leading to a landmark case that saw the Department of Justice extract guilty pleas across the sector: $300 million from Samsung in 2005, then the second-largest criminal antitrust fine in U.S. history, alongside $185 million from Hynix, $160 million from Infineon, and $84 million from Elpida. More than a dozen execs served prison time in the U.S., while Micron, which admitted participating, escaped prosecution entirely by turning first under the DoJ's corporate leniency program.

Then, in 2018, Hagens Berman filed a class action alleging the same three companies colluded during the 2016-2017 upcycle, when DRAM prices roughly doubled and all three throttled supply growth in lockstep. The district court dismissed it in 2020, and the Ninth Circuit affirmed that decision in 2022, ruling the alleged conduct was “more likely explained by lawful, unchoreographed free-market behavior” than by agreement. The plaintiffs never reached the discovery phase in that case; it instead died on the pleadings, which is where this latest case is also likely to be decided.

Parallel conduct is legal

Section 1 of the Sherman Act punishes agreements in restraint of trade, but not identical behavior. When three firms in a concentrated market watch each other's earnings calls and rationally match each other’s output cuts, antitrust law calls it conscious parallelism and permits it.

Since the Supreme Court’s 2007 Twombly decision, a price-fixing complaint can overcome a motion to dismiss only if its factual allegations make an actual agreement plausible, not merely possible, and parallel conduct alone can never reach that threshold. Instead, plaintiffs need what are known as “plus factors”: actions against each firm's independent self-interest, suspicious communications, or opportunities to conspire that produce otherwise inexplicable behavior.

In the 2018 case, the plaintiffs offered eight plus factors, including trade-press statements about supply discipline and attendance at the same industry events, and both courts found them consistent with each company independently deciding that flooding a recovering market would be stupid. An oligopolist declining to start a price war isn’t evidence of a cartel; it’s evidence of an oligopoly.

2026's HBM pivot

What’s new in this case is that the complaint alleges the three memory makers used their pivot to high-bandwidth memory as a coordinated pretext to gut commodity DRAM output, curtailing DDR3 and DDR4 production far beyond what HBM demand required and starving the market that feeds PCs, phones, and servers.

The filing stacks supporting plus factors on top, including near-simultaneous production cuts announced in late 2022, Micron's decision last year to shut down its consumer-facing Crucial memory business and remove a retail supply channel, and the makers' synchronized customer-vetting regime introduced to block hoarding and resale, which the plaintiffs read as jointly policing who gets supply. Apple’s memory-driven iPad and Mac price increases appear in the complaint as downstream proof of harm.

HBM carries far higher margins than commodity DRAM, and every maker had an independent incentive to chase Nvidia’s order book. The late-2022 cuts came during the worst memory downturn in over a decade, when SK hynix and Micron were posting operating losses, and Samsung held out on cuts months longer than its rivals, which is awkward material for a case looking to rely on a lockstep narrative. Crucial's shutdown also coincided with Micron reallocating output toward data center customers paying more. As such, every allegation in the complaint has a non-conspiratorial explanation available, and under Twombly, the plaintiffs need there to be at least a plausible conspiracy theory to have a chance of success.

Motions to dismiss likely

A leading-edge DRAM fab costs $15 billion to $20 billion and takes years to bring up, so no fourth player can arbitrage the shortage away on any timescale that’s relevant to this case. Three firms facing inelastic demand and no threat of entry can sustain supracompetitive prices through nothing more than mutual self-restraint, and current numbers show what that looks like.

SK hynix reported a record operating margin above 70% in its most recent quarter, and the investment firm Jefferies expects DRAM contract prices to rise another 40% to 50% in the third quarter and 30% to 40% in the fourth, with no meaningful relief before 2028. SK Group chairman Chey Tae-won has put the end of the shortage even further out. Margins that fat are indeed consistent with a cartel, but they’re equally consistent with a demand shock hitting a market built to under-supply, and courts have declined to let juries choose between the two unless a seriously high evidential threshold has been reached. Here, that doesn’t appear to have happened. In addition, China’s CXMT is rapidly expanding DDR5 output with state backing, and any sustained market share gains and price pressure from it would undercut the complaint's premise that the incumbent big three face(d) no competitive pressure.

The defendants haven’t yet responded in court and are likely to file motions to dismiss. Surviving dismissal would force three companies, which are enjoying the most profitable memory cycle in history, to open their internal communications regarding HBM allocation and commodity wind-downs to plaintiffs’ lawyers for the first time. If the court follows the Ninth Circuit's 2022 reasoning instead, the suit joins its predecessor, and 90% of the world's DRAM supply continues to be governed by three firms whose parallel restraint, in the law’s eyes, remains just good business.

South Korean President Lee Jae Myung on Monday, June 29, announced an 800 trillion won ($520 billion) public-private investment plan alongside Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix to expand the country's chipmaking capacity, a move the government framed as essential to keeping South Korea competitive in the global artificial intelligence race. Lee unveiled the plan in a televised state address at his office in Seoul, flanked by Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Jae-yong and SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won, the leaders of the world's two largest memory chipmakers.

"Right now is truly a decisive moment, as the landscape of the global economy is being reshaped," Lee said in televised remarks. "Major countries, including the U.S. and China, are engaged in all-out competition with massive stakes." He added that only through cooperation between the private and public sectors could South Korea hope to triumph. Industry Minister Kim Jung-kwan said the plan would let the country rapidly expand production by sharply shortening the timeline from licensing to construction.

The centerpiece of the partnership is the construction of four production facilities, with Samsung and SK Hynix each building two. According to the government, the new plants will be built in the southwestern part of the country, near the city of Gwangju, a mostly rural area far from the existing semiconductor base south of Seoul, where both companies operate major clusters. Samsung will also build packaging facilities for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips in Chungcheong as demand for the advanced components soars.

"HBM, which is indispensable for the training and inference of AI models, requires cutting-edge technology for stacking semiconductor chips," the Samsung chairman said. "We will focus our investment on HBM fabs, which require main-fab-level processes, alongside existing semiconductor back-end fabs in the Chungcheong region, including Cheonan and Onyang."

One detail the government did not provide was the split between public and private money, as the project is a combined public-private commitment rather than a government spending program. While it is not immediately clear how much of the 800 trillion won would come from the state versus the two chipmakers, the disclosed line items are comparatively modest.

Industry Minister Kim Jung-kwan said the government and industry would jointly invest more than 30 trillion won over 15 years across the semiconductor value chain, while President Lee said Gwangju and South Jeolla province would contribute a further 5 trillion to 20 trillion won. Kim put another 81 trillion won toward the Chungcheong packaging hub, though he did not say how much of that is public.

The balance of the headline number is widely expected to be company capital expenditure, with the state's role concentrated in subsidies, faster permitting, and infrastructure. Kim said the government would streamline approvals and bring fab construction forward by up to 12 years, from the mid-2040s to the mid-2030s.

The plan also absorbs and accelerates projects already underway. The government said it would help Samsung and SK Hynix speed up construction of their existing capital-region clusters, with SK Group pulling forward the ramp of its Yongin memory site from 2045 to 2033, part of a stated goal to double the country's memory output within five years. SK Hynix supplies the bulk of the HBM that Nvidia depends on for its AI accelerators, the very strain this expansion is meant to relieve. While semiconductors are the focus of the investment, with the priority being a decisive lead in memory chips, the companies will also work on AI robots, physical AI, and AI data centers.

The investment partnership appears to be the latest piece of a broader strategy. SK Hynix had already committed $15 billion to new semiconductor facilities in February, a figure that now reads as an early piece of the larger national framework. Earlier iterations of the country's cluster plan had pegged long-term investment at around $471 billion, stretching to 2047, so the new figure represents a substantial expansion as AI demand projections have climbed. The fabs are targeted for completion in the mid-2030s.

The announcement caps an extraordinary stretch for both firms. SK Hynix overtook Samsung in June to become South Korea's most valuable listed company for the first time in more than 25 years, lifted by its commanding lead in HBM, while Samsung's chip division alone booked 53.7 trillion won in first-quarter operating profit as AI-driven memory shortages are expected to strain the companies' capacity past 2027.

The scale of the investments also invites inevitable comparison. At roughly $520 billion, South Korea’s plan dwarfs the United States' CHIPS Act, which provided about $52 billion in direct subsidies, by a factor of ten. Although the comparison is imperfect, since the U.S. figure is a government subsidy while the Korean number appears to be mostly private investment that the state is coordinating.

The strategic logic is the same on both sides of the Pacific: secure domestic capacity for the chips that underpin AI, at a moment when the U.S., China, Japan and the EU are all pursuing their own semiconductor industrial strategies. For Seoul, the specific prize is memory, the segment where its two companies already hold a commanding global position, with the goal being to extend that lead rather than merely defend it.

Samsung, SK hynix, and Micron were sued on June 25th in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, where 17 plaintiffs accuse the three memory makers of illegally coordinating to restrict DRAM supply and inflate prices that the complaint says have risen roughly 700% over four years. The class action, filed as Garciaguirre v. Samsung Electronics and assigned to Judge Noel Wise, invokes Section 1 of the Sherman Act and targets companies that together hold around 90% of the global DRAM market. Samsung and SK hynix have pleaded guilty to criminal DRAM price fixing once before, with the latter paying a $185 million fine in April 2005.

The complaint argues that the three companies used a coordinated shift toward high-bandwidth memory (HBM), the stacked DRAM that feeds AI accelerators, as a cover to curtail production of older DDR3 and DDR4 modules. That contraction in commodity DRAM, the plaintiffs argue, pushed prices to record highs while no rival could step in: building a new DRAM fab costs tens of billions and takes years, leaving the incumbents free to cut output without fear of being undercut.

The named plaintiffs include 14 individuals and three small PC businesses, among them Troy's Computers and Florida repair outfit My Florida PC, and they cite Apple's recent iPad and Mac price increases as evidence of the squeeze. They’re seeking class status, an injunction, and treble damages as a result.

However, this case revisits a precedent that was already established in the same courthouse. A 2018 class action brought by law firm Hagens Berman made similar claims about parallel production cuts, and the district court dismissed it in 2020. The Ninth Circuit upheld that dismissal in 2022, ruling the trio's conduct was “more likely explained by lawful, unchoreographed free-market behavior” than by an illegal agreement.

It was held at the time that the plaintiffs’ eight “plus factors” didn’t clear Section 1’s threshold, which demands evidence of an actual agreement rather than the conscious parallelism common in a three-supplier market. The new complaint leans on the pivot to HBM as the additional evidence that this earlier lawsuit lacked.

The three memory makers have publicly stated they’re operating independently while redirecting capacity to HBM, and senior executives have warned the shortage could run for years. Investment bank Jefferies expects DRAM prices to rise another 40% to 50% in the third quarter and a further 30% to 40% in the fourth, with no meaningful relief before 2028. The allegations remain unproven, and the defendants have not yet responded in court.

SK hynix overtook Samsung Electronics on Monday to become South Korea's most valuable listed company, the first time Samsung has surrendered the top spot on the KOSPI index since November 2000, according to Reuters. SK hynix shares closed up 5.6% to lift its market capitalization to 2,080.4 trillion won ($1.35 trillion), edging past Samsung's 2,066.7 trillion won excluding preferred shares, after a rally of more than 340% this year built almost entirely on demand for the high-bandwidth memory it supplies to Nvidia and other AI chip buyers. The company held 61% of the global HBM market in 2025, against 17% for Samsung and 21% for Micron.

SK hynix is one of the few pure-play memory makers, while Samsung spans smartphones, displays, contract chipmaking, and home appliances, among many other markets. Investors value the focus on pure-play memory higher because HBM carries the industry's fattest margins and ties suppliers to specific AI accelerators, unlike commodity DRAM that buyers can swap between vendors.

SK hynix built its lead by continuing to invest in HBM through the 2023 downturn, when a memory price collapse pushed it to a 7.73 trillion won annual operating loss. Samsung, by contrast, reportedly hit yield and qualification delays on its HBM3E chips that slowed major Nvidia orders, the proximate reason for a 61% share against a 17% one.

Samsung's remaining stronghold is conventional DRAM, but even that margin is shrinking. Bank of America estimates put SK hynix's monthly DRAM output at roughly 589,000 wafers this year against Samsung's 691,000. SK hynix is projected to expand output by about 38% between 2025 and 2028, compared with 17.5% at Samsung, which would cut the production gap to under 10% by 2028 from around 23% in 2025. The capacity both companies are pouring into HBM is not going into the commodity chips behind the memory shortage they've warned could run past 2027, and SK hynix has pledged to double its memory wafer output within five years.

Samsung, meanwhile, disputes the ranking, telling Reuters that its market cap should include preferred shares, which would lift its value to 2,246.4 trillion won. The gap also reflects the HBM3 and HBM3E generations rather than what comes next. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang confirmed earlier this month that Samsung, SK hynix, and Micron all passed HBM4 certification for the Vera Rubin platform, and Samsung shipped the industry's first 12-layer HBM4E samples on May 29th.

SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won, who pushed through the original Hynix acquisition despite internal opposition, explained the strategy in a book published in January. "What I really wanted to accomplish when we acquired Hynix was to transform it from a commodity memory producer into a mainstream semiconductor company whose products are indispensable," Chey said.

The Bank of Korea has named performance bonuses at Samsung Electronics and SK hynix as a risk to the country's inflationary stability, warning in a price-stability report on June 17th that payouts worth several hundred thousand dollars per worker could push wages higher across the wider economy. The central bank found that special pay in the IT sector increased by 60.6% year over year in the first quarter, while wage growth elsewhere ran at just 2.1%, a gap wide enough that two chipmakers are now featured in national monetary policy. The bank held its benchmark rate at 2.50% in May and projects full-year inflation of 2.7%, above its 2% target.

SK hynix agreed last September to set aside 10% of its operating profit for worker bonuses, and Samsung committed 10.5% of its semiconductor operating profit after its union threatened an 18-day strike in May. These figures mean that a memory worker on a base salary of 80 million won ($52,400) stands to collect roughly 626 million won ($410,000) this year, while SK hynix staff could receive more than 700 million won ($454,851) if the company reaches 250 trillion won in annual profit. SK workers could see close to $900,000 next year on top of this year's haul.

In its price-stability report, the Bank of Korea modeled how concentrated payouts move prices. When the share of firms paying top-10% bonuses rises, consumer prices climb 0.05 percentage points roughly five months later, a lag effect that broad, even wage increases don’t produce.

Governor Shin Hyun-song has said that consumer prices should stay on a high upward path, with second-half headline inflation near 3%. The bonuses have already spilled into other areas, with labor groups citing them in next year's minimum wage talks, and card spending has risen fastest in the Gyeonggi Province districts around the two firms' fabs, where luxury sales have surged.

The payouts can of course be traced back directly to the AI-driven memory supercycle that has sent DRAM and NAND contract prices climbing through 2025 and 2026. HBM demand for AI accelerators has handed Samsung and SK hynix record operating profits, with profit-linked bonus deals converting that windfall for the companies into bags of cash for workers in the companies’ microchip divisions.

Senior South Korean policymaker Kim Yong-beom spooked markets last month when he floated the idea of a “national dividend” in a Facebook post, writing that gains from the AI infrastructure era were built on an industrial foundation the entire nation accumulated over half a century. Seoul officials later said it had no such plans, however.

Samsung displayed its first physical mockup of HBM5 memory at Computex 2026 in Taipei. Tom's Hardware dropped by to see its pairing of the eighth-generation AI memory with a new in-package cooling structure it calls Heat Path Block, or HPB. Just last week, rival SK hynix unveiled its own iHBM thermal design, meaning both companies are now focusing on the same heat bottleneck in the die-to-die interface that connects memory to the processor. Samsung also confirmed that it’ll fab HBM5’s base die on its in-house 2nm process, down from the 4nm node used for HBM4 and HBM4E.

Rather than letting heat escape outward through the core dies, HPB builds a separate set of thermal pillars that pull heat from inside the stack and carry it to a spreader sitting above or beside the package, according to Samsung at Computex.

The design concentrates on the D2D PHY layer, the high-speed link between the HBM base die and the GPU, where power density and temperatures increase exponentially as stacks grow taller and run quicker. Samsung said it has already implemented and verified HPB on HBM4E, the generation whose first 12-layer samples it began shipping last month at 14 Gbps, scaling to 16 Gbps, with 3.6 TB/s of bandwidth per stack.

Samsung runs both a memory business and a logic foundry, letting it build the HBM5 stack and the 2nm die beneath it in-house. "AI systems are becoming more powerful and densely integrated, making heat management, data-processing efficiency, and packaging stability just as important as memory performance itself," Song Jai-hyuk, president and CTO of Samsung's Device Solutions division, told reporters at Computex, according to the Korea Herald. Song said the company would keep building its competitiveness in next-generation memory through cooperation with partners, including Nvidia.

Last year, a roadmap from KAIST projected HBM5 reaching a 4,096-bit interface, roughly 4 TB/s per stack, and about 100 watts of per-stack power, a thermal load that goes a long way in explaining why both Korean memory giants are reworking their packaging now rather than at launch.

SK hynix faced the same problem via a different route. Its iHBM design embeds cooling elements made of electrically non-conductive, thermally conductive silicon into the D2D PHY layer, which the company said cuts thermal resistance by more than 30% against current products.

SK hynix has opted to place a cooling element directly at the hotspot, while Samsung has built a route to evacuate heat away from it. Both methods are slated to debut with HBM5, but it’ll be a little while before we see either in action, as neither company expects it to reach mass production before 2028.

We’ve seen numerous announcements from major players in the gaming monitor space over the past few days, including Alienware, Asus, and Gigabyte. Not to be left out, Samsung also has five new gaming monitors in 27-inch and 32-inch screen sizes across the Odyssey G8, OLED G8, and Odyssey OLED G7 product families.

The Odyssey G8 is available in 27-inch (G80HF) and 32-inch (G80HS) sizes, both featuring IPS panels. The 27-inch model features a 5K resolution (5120 x 2880), which results in 218 pixels per inch (PPI). The monitor supports dual-mode operation, so at native resolution it maxes out at 180 Hz. At 2560 x 1440 resolution, the maximum refresh rate jumps to 360 Hz.

The 32-inch model bumps the resolution to 6K (6,144 x 3,456) and 224 PPI. This monitor also supports dual-mode operation, with a 165 Hz refresh rate at 6K, and a 330 Hz refresh rate at 3K (3,072 x 1,728).

Both monitors have a typical brightness of 350 nits (400 nits peak), support G-Sync and FreeSync, and include two HDMI 2.1 ports and one DisplayPort 2.1 port.

There are also two new additions to the Odyssey OLED G8 family, the 27-inch and 32-inch G80SH, which feature QD-OLED panels. Specs-wise, the monitors primarily differ in screen size and brightness (while both peak at 1,000 nits, the 27-inch model has a typical brightness of 250 nits versus 300 nits for the 32-incher).

With that said, both offer a 4K resolution (3,840 x 2,160), a maximum refresh rate of 240 Hz, and a 0.03 ms response time. AMD FreeSync Premium Pro is supported, although there is no mention of Nvidia G-Sync compatibility. You'll find two HDMI 2.1 ports, a DisplayPort 2.1 port, and a USB-C port (96-watt Power Delivery) for your video needs.

Finally, there's the Odyssey OLED G7 (G73SH), which is a dual-mode 32-inch OLED panel. It's another 3,840 x 2,160 panel, this time with dual-mode capabilities: it operates at 165 Hz at 4K and 330 Hz at 1080p. The monitor boasts a 1,500,000:1 aspect ratio, 275-nit typical brightness, and 1,300-nit peak brightness (1.5 percent window). The Odyssey OLED G7 has one HDMI 2.1 and one DisplayPort 1.4 port.

The 27-inch and 32-inch Odyssey G8 are priced at $949.99 and $1,599.99, respectively. The 27-inch and 32-inch Odyssey OLED G8 come in at $1,099.99 and $1,299.99, respectively, while the Odyssey OLED G7 costs $1,099.99. Samsung is also currently offering up to a $300 E-Certificate when purchasing these monitors from its online store.

South Korean media has noted a surge in spending on luxury goods following big bonus payouts to semiconductor workers. For example, the Chosun Daily (machine translation) reports that luxury consumption in southern Gyeonggi Province, where the nation’s 'Semiconductor Belt' is located, has rocketed. In one local department store, some luxury goods category sales are up nearly 150%. The flood of cash and spending shows that towns in Gyeonggi Province are now enjoying their own 'Gangnam Style.'

The Korean news source provides some interesting stats showing the rapid increase in conspicuous consumption since the fab workers at Samsung and SK hynix earned their envy-inducing bonuses. At a department store/mall called Shinsegae South City, located in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province, luxury jewelry sales in May were up 146.3%, it says. Moreover, luxury watch sales rose 85.3%.

Chosun Daily also shared some retail stats for the Lotte Department Store Dongtan Branch (also in Gyeonggi Province). It says that from Jan 1 to May 27, 2026, luxury sales were up 40% compared to the same period last year. A breakdown of these figures shows customers didn’t just target luxury brands but big-ticket home appliances (a category up 30%). A statement from this department store shows they are aware of the economic driving force behind the spending on luxury goods. "Sales of high-end goods such as luxury and home appliances have increased due to the boom in semiconductor companies, the creation of advanced industrial clusters, and the move-in of new large apartment complexes," said a store statement.

It was a similar story at The Hyundai Department Store, Pangyo Branch (also in Gyeonggi Province). Here, luxury goods sales were up 46.1% in May. That compares with an increase observed across all Hyundai Department Store stores nationwide of about 32%. High-end watches and jewelry (66%) and high-end clothing brands (36.9%) were major contributors to the sales boom.

With locals snapping up luxury goods like kids picking up candy, the semiconductor boom in South Korea looks like it will be highly beneficial to mostly European brands like Chanel, Hermès, Prada, Gucci, Rolex, Cartier, etc.

Recent reports suggest the good times are rolling at SK hynix, where workers are tipped to receive bonuses of up to $900,000 next year, on top of $447,000 this year. It's good to see the huge influx of RAM and NAND cash not just going to Samjeon Nix (Samsung Electronics, SK hynix) corporate accounts, or one or two billionaires, but that the good times are being shared with those at the coal face.

Samsung Display is pushing the envelope in high-resolution, high-refresh rate displays with the announcement of its 360 Hz 4K QD-OLED panel. The company says that it will launch the new screen at Computex 2026, which is said to be the first one to go beyond 240 Hz while running at a native 4K resolution. We’ve already seen monitors that can go beyond 1,000 Hz, but these are often limited to 1080p or even lower resolutions. The new display achieved a higher refresh rate through optimized panel circuitry and driving systems, which must handle an increased amount of data compared to older, slower displays.

Aside from achieving 360 Hz at 4K, the Samsung panel also comes with other technical improvements. This includes Dual Mode, which allows competitive gamers to go up to 680 Hz at a reduced 1080p resolution. It also comes with VESA DisplayHDR True Black 600 certification, meaning the display can hit 600 nits of brightness while keeping black levels at 0.0005 nits or lower, giving users excellent contrast while ensuring that they can still see the QD-OLED screen even in bright situations. Samsung says its engineers also revamped the display’s pixel structure, using a V-stripe pattern for sharper text rendering.

All these features should make it an excellent all-around panel for both professionals and gamers, ensuring that users get a sharp, crisp image while giving them deep blacks and a bright screen. “Many customers have described the new 31.5-inch 4K 360Hz product as a near-perfect monitor that delivers everything consumers expect from a premium monitor, including ultra-high resolution, an ultra-high refresh rate, high brightness, and enhanced readability,” Samsung Display Vice President Brad Jung claimed. He also added, “Building on the fundamental image quality advantages of QD-OLED and our continuous research and development efforts, Samsung Display will continue to introduce innovative products that exceed market expectations.”

The company says that it’s already in talks with 10 manufacturers to supply this particular panel. If all goes well, we expect to see new monitors equipped with this panel appear in the market in the next 12 months, especially as Samsung plans to mass-produce the display in the latter half of 2026. We’re excited to test monitors with this technology once they hit the market, but until then, you can check out the best 4K gaming monitors if you need a new screen right now.

Samsung Electronics' largest union has ratified a compensation deal that will pay semiconductor workers an average bonus of roughly $340,000, according to Bloomberg. About 74% of the union's members voted in favor of the agreement, which was first reached last week, just 90 minutes before an 18-day general strike was set to begin at the world's largest memory chipmaker. But the deal has deepened internal rifts at the company: some memory division employees stand to receive 600 million won ($400,000) while staff in Samsung's smartphone, TV, and appliance divisions are looking at payouts of just 6 million won ($4,000).

The agreement allocates 10.5% of Samsung's semiconductor division operating profit as stock-based bonuses, with an additional 1.5% in cash, plus a 6.2% average wage increase. The program runs for 10 years, contingent on the division hitting some lofty annual operating profit targets. Based on Bloomberg's projections of Samsung's 2026 operating profit at approximately 330 trillion won, the total bonus pool for the company's 78,000 semiconductor employees could reach roughly 40 trillion won ($26.6 billion).

The vote puts months of escalating labor unrest to an end, unrest that saw more than 40,000 workers rally in April, causing night-shift fab output to fall by 58%. Workers had compared their compensation unfavorably to rival SK hynix, which offered more generous bonuses last year. But while the strike threat is over, the resentment it exposed isn’t; only about 21% of Samsung's smaller union, which represents mostly non-chip staff, approved the agreement.

This resentment has led to work slowdowns that have spread to Samsung’s foundry and TSP (Test & Package) divisions, with meetings being canceled and decision-making on major projects reportedly at a standstill. TSP handles the back-end packaging and testing essential to producing high-bandwidth memory, and disruptions there could complicate Samsung's HBM4 production ramp for Nvidia's next-gen Rubin AI accelerators.

Samsung’s DX division head, TM Roh, said, “I understand that the recent wage negotiation process and its outcome have left many of you feeling alienated, deprived, and perhaps disappointed or hurt by the company,” in an internal memo following the signing of the deal. “I will personally oversee and examine what needs to change in each business unit, where we need to focus more boldly, and what is most urgently needed on the front lines.”

The vote came on a milestone day for the memory sector, with SK hynix and Micron both crossing the $1 trillion market cap mark early Wednesday, joining Samsung, which breached the same threshold last month. Samsung's challenge now is keeping its memory, foundry, and packaging teams functioning while one group of employees has received a historic windfall and the other hasn’t — and isn’t happy about it.

A South Korean court on Tuesday dismissed an attempt by Samsung Electronics' consumer electronics workers to block ratification of the company's AI-driven bonus deal, according to the Korea Herald, all but guaranteeing approval of a package that will pay memory chip employees roughly $400,000 each this year while their colleagues in smartphones and home appliances receive closer to just $4,000.

The Suwon District Court rejected the injunction filed by five employees from Samsung’s Device eXperience (DX) division, who had argued it was unfairly excluded from the vote. Over 90% of eligible members of the larger Samsung Electronics Labor Union (SELU), which led negotiations, had already cast ballots by Tuesday morning.

The vote closes Wednesday and is widely expected to pass, since an estimated 80% to 90% of the SELU's 57,290 voting members work in Samsung's semiconductor division, the primary beneficiary of the deal.

The government-mediated agreement, struck last week to avert an 18-day general strike by 48,000 workers, allocates 10.5% of Samsung's semiconductor division operating profit as stock-based bonuses, plus an additional 1.5% in cash. The program runs for 10 years, contingent on the division hitting aggressive annual operating profit targets of 200 trillion won ($132 billion) from 2026 to 2028 and 100 trillion won from 2029 to 2035.

Based on Bloomberg's projections of Samsung's 2026 operating profit at approximately 330 trillion won (~$218 billion), the total bonus pool for the company's 78,000 semiconductor employees would reach roughly 40 trillion won ($26.6 billion). Individual payouts vary sharply by unit: memory division workers stand to receive around 600 million won (~$400,000), while those in Samsung's struggling foundry and logic chip design operations would get substantially less but still significant sums.

DX division employees, like those behind the legal filing, by contrast, would receive approximately 6 million won (~$4,000) under the existing bonus structure, which the new deal doesn’t change.

While the court's ruling removed the most immediate legal obstacle, opposition to the deal extends well beyond the SECU. The National Samsung Electronics Union (NSEU), which has roughly 20,000 members across both chip and non-chip divisions, said it’s also voting against the deal, and NSEU official Lee Ho-seok told Reuters that some foundry workers within Samsung's chip division are also frustrated with the terms.

A group of individual shareholders has separately threatened to sue, arguing that the profit-linked bonus scheme amounts to a distribution of company funds that requires a shareholder vote under South Korean commercial law. The Korea Shareholder Action Headquarters staged a rally last week near the Seoul residence of Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Jae-yong, warning it would use all available legal avenues to block disbursement.

The internal rift has already had operational consequences, with resentment over the bonus disparity having spread to Samsung’s chip packaging divisions. It’s understood that intentional production slowdowns are disrupting HBM delivery schedules, prompting CEO Jun Young-hyun to urge employees in an internal memo to move past the conflict.

Samsung's tentative profit-sharing deal with its largest labor union averted an 18-day strike just days ago, but the agreement has triggered internal conflict that’s now threatening the company's ability to ship AI memory on schedule, according to a Seoul Economic Daily report published yesterday.

It’s understood that meetings are being canceled across Samsung's non-memory and shared business units. That work negligence has become widespread in the foundry and TSP (Test & Package) divisions, which handle the back-end packaging and testing work essential to producing high-bandwidth memory. One source told the publication that “decision-making on major projects has come to a complete halt,” as inter-departmental resentment deepens over the bonus gap.

This disruption in TSP could be especially consequential for Samsung as it looks to ramp up its HBM4 production for Nvidia’s next-gen Rubin AI accelerators. TSP uses an integrated turnkey system that routes chips through its own foundry and packaging lines, and any slowdown in back-end operations will directly constrain HBM output as all three major memory producers are racing to fulfill hyperscaler orders.

Another source speaking to the publication warned that continued negligence on production and verification lines could damage Samsung's customer relationships and jeopardize delivery commitments.

The root of the conflict is a massive disparity in proposed payouts. Under the tentative deal, employees in Samsung's memory division stand to receive bonuses of roughly 600 million won (~$400,000). In contrast, workers in the DX (Device eXperience) division, which covers smartphones, TVs, and home appliances, would receive approximately 6 million won (~$4,000). The deal allocates 10.5% of the semiconductor division's operating profit as stock-based bonuses, with an additional 1.5% in cash.

Workers outside the memory unit have pushed back hard, with a smaller union representing DX employees filing a court injunction this week to block the larger, chip-dominated union from handling collective bargaining. That union's membership surged from 3,000 to nearly 13,000 after the deal was announced. Separately, the Korea Shareholder Action Headquarters has threatened legal action, arguing the profit-linked bonus structure requires shareholder approval under Korean law.

Union members began casting electronic ballots on Friday, with voting open through May 27. Ratification requires participation from more than half of eligible members and a majority yes vote, but approximately 43,000 non-memory union members within the DS division could swing the outcome. According to reports from Korea, internal message boards have shown strong opposition from workers who view the deal as favoring the memory unit at everyone else's expense.

Samsung's semiconductor CEO, Jun Young-hyun, urged employees in an internal memo Thursday to move past the conflict, but the dispute now poses a tangible risk to Samsung during what Bloomberg estimates will be a record year, with 2026 operating profit projected at 330 trillion won (~$218 billion).

Following a last-minute deal yesterday between Samsung Electronics and its South Korean workers’ union, the company will reportedly distribute 40 trillion won ($26.6 million) in bonuses to chip employees. According to a Bloomberg report, the bonus, which will vary by employee, will result in an average payout of 513 million won (~$339,000) per employee in Samsung’s semiconductor division, based on proposed terms and projected 2026 operating profits. Other estimates put the figure at around 600 million won (~$396,000).

As part of the tentative deal — which narrowly averted a strike originally scheduled to begin May 21st — Samsung has reportedly agreed to distribute 10.5% of its profits as employee bonuses in the form of stock, plus another 1.5% in cash. The union initially requested 15%. Addressing another major union demand, the new bonus program will continue for 10 years — rather than a one-off payment — provided specified profit targets are met.

The union plans to vote on the deal internally over the coming week. Should the deal pass, employees will likely receive the bonuses in early 2027. The agreement permits employees to sell one-third of the shares right away, and the remainder in installments over two years, according to Bloomberg.

The deal comes after months of escalating labor unrest centered on employee bonuses. Labor unions demanded a revision of Samsung’s bonus structure that would allow employees to earn more, as the company’s profits surge amid the AI-driven semiconductor boom. Bloomberg estimates Samsung’s 2026 operating profits will multiply sevenfold to 330 trillion won (~$218 billion).

The unprecedented profits are projected as the AI infrastructure boom has transformed memory chips — once a cyclical commodity business — into one of the most lucrative industries on earth. Demand for High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) and other AI-oriented components has triggered what analysts are calling a semiconductor supercycle. The workers at the center of this boom argue that since they are active facilitators of the hardware, they deserve a share of the profits. Samsung is notably not the first major Korean chipmaker to reach this conclusion. Last September, SK Hynix settled with its own union to allocate 10% of annual operating profit directly to employees as performance bonuses for the next decade, while removing caps on bonuses.

The payouts themselves are extraordinary by almost any conventional corporate standard — but then again, so are the profits currently flowing through the AI semiconductor ecosystem. Reports suggest the payouts are having a broader impact on the industry. Jobs at Samsung and SK Hynix were already coveted in South Korea. However, with potential bonuses that can exceed the lifetime earnings of workers in other sectors, competition for roles is sky-high. The bonuses are also reshaping decision-making within the companies themselves. We recently covered reports that Samsung and SK Hynix employees were considering terminating prestigious overseas training opportunities to remain eligible for bonuses.

Samsung Electronics has narrowly avoided an 18-day strike at its South Korean chip operations after reaching a last-minute tentative wage agreement with its labor union on Wednesday — just hours before workers were due to walk out.

The union, representing nearly 48,000 members, said it would suspend the general strike planned for May 21 to June 7 and put the deal to an internal vote. Voting is expected to run from May 22 to May 27, though some notices put the window at May 23 to May 28. If members approve it, the tentative agreement becomes formal; if they reject it, the strike threat could return.

The deal followed last-minute talks involving Samsung management, union leaders, and South Korea’s labor ministry. Labor Minister Kim Young-hoon helped restart negotiations after earlier discussions broke down. Samsung’s Device Solutions negotiator, Yeo Myeong-gu, and union leader Choi Seung-ho signed the tentative agreement in Suwon.

Exact terms of the agreement have not been fully disclosed, but the dispute centered on performance bonuses. The union had pushed for Samsung to allocate 15% of annual operating profit to employee bonuses and scrap a 50% annual salary cap on performance payouts. Samsung had resisted those demands, arguing that profit-sharing across its businesses was complicated because its booming memory division and weaker logic/foundry operations were performing very differently.

The breakthrough caps months of escalating labor unrest. Dissatisfaction grew among workers as Samsung’s semiconductor profits surged on AI-driven memory demand, with workers comparing their payouts to those at rival SK Hynix, which has offered more generous bonus structures.

After earlier talks collapsed in February and March, the union threatened a May general strike. Further negotiations were scheduled for May 11 and 12, but the penultimate talks broke down again on May 12 without a deal. Leaked transcripts from the talks alleged that Samsung offered memory workers a 607% bonus worth $477,000, while logic chip staff were to get as little as 50%. The union rejected the proposal — citing a potential retention crisis due to the imbalance — and threatened to proceed with the strike.

The union had already demonstrated its ability to disrupt operations via a one-day strike that reportedly saw over 40,000 workers participate and caused night-shift output at Samsung’s foundry operations to fall sharply, with memory output also hit.

Ahead of today's deal, the May 21st strike seemed inevitable, with Samsung reportedly winding down chip production in preparation. Samsung had also obtained last-minute court injunctions to limit the impact of the strikes before direct government intervention helped bring both sides back to the negotiating table.

Analysts and officials warned of potential disruptions to chip supply and major economic damage in South Korea. One estimate cited possible daily losses of around 1 trillion won if production halted, while others warned of tens of billions of dollars in broader economic risk.

For now, that risk is suspended — not eliminated. The immediate question is whether Samsung’s union members accept the tentative wage deal. Approval will defuse the company’s biggest labor crisis in years, while a rejection will put the strike back on the table at one of the most sensitive points in the global AI chip supply chain.

Samsung and SK Hynix employees are reportedly rejecting overseas training programs in favor of bonuses while seeing their matchmaking grades rise on online dating sites. According to the Korean Media outlet Chosun, discussions on Samsung Electronics’ internal bulletin board indicate that employees are considering choosing potential bonuses over hard-earned, typically coveted training programs. The sentiments come amid projections that the company plans to distribute “record-high” performance bonuses due to profit surges from the AI-driven semiconductor boom, with the company’s policies restricting eligibility.

According to the report, Samsung Electronics has exempted employees currently undergoing overseas training from bonus eligibility. This stance is reportedly seeing a number of employees terminating their training to return to their roles. Samsung runs a highly sought-after training program that provides employees around their 7th year at the company with financial and operational support to pursue postgraduate degrees at prestigious institutions both in and outside Korea. For example, in addition to their annual salaries, the company provides employees pursuing an MBA in the US with 500 million Korean won (~$333,000) in tuition and living expenses over two years. The support varies across institutions and countries.

The program is typically highly competitive, with only 1 in 70 applicants succeeding. Now, following projections that the electronics giant could distribute an average of 600 million (~$400,000)won in bonuses to employees in the semiconductor division, interest in the training programs has dropped. Reports suggest that even those currently undergoing training are considering halting midway to be eligible for performance bonuses, as these are likely to outweigh the financial benefits of the training program.

According to the Chosun report, sources from Samsung Electronics stated, “There have been inquiries to the HR team about whether trainees can withdraw mid-program and if they must repay previously received company support.” indicating that despite potential repayment obligations, some employees are willing to return regardless.

These reports are coming even as Samsung Electronics employees are planning industrial action to compel the company to extend continuous performance bonuses to employees outside the semiconductor division. The company says only employees in the semiconductor division will receive ongoing bonuses, while others in other divisions will receive a one-time payment. The strike is scheduled for the 21st of May.

At Samsung’s competitor, SK Hynix, similar reports of employees abandoning training in favor of bonuses are emerging. Despite the fact that SK Hynix takes a softer stance by offering partial bonuses to training beneficiaries, anonymous posts on its internal board reportedly include comments like, “If next year’s bonus reaches 700 million Korean won (~$466,000), not abandoning the training might make me a sudden pauper overnight” and “Seeing the projected bonuses for next and the following year, I want to cut off the hand that applied for the training.”

These comments follow projections of even bigger bonuses in the coming years, as SK Hynix paid out 140 million Korean won (~$93,000) in performance bonuses early this year, which, unlike at Samsung, was distributed across the entire company. Analysts predict a dip in the popularity of overseas training programs at Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix over the next few years, as the appeal of performance bonuses grows. SK hynix bonuses are tipped to hit $477,000 this year and as much as $900,000 next year.

Beyond strikes, life-changing decisions, and financial gain, these massive performance bonuses stemming from AI-driven profit surges are influencing quite unexpected areas of life in South Korea. Reports from Chosun indicate that SK Hynix employees are ranking higher on matchmaking companies’ eligibility scales due to bonuses and increased income, with employees reportedly being flooded with blind-date offers.

"In the past, if we matched a partner for an SK hynix employee at about a B+ grade, now it's unconditionally 'A-grade.' As the overwhelming bonus system has become known, we're seeing a trend where female members are seeking out SK hynix employees first,” said Son Dong-gyu, CEO of the matchmaking company Bien Aller.

However, on the flip side, because bonuses are paid in direct proportion to days worked, there has been an uptick in aversion to taking extended leave, such as parental leave, as these are reportedly perceived as forfeiting income. These reports all underscore the massive influence of the AI boom on almost every aspect of humanity.

Noriyuki "hiyohiyo" Miyazaki, the developer of CrystalDiskInfo, has announced an important new feature in version 9.9.0: the ability to detect fake Samsung SSDs. The update is very useful given the sharp rise in counterfeit Samsung SSDs. When CrystalDiskInfo identifies a drive as inauthentic, it clearly labels the device with a [FAKE] label at the front to make it easy for users to spot the counterfeits.

Samsung makes some of the best SSDs on the market, which unfortunately makes their drives popular targets for counterfeiters. The Samsung Magician software is usually the first tool that comes to mind when you want to verify the authenticity of a Samsung SSD. However, recent updates to CrystalDiskInfo have introduced a similar verification feature, offering consumers a reliable third-party alternative.

While the developer has not provided an in-depth explanation of the technical details behind this detection method, they have shared that the function will rely on periodic updates for the time being. We suspect the program may be cross-referencing firmware and other S.M.A.R.T. data from the legit drives to weed out the bad ones. As a result, users may need to update CrystalDiskInfo regularly. Nonetheless, Miyazaki has expressed plans to roll out an improved version of the authentication feature in the near future.

In a test conducted with ITG Marketing, the tester demonstrated the effectiveness of CrystalDiskInfo’s new counterfeit-detection feature. The program quickly flagged a Samsung 990 Pro clone. Specifically, CrystalDiskInfo identified the PCI Vendor ID as belonging to a controller manufactured by Maxio, not Samsung. The firmware version also came out to 8888888, which is also bogus. It's easy for fraudsters to manipulate the physical labels and maybe even the name of how the drive shows up in Windows, but the controller's PCI Vendor ID is harder to falsify.

The verification feature is still a work in progress, which is why it requires regular updates. If you ever encounter a fake Samsung SSD, you can help contribute to improving CrystalDiskInfo’s detection feature. The developer encourages users to share their experiences by exporting the scan results as a text file and either emailing it directly to the developer or uploading it to the CrystalDiskInfo bulletin board.

CrystalDiskInfo, which has been around for 18 years now, is a powerful utility that reads the S.M.A.R.T. data from your storage drives and translates the cryptic raw values into valuable information we can understand. The program offers a wealth of information that spans from basic metrics, such as drive temperatures, to more advanced data, such as when helium starts to leak out of helium-filled hard drives.

CrystalDiskInfo has amassed over 90 million downloads during its lifetime. Miyazaki's commitment to improving the software has made it one of the best out there, and with the addition of this new Samsung SSD authenticity checker, it's more useful than ever.

Samsung has been granted a last-minute injunction by a South Korean court that limits the scope of strike action planned by disgruntled employees later this week, forcing both sides back to the bargaining table for more talks. The Financial Times reports that the Suwon District Court passed down a ruling on Monday, partially accepting a request from the company to neuter the planned industrial action.

Workers are unhappy over bonus caps and seeking a more generous share of Samsung's profits, amongst other things, in an 18-day walkout scheduled to begin on May 21. Now, the aforementioned court has said that staffing levels required to maintain safety, prevent damage to the facility, and maintain product quality "must remain at normal levels," FT reports. Furthermore, union members and their leaders will not be allowed to occupy or lock company facilities, or to prevent workers from entering them, and will face a fine of $74,000 (100 million won) per day if this order is breached.

While Samsung has already started winding down production at its facilities in anticipation of the walkout, its share price has jumped in early trading as a result of the ruling, which obviously favors the company and will weaken the impact of any strike action, and thereby the bargaining position of the workers.

To that end, Reuters reports that Samsung Electronics and the labour union have resumed talks to stop the industrial action. Some 45,000 workers had been expected to take part, although it's unclear how many are affected by the court ruling should the strike go ahead. A statement from the union reported by Reuters said that the action wouldn't stop the strike from going ahead if no deal can be reached, but that the union would "engage seriously" in negotiations.

Previous estimates indicate the strike could cost Samsung a total of 4 trillion won in revenue, with others putting the figure higher at 1 trillion won ($700 million) per day. Workers have already rejected the offer of a one-time bonus payout of $340,000 per employee. No doubt, this offer is undermined somewhat by rival SK hynix, which is set to pay out some $477,000 per employee this year and $900,000 next year. Bonuses at the company remain guaranteed for the next 10 years, putting Samsung's offer in the shade.

South Korea's government has said it will pursue all options to prevent a strike, including an emergency arbitration order. Such a government order would, in theory, prevent strike action for 30 days while mediation and arbitration are conducted by the country's Labor Relations Commission.

Internal Samsung wage negotiation transcripts obtained by Reuters show the company proposed bonuses of 607% of annual salary for its memory chip division in March, while offering workers in its loss-making foundry and System LSI businesses between 50% and 100%. The documents, part of hundreds of pages of meeting minutes, offer a detailed look at the internal fractures driving Samsung toward what would be the largest strike in its history, scheduled to begin on Thursday.

Samsung's Device Solutions division houses three businesses under one roof: memory, System LSI, and foundry. The first is printing money on the back of AI-driven HBM demand, while the other two have posted combined operating losses running into the trillions of Korean won.

Samsung's negotiators argued in the transcripts that the bonus disparity reflects that, with Kim Hyung-ro, a vice president and management negotiator, telling the union that the logic chip divisions would have collapsed or shut down without the memory unit's profits. “So how can you ‌justify giving performance bonuses?” he is quoted as saying in the transcripts.

The union understandably rejects this reasoning, with its chairman, Choi Seung-ho, counterstating that a worker in the memory division receiving 500 million won in bonuses while a foundry colleague takes home 80 million won creates a retention crisis the company cannot afford.

Samsung has since replaced Kim Hyung-ro as its chief bargaining representative, reportedly at the union's insistence, and Chairman Jay Y. Lee issued a rare public apology on Saturday, cutting short an overseas trip to address the dispute in person.

Reuters has also reportedly spoken with workers who described shrinking teams in Samsung's foundry operations at Pyeongtaek, with engineers departing for both SK hynix and Micron. This confirms what union chairman Choi said last month, when he highlighted that roughly 200 Samsung employees moved to SK hynix over the previous four months alone.

SK hynix set a market benchmark last September when it agreed to allocate 10% of annual operating profit directly to employees for the next decade and removed caps on performance payouts. Based on 2026 profit forecasts, that deal translates to average per-worker bonuses approaching $477,000 this year, with projections nearly doubling in 2027. Samsung's union is demanding a similar structure: 15% of operating profit allocated to a bonus pool, the removal of the existing 50% cap, and formalization in employment contracts.

Samsung is the only major semiconductor company that designs logic chips, manufactures them on a contract basis, and produces its own memory. That integrated model underpins a long-standing ambition to challenge TSMC in contract chipmaking by 2030, backed by more than $116 billion in planned investment. But the bonus disparity exposed in the transcripts highlights a huge problem with housing wildly unequal businesses under one compensation framework.

Yonsei University professor Namuh Rhee argues that the conflict is partly a consequence of Samsung's own organizational design. Combining profitable memory with loss-making foundry operations under a single division, Rhee wrote, creates internal conflicts of interest and depresses the company's stock valuation, according to Reuters.

The April one-day walkout provided a preview of what a full stoppage could look like: memory fab output fell 18% on the affected shift, and contract foundry production dropped 58%. Samsung has already begun winding down chip production in anticipation of the strike going ahead.

Ahead of industrial action by disgruntled employees over bonuses, Samsung has reportedly begun throttling semiconductor output by cutting new wafer input and placing lithography, etching, and cleaning equipment on standby, according to a report from both the Korea Herald and Seoul Economic Daily.

The pre-strike adjustments, described as “emergency management mode," are designed to limit losses at facilities that normally operate around the clock. However, they also mean that Samsung's chip production is already declining days before the union's 18-day walkout is scheduled to begin on May 21st.

The process involves restricting how many new wafers are fed into production lines and changing the product mix to focus on higher-value chips like HBM and advanced node semiconductors, per a source reported by the Herald.

This slowdown adds to a timeline of disruption that’ll extend well beyond the planned strike dates. KB Securities analyst Kim Dong-won estimated in a recent report that restarting and stabilizing Samsung's highly automated production lines after an 18-day stoppage could take an additional two to three weeks. Combined with this pre-strike wind-down period, Samsung's total window of reduced output could stretch to six weeks or longer.

According to the Seoul Economic Daily, daily losses could approach 3 trillion won ($2 billion) if fabrication lines are paused entirely. Professor Kwon Seok-joon at Sungkyunkwan University previously estimated that the 18-day walkout alone would cause 10 trillion to 17 trillion won ($17 billion) in direct losses, while JPMorgan has projected total losses of up to 43 trillion won ($28 billion) when factoring in labor costs and extended production disruption.

As of yesterday, May 14th, more than 43,000 workers had signed up to participate in the walkout, approaching the union's target of 50,000. "Even at the current level, more than half of the entire semiconductor (DS) division workforce is joining, and the company judges that a de facto shutdown is imminent,” a source told the Seoul Economic Daily.

Samsung sent a letter to the union today following the collapse of talks earlier this week, proposing that both sides resume talks without preconditions on Saturday, but union head Choi Seung-ho rejected the overture, telling Korean media that negotiations could take place after June 7, the scheduled end date of the strike.

TrendForce projects that the strike could disrupt 3% to 4% of global DRAM supply and 2% to 3% of NAND supply, given Samsung's production share. The longer-term risk, however, may be reputational because Samsung is ramping up the supply of HBM and high-capacity server DRAM for AI infrastructure. Even brief delivery uncertainty could push customers toward SK hynix and Micron.

All three leading-edge foundries — Intel Foundry, Samsung Foundry, and TSMC — have initiated mass production of chips using 2nm-class process technology. Samsung was the first one to start production using its SF2 node (though it could be argued that this is a rebadged SF3P) around mid-2025, Intel followed suit with its 18A node in November (albeit at development lines in Oregon, not production lines in Arizona), and TSMC initiated high-volume manufacturing using its N2 process at two volume fabs in Taiwan in December. We outline what's next for these three leading-edge foundries.

The current state of the market

The amount of capital, expertise, and experience required to develop leading-edge process technologies and build high-volume fabs supporting advanced nodes is so high that only three companies in the world are currently capable of producing them. Companies like Rapidus have yet to prove they are a viable leading-edge chipmaker. Meanwhile, all three leading foundries are transitioning from traditional node scaling to a more segmented, architecture- and product-driven approach, but are doing so with different priorities.

TSMC is focused on predictable scaling, combined with aggressive specialization, which is why its roadmap is split into high-performance computing-oriented technologies with backside power delivery network (BSPDN) and cost/density-optimized nodes without it.

Samsung has a wide range of node variants, though it is currently more focused on yield improvement, rather than on scaling, which is why its roadmap appears more iterative than breakthrough-focused. This is perhaps why it is behind competitors with its BSPDN implementation.

Intel seems to be pursuing the most aggressive technological roadmap with a conjoined implementation of gate-all-around (GAA) RibbonFET transistors and PowerVia BSPDN, rapid iteration, and the aggressive pursuit of High-NA EUV lithography in 2027 – 2028, years before its rivals.

Intel Foundry: The most ambitious chipmaker

Being a new player in the foundry market and a large integrated design manufacturer (IDM), Intel is pursuing a multi-faceted strategy aimed at addressing the needs of its own products, as well as attempting to land customers that do not necessarily require leading-edge process technologies.

Intel's roadmap is the most ambitious, but arguably the most volatile one, when compared to the plans of other leading foundries. On the one hand, Intel needs the best fabrication technologies to differentiate its own consumer and data center products. To that end, with its 18A and subsequent process technologies, Intel bet on the simultaneous implementation of GAA transistors and a BSPDN to maximize performance, power efficiency, and transistor density. On the other hand, since Intel has zero customers from the automotive and smartphone sectors, it does not have any technologies tailored specifically for these applications.

Intel's 18A is probably the most important technology for the company in years, as it will return production of the company's consumer CPUs back to its own fabs, something that promises to greatly improve margins. Although the company is in the process of improving yields on 18A and current 18A volumes are not significant, Intel is already preparing follow-on refinements such as 18A-P (with enhanced performance and improved power efficiency) and 18A-PT (which supports through silicon vias (TSVs) and can be used for 3D-integrated systems-in-package).

Beyond that, Intel is targeting 14A and 14A-E for 2027 ~ 2028 production readiness and an early ramp. The nodes will introduce Intel's 2^nd Generation RibbonFET GAA transistors, revamped PowerDirect backside power delivery, and Turbo Cells to improve the performance of critical data paths.

These will be the company's first nodes to use High-NA EUV lithography, at least for some 14A and 14A-E variants, which will be another attempt to introduce a technology that will differentiate Intel compared to competing nodes. Intel has said that the interest in 14A from external customers is significant. Musk's Terafab project is set to make use of Intel's 14A, as a licensee, but not as a customer.

At the same time, Intel is heavily relying on node variants to address different use cases, including performance enhancements (P), feature enhancements (E), and through-silicon via support (T). These process technologies are required to enable Intel to build custom multi-chiplet products for consumer and data center applications, which directly support its strategy to produce most of its products at in-house fabs.

Intel's roadmap also includes continued investment in mature nodes such as Intel 16 and UMC 12 as the company pursues a strategy to capture demand outside leading-edge applications, to ensure steady revenue streams.

While Intel's plans are aggressive and ambitious, the abrupt cancellation of 20A in late 2024 highlights the execution risks associated with such a roadmap.

Samsung Foundry: When yields matter more than nodes

Samsung was the first company to adopt GAA transistors with its SF3E technology in 2022, three years before Intel and TSMC. However, low and unpredictable yields have limited the adoption of this technology to niche applications like cryptocurrency mining ASICs. While SF3 was more mature, it was still adopted by select applications, mostly internally. As a result, the highest-performing chips made by Samsung are produced using FinFET-based SF4P and SF4X, which puts the company behind its rivals.

For now, reducing defect density, increasing yields, and ensuring stable yields are the top priorities for Samsung. Last year, it began making mobile system-on-chips (SoCs) using its SF2 node (which it calls the 1^st Generation 2nm GAA process), but among the major goals for the company for this year is to ramp up '2^nd Generation 2nm [SF2P] and prepare performance and power-optimized 4nm process,' which suggests limited adoption of SF2. The fact that the low-power 4nm-class node will be a major workhorse for the company. The company's roadmap also indicates SF2X (HPC-oriented) in 2026 as well as SF2A (for automotive applications) and SF2Z (SF2X with BSPDN) in 2027, though we can only wonder whether these nodes will be widely adopted.

Nonetheless, Samsung's iterative approach to the evolution of its SF2 nodes (SF2=>SF2P=>SF2X=>SF2X with backside power) is evident, which gives us hope that the company's yields will gradually improve.

Samsung's next major node will be SF1.4, a 1.4nm-class process technology optimized for consumer and smartphone applications, which won't feature backside power delivery. Samsung's slides put SF1.4 above the SF3 and SF2 families, which may suggest that this manufacturing process will feature some major enhancements, such as a new GAA transistor design or other major refinements. Samsung expects to mass-produce chips on its SF1.4 technology in 2027, so it can formally leave Intel and TSMC behind with its 1.4nm node.

A big question lingers, and that's whether Samsung plans to finally start using pellicles with its EUV lithography tools starting with SF1.4, or later. A lack of pellicles greatly increases the number of potentially yield-killing stochastic mask-borne defects, which are increasingly dominant at the 2nm and are getting much worse at thinner nodes.

TSMC: New technologies like clockwork

TSMC's roadmap remains the most structured and execution-focused among the three. The world's largest contract chipmaker initiated mass production of chips using its N2 process technology — its first node with GAA nanosheet transistors — at two fabs simultaneously late last year in a bid to meet demand from a wide range of applications, starting from Apple's smartphones and all the way to AMD's server-bound EPYC 'Venice' CPUs. Initiating volume production at two fabs simultaneously is something that rarely happens in the industry, though it looks like structural changes caused by demand from the AI segment are changing many things in the industry.

TSMC is on track to start making chips using performance-enhanced N2P with traditional frontside power delivery and A16 technology that adds backside power delivery on top, a split which highlights TSMC's increasingly segment-specific approach to leading-edge technologies.

Going forward, the company is set to continue offering advanced technologies with and without BSPDN, as this feature may be too expensive for consumer and smartphone applications, but is clearly valuable for heavy-duty data center processors. For example, A14 will emerge as a smartphone-oriented node in 2028, but then will re-emerge as a data center-oriented node once it gets BSPDN in 2029.

In addition, the company will continue to offer mainstream nodes like N4C, N3C, and eventually N2C for applications that are more sensitive to costs. Automotive-specific nodes (N7A, N5A, N3A) will lag leading-edge nodes by one to two generations, as they prioritize reliability and longevity over performance and transistor density.

TSMC's segmentation and yearly cadence for advanced manufacturing nodes enable the foundry to address the most demanding clients like Apple, AMD, Intel, Nvidia, or Qualcomm with competitive process technologies. Ultimately, such cadence and a wide range of nodes reinforce TSMC's position as the most predictable and commercially disciplined foundry.

Fractured futures

To sum things up, TSMC continues to bet on execution discipline and segmentation as it ramps its 2nm-class node at two fabs to meet overwhelming demand from a variety of applications, starting from humble cell phones all the way to heavy-duty servers.

Intel leads in architectural ambitions, as currently it is the only company that uses a process technology that features both gate-all-around transistors and backside power delivery. However, the company admits that its yields will only get to world-class level by 2027, which likely makes Intel's 18A node significantly less attractive to demanding customers.

Samsung sits somewhere in the middle, offering a wide variety of process technologies for different applications, but the company's yields with GAA-based nodes have been a challenge, which is why the firm is now focused on yield increases rather than on breakthroughs, so it does not attempt to leapfrog its competitors.

Government-mediated negotiations between Samsung Electronics and its largest labor union fell apart on Wednesday, according to Reuters, leaving just eight days before an 18-day strike that could shut down much of the world's biggest memory chip operation. The union warned that it is “no longer considering additional negotiations” until after the proposed general strike.

South Korean Prime Minister Kim Min-seok responded by convening an emergency ministerial meeting, instructing officials to closely manage the situation given what his office called the potential gravity of the impact on the national economy.

The breakdown followed two days of marathon talks brokered by South Korea's National Labor Relations Commission. The commission said it ended proceedings because of the gulf between the two sides and the union's own request to suspend discussions.

JPMorgan has estimated that an 18-day work stoppage would cost Samsung over 4 trillion won in direct revenue, roughly 1% of its semiconductor division's annual sales. Professor Song Heon-jae of the University of Seoul puts the figure higher, projecting losses of approximately 1 trillion won ($700 million) per day from factory shutdowns, Seoul Economic Daily reported on April 26. Meanwhile, the union's own estimate sits at up to 30 trillion won ($20.3 billion) in total damages.

Samsung has offered a one-time payment for 2026 but refused to commit to permanent changes in how bonuses are calculated, according to union representative Choi Seung-ho. That fell fundamentally short of the union’s demands, which include the scrapping of a cap on bonus pay currently set at 50% of base salary, and the allocation of 15% of annual operating profit to performance payouts.

While Choi said the union doesn’t plan to resume talks before the May 21st strike date, it would consider a new offer if Samsung puts one forward. Samsung said it regretted the outcome and would continue seeking dialogue.

“We spent 16 out of the 17 hours of mediation simply waiting around,” Choi said, according to Korea JoongAng Daily. “We declared the negotiations over because management kept extending the mediation without making any meaningful changes to its proposal, which appeared to be an attempt to weaken momentum for a general strike.”

The collapse has raised the prospect of an emergency arbitration order, a legal mechanism that would immediately freeze industrial action for 30 days while the labor commission mediates. South Korean Labor Minister Kim Young-hoon stopped short of invoking it on Wednesday, saying the dispute should be resolved through dialogue. The union has warned that such an order would damage labor relations further.

The tool has rarely been used, and doing so would be an unusual step for the current administration, which is friendly towards unions, but the economic stakes are substantial: semiconductors accounted for 37% of South Korea's total exports in April, up from 20% a year earlier, according to government data cited by Reuters.

The union now counts more than 90,000 members, representing over 70% of Samsung's South Korean workforce. That figure has grown from roughly 73,000 earlier this month and 32,000 during Samsung's first-ever strike in 2024. A one-day walkout in April offered a preview of what a full stoppage could do: Samsung's memory fab output fell 18% on the affected shift, and contract foundry production dropped 58%. With a potential 18-day strike, the losses in production and profit could be even larger.

Memory and storage chip prices have been steadily increasing worldwide due to the AI-driven shortage. Still, Japanese consumers are being hit the hardest, with crazy prices appearing in multiple shops across Tokyo. According to Akiba PC Hotline! [machine translated], Samsung SSDs have increased by up to 300% in various computer retailers, with the top-of-the-line 8TB Samsung 9100 Pro going up as high as $3,470.97 USD (547,980 JPY) at the current exchange rate. By comparison, you can get the same drive on Amazon for just $1,960.69 — around 43% cheaper than what is offered among Japanese retailers.

The egregious pricing isn’t limited to large-capacity PCIe 5.0 drives either. The 4TB 9100 Pro with heat sink is priced at $1,773 USD (279,980 JPY), which is a 31.5% increase from its previous price, while the 2TB version is now at $893 (140,980 JPY). These examples are around double the prices of the same models here in the U.S., as you can see on our SSD price tracker. More “affordable” Samsung models like the 990 Pro, 990 Evo Plus, and even the 870 Evo didn’t escape the pricing hikes, either. When compared to their prices from January of this year, those drives have jumped in price by as much as 384.7%.

The Japanese news outlet also reports that the price hikes aren’t limited to Samsung drives, as Kioxia SSDs also saw recent price jumps of between 39.8% to 59.4%. This meant that the 2TB Exceria Pro G2 costs $594.68 USD (93,880 JPY), while the 1TB Exceria Basic now costs $208 (32,980 JPY). It’s not all bad news for Japanese buyers, though, as Western Digital (SanDisk), Lexar, and other less popular brands saw a price drop for Gen 4 and Gen 5 M.2 NVMe SSDs and SATA SSDs.

These are some of the highest price hikes we’ve seen across the world, so far. Unfortunately, it’s unlikely that this will be the last price hike we’ll see, as PC makers are reporting increasing component costs that go beyond RAM and storage. Even other storage products like memory cards and flash drives saw price increases between 124% and 261%. Unfortunately, the average buyer cannot do anything but either pay the higher prices or wait until they go down in the distant future (if they ever do).

A senior South Korean policymaker has proposed redistributing tax revenue generated by the country's AI semiconductor boom to ordinary citizens as a “dividend,” rattling stock markets on the same day that Samsung's union bonus talks showed no sign of resolution, according to Bloomberg.

Kim Yong-beom, presidential chief of staff for policy, floated the idea of a "national dividend" in a Facebook post late Monday, writing that gains from the AI infrastructure era were built on an industrial foundation the entire nation accumulated over half a century. The benchmark Kospi index fell as much as 5.1% before recovering to close down 2.3% after Kim clarified he was referring to excess tax revenue rather than a new windfall levy on corporate profits. A government official confirmed to the outlet that the government is not considering any such plans, and that the comments were Kim's personal opinion.

The post came during the final stretch of government-mediated talks between Samsung and its largest labor union. Negotiations entered a second day on Tuesday at the National Labor Relations Commission in Sejong after 11 hours of talks on Monday produced no agreement, the Korea Herald reported.

The union is demanding 15% of operating profit as performance bonuses, removal of the existing payout cap, and a 7% base pay increase. Samsung management has reportedly offered terms exceeding rival SK hynix's 10% profit-sharing, but the union rejected those proposals because it wants the ratio institutionalized as a permanent system.

Samsung is forecast to post roughly 330 trillion won ($220 billion) in operating profit this year, while SK hynix is projected at 239 trillion won. If the two companies hit those marks, their combined corporate tax bill alone could exceed 100 trillion won, which would surpass the roughly 100 trillion won the Korean government estimated for total national corporate tax collection in 2026, per KB Securities analyst Lim Jae-kyun.

The union has set May 21st as the start of an 18-day general strike running through June 7th if talks collapse. Seoul Economic Daily reported earlier today that the negotiations were heading toward failure, with the Korea Herald noting that the Labor Relations Commission left open the possibility of extending mediation past its scheduled close if necessary.

A one-day walkout in April cut Samsung's contract foundry output by 58% on the affected night shift, and analysts have estimated that an 18-day stoppage could cost $6.9 billion to $11.7 billion in direct production losses.

The government does have a rarely used nuclear option: Under Article 76 of South Korea's labor law, the labor minister can issue an emergency arbitration order suspending strike activity for 30 days. The mechanism has been invoked only four times since 1969, and the Labor Ministry said Tuesday it has not begun reviewing the option.

Samsung and its largest labor coalition are sitting down for government-mediated negotiations over the next two days, the Korea Herald reported, with just 10 days remaining before a planned general strike that threatens to shut down the world's biggest memory chip operation for more than two weeks.

The two sides are meeting through South Korea's National Labor Relations Commission after earlier rounds of mediation in February and March collapsed without a deal. The union has warned it will walk out from May 21st through June 7th if the talks fail, and with roughly 73,000 members now enrolled, estimates put expected participation at 30,000 to 40,000 workers.

South Korean Labor Minister Kim Young-hoon welcomed the resumption of talks on X, writing that "the solution may already be close," but as of 3 p.m. local time, no deal had reportedly been reached. The union has warned that the strike could create a shortfall of some $20.4 billion, according to reporting by Digitimes.

JPMorgan analysts warned earlier this month that Samsung's annual operating profit could fall by 7% to 12% if management accepts the union's core demands. They estimate that allocating 10% to 15% of operating profit as performance bonuses and raising base salaries by 5% would generate KRW 21 trillion to KRW 39 trillion ($14.3 billion to $26.5 billion) in additional labor costs above current projections. A separate production-disruption scenario put the potential sales hit from the 18-day walkout at around KRW 4 trillion.

The stakes have grown considerably since Samsung's first-ever strike in 2024, when the union had about 32,000 members and only around 15% of them participated. A one-day strike in April offered a glimpse of what a full stoppage could look like: Samsung's memory fab output fell 18% on the affected night shift, and its contract foundry output dropped 58%.

In essence, the ongoing dispute centers around the union’s demand that Samsung uncap performance payouts and set them at 15% of operating profit. Market analysts project Samsung's 2026 operating profit at roughly KRW 300 trillion, which would translate to per-employee bonuses approaching KRW 600 million ($408,000) in the semiconductor division under the union's formula. Management has offered what it describes as industry-leading compensation but has refused to permanently remove the cap, and workers have rejected a counteroffer of a $340,000 one-time bonus. A recent report that SK hynix workers can expect guaranteed bonuses of $477,000 this year and almost $900,000 next year has also brought worker compensation into sharp focus.

The negotiations are further strained by fractures within Samsung's own workforce, with about 80% of the Super Enterprise Union's Samsung branch coming from the Device Solutions semiconductor division, per Digitimes, and its bargaining priorities reflect that, with the union focusing its negotiations with management on bonus demands for that division.

Meanwhile, workers in Samsung's DX division, which covers smartphones, TVs, and home appliances, have pushed for companywide profit-sharing to be included in the talks. More than 2,500 members recently left Samsung's largest union, objecting to what they viewed as memory-focused demands that offered little to employees outside the chip business.

Union head Choi Seung-ho told the Korea Herald last month that roughly 200 Samsung engineers had left for rival SK hynix over the preceding four months, calling the departures evidence that Samsung's compensation structure is failing to retain critical talent during the AI memory boom.

Negotiations between the National Samsung Electronics Union, which represents workers in the company’s chipmaking division, and management have seemingly broken down over a single issue. According to the Financial Times, the two sides are close to agreeing on an allocation of 13% of operating profit, which works out to be roughly $340,000 USD per employee, as a bonus to the workers. However, company management is only willing to give this as a one-time offer, while the union wants the allocation to be guaranteed annually and included in the agreement that the two sides will sign.

The issue about the bonus was brought to national attention when more than 30,000 Samsung workers took to the streets in late April to demand a bigger slice of the profits that Samsung is making from the AI infrastructure buildout. This demand stemmed from a comparison with SK hynix workers, who were guaranteed bonuses of $477,000 each this year, and almost doubled to $900,000 next year. Furthermore, these bonuses are guaranteed for the next ten years. The massive amount stemmed from the windfall that the memory and storage chip manufacturer is making from the AI infrastructure build-out, with AI data centers and hyperscalers willing to pay a premium just to secure the chips they need.

The workers argue that even though Samsung is much larger, their bonuses only equate to less than 30% than what SK hynix offers to its people. Their initial demand was a 15% cut in the semiconductor fab’s operating profit, a removal of the 50% bonus cap, and a 7% wage hike, while management countered with a 10% allocation, a 6.2% pay increase, and other benefits like preferential mortgage rates. It seems that the two sides have finally settled on the 13% bonus allocation, and the only question remaining is whether management will agree to a guaranteed annual bonus.

Samsung is facing the threat of a massive strike if the two parties fail to come to an agreement. The union said that it will conduct a general strike from May 21 to June 7 — meaning Samsung’s chip fab operations will be crippled for at least 18 days. It should be noted that the single-day action in April resulted in a 58% drop in production for just a single shift. Prof. Kwon Seok-joon of Sungkyunkwan University told the Financial Times that an action like this could cost Samsung somewhere between $6.9 billion and $11.7 billion in direct losses, with an even larger amount in indirect costs. Furthermore, it will damage Samsung’s reputation as a supplier for HBM4 chips, especially with the tight competition between the three major memory and storage chip manufacturers.

Kwon also noted that it’s harder for Samsung to just grant the bonus, even if it comes from operating profits and not revenue. Unlike SK hynix, which is a standalone fab, Samsung’s semiconductor fab operates under the larger Samsung Electronics company, which itself is part of the larger Samsung Group. Other arms of the company are said to be struggling because of the higher costs brought about by the chip shortage, even as the semiconductor division is making record profits.

If the fab workers get their desired bonus, workers from less profitable divisions might feel that they’re being short-changed. Because of this, a smaller union, whose members mostly come from Samsung’s smartphone, TV, and home appliances lines, has reportedly pulled out of the planned joint strike. Should management grant the semiconductor division’s demand for a bonus allocation of 15% of operating profits, Kwon told FT that “the maths gets uncomfortable fast.”

Apple is reportedly talking with Intel and Samsung to produce processors for the company as it’s grappling with a shortage of chips for its latest products. According to Bloomberg, Cupertino has had multiple early-stage discussions with Team Blue, while some key Apple executives have also visited a Samsung plant that’s still in development — likely its Taylor, Texas, fab, which is set to start risk production this year.

None of the talks have resulted in any orders, so far, the report states. There have been concerns about using non-TSMC tech in Apple products, especially as it has been producing chips for the iPhone since the A8 used in the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus. However, the AI infrastructure build-out is negatively affecting the company, with Apple CEO Tim Cook conceding that it’s constrained by TSMC’s supply of advanced chips. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said that his company has dethroned the consumer electronics giant as TSMC’s number one customer, and even alluded that Apple might have to pay more for its chips. But even before this, Cupertino has reportedly been considering using Intel’s 18A process to build future M-series chips, especially as global geopolitical events are threatening the stability of the global supply chain.

If we look at Apple’s history, both Samsung and Intel have closely worked with the company for years. The first iPhone, all the way to the iPhone 5S, was powered by Samsung chips, while Macs and MacBooks used x86 Intel processors from 2006 until they were replaced by Apple silicon in 2023. If successful, these talks would resume Apple’s partnership with one (or both) of the companies.

This would be a win for Intel as it’s looking to land a major customer for its foundry business — something that it fumbled in 2011 when Cupertino first approached it for its custom chip needs. A move like this could also help bolster Samsung’s foundry business, as it sits at a distant second place when compared to TSMC. At the same time, it would reduce Apple’s risk of relying on a single supplier for the majority of its advanced chip supply. Even though TSMC’s Arizona plant is ramping up production and it’s estimated that it will deliver 100 million chips for Cupertino this year, it is just a fraction of Apple’s demands, with the majority of its advanced SoCs still expected to come from Taiwan.

Tim Cook has been well aware of the situation with TSMC for years now. He even said in a 2022 all-hands company meeting, “Regardless of what you may feel or think, 60% coming out of anywhere is probably not a strategic position.” This was likely highlighted with the AI-driven chip shortage. “The primary constraint is the availability of the advanced nodes our SoCs are produced on, not memory,” the Apple CEO said during the company’s latest earnings call. “I believe it will take several months to reach supply-demand balance.”

But even if Apple were to strike a deal with both Intel and Samsung today, it will take some time for production to ramp up, and consumers won’t feel its effect for several months, if not a couple of years.

Samsung’s production numbers reportedly plummeted significantly during a one-day strike by the company’s labor union. According to Seoul Economic Daily, citing union officials, the company’s memory fab output fell by 18% while its contract chip foundry plunged by 58.1%. These numbers only affected the night shift after the April 23 strike, with the “Joint Struggle Headquarters” saying that it will conduct a larger 18-day labor action if company management fails to reach a deal with workers. The union estimates that the walkout, which would last for more than two weeks, will cost the company KRW 30 trillion, or over $20 billion. It also threatened to mobilize personnel assigned to the fabs’ “safety protection facilities.”

The disagreement between the union and management stems from the company’s refusal to allocate 15% of its operating profit as a bonus for its workers, amounting to around $27 billion (about KRW 40 trillion), and would net chip fab workers around $400,000 each. Aside from this, the union also demanded a 7% increase in pay and a removal of the 50% bonus cap. The management made a counteroffer of a 10% operating profit bonus, 6.2% wage increase, and preferential mortgage loans, among other benefits, but it seems that this wasn’t enough for the union.

The group pointed out that SK hynix, Samsung’s biggest domestic chip rival, has given its workers a performance bonus amounting to 10% of its annual operating profit and removed the cap on the amount. This means that their bonuses only equate to less than 30% of what the SK hynix workers get, even though Samsung is 60% larger in terms of market capitalization.

Initial estimates from the police suggested that over 30,000 people attended the strike, but the union said that about 40,000 of its members were present in yesterday's action. This is a massive number and is said to represent nearly a third of the company’s semiconductor fab workforce. A general strike lasting several days would cripple operations, reducing Samsung’s advantage of being the first company to mass-produce and deliver HBM4 memory to its customers. It could also potentially exacerbate the global memory chip shortage, resulting in longer delivery times and potentially higher prices for everyone.

Unless the two sides come to an agreement, the union will kick off the general strike on May 21. Supra-Company Union Samsung Electronics chapter head Choi Seung-ho also said that he has submitted a notice to the Seoul Yongsan Police Station that the group will hold a rally in front of the residence of Samsung Chairman Lee Jae-yong on the same day.

Thousands of Samsung workers took to the streets today outside the company’s main chip fab, demanding a greater share of AI profits. According to the police, some 30,000 people attended the rally in Pyeongtaek, South Korea, more than 30 miles south of Seoul, while organizers claimed that over 39,000 were present. Bloomberg reports that the Samsung labor union wants 15% of the company’s operating profit to be shared with chip-division workers and to remove the 50% bonus cap, as well as a 7% increase in pay. If this bonus is approved, that would amount to $27 billion (more than KRW 40 trillion), averaging more than $400,000 per worker.

However, it seems that this might be a bit too much for Samsung management. It made a counteroffer of a 10% allocation of operating profit to bonuses, a 6.2% wage increase, and additional benefits like preferential mortgage loans. The union has apparently rejected this proposal, pointing out that rival SK hynix has allocated 10% of its annual operating profit for performance bonuses and also removed the maximum bonus limit for its workers. The Samsung workers argue that their bonuses only equate to less than 30% of what comparable SK hynix workers get.

While Samsung has fallen behind its homegrown rival when it came to HBM3 dominance, it has since caught up after it became the first company to deliver next-generation HBM4 chips. “The company has spoken of crisis every year,” Samsung labor union head Choi Seung-ho told the publication. “But in the midst of those crises, it was not management that sustained Samsung Electronics. It was the employees here — the union members — who made the company the world’s leading semiconductor producer, who manufactured, improved processes, worked through the night, and raised yields.”

If the two parties fail to resolve the issue, the union says it will conduct an 18-day general strike starting May 21. This massive number of workers walking out of the posts will cause massive disruption for the company, with TradingKey estimating losses of around US$20.3 billion (around KRW 20 trillion). “Samsung will continue to make efforts to reach a swift agreement in wage negotiations,” a company spokesperson told Bloomberg.

Late last year, 10 former Samsung employees were indicated in a corporate espionage case in which they were accused of leaking critical chipmaking IP to China's CXMT. Today, a South Korean court has found one of the accused guilty. The court sentenced 56-year-old "Jeon" to seven years in prison on charges of violating the region's Industrial Technology Protection Act. The defendant purportedly stole over 600 detailed steps on DRAM manufacturing, according to Reuters.

The court deemed the accused shared information on "core national technology" that caused South Korea potentially trillions in losses — since leaking it gave a head start to CXMT, which consequently ended up debuting 10nm-class HBM2 memory much earlier than expected. Interestingly, the court did consider Jeon's low compensation at Samsung at the time of the crime, calling it a "mitigating factor" when presenting the final sentence.

Estimates put Samsung's R&D costs for 10nm DRAM at around 1.6 trillion KRW ($1.08 billion), spread across five years. Jeon left Samsung to work for CXMT around this time, and was thought to have shared chipmaking secrets via handwritten notes. CXMT was manufacturing 17nm DRAM in 2022 and jumped to 10nm in 2023 — a huge improvement for a fab with otherwise limited access to cutting-edge lithography tools.

The prosecution argued Samsung's stolen IP contributed to CXMT's abrupt growth. This alone would have been enough for an indictment, but the opportunity cost of lost sales (customers opting for CXMT over Samsung) was the final nail in the coffin. Moreover, Jeon received 2.9 billion KRW ($2 million) in exchange for the information he shared with the Chinese company, as well as stock options and other contract incentives.

Recently, HP was reported to be considering Chinese companies to supply memory amidst the growing component shortage. Asus and Dell are also interested in delegating some of their memory needs to China, since the major DRAM manufacturers are all laser-focused on making HBM for AI accelerators. CXMT is part of the "Section 1260H" list of foreign companies suspected of aiding the Chinese military, but it's not banned in the U.S. yet.

The AI chip supercycle is generating such extraordinary profits at South Korea's two largest memory manufacturers that individual employee bonuses at SK hynix could average roughly 700 million won ($477,000) this year, and almost $900,000 next year, according to Korea JoongAng Daily. Samsung Electronics' labor union, meanwhile, has threatened a general strike from May 21st to June 7th after rejecting management's compensation offer.

SK hynix agreed last September to remove its previous bonus cap and allocate 10% of annual operating profit directly to employees as performance-based payouts. With analyst forecasts of some 250 trillion won ($169 billion) in operating profit for 2026, the resulting bonus pool of 25 trillion won would be split among roughly 35,000 workers. It’s understood that the company already paid profit-sharing bonuses averaging about 140 million won (roughly $95,000) per employee in February.

At Samsung, things aren’t looking quite so rosy, as disputes rage on surrounding what percentage of earnings should flow to workers. The company’s union is pushing for 15% of operating profit, which market analysts project will reach roughly 298 trillion won ($202 billion) this year. At that level, the semiconductor division alone would owe approximately 580 million won (~$396,000) per employee across its 77,000-person workforce.

Samsung management countered with a 10% allocation matching SK’s framework, but that proposal was rejected, with the union instead opting to plan a large rally at the company’s Pyeongtaek fab scheduled for April 23rd. Samsung Electronics asked a court last Thursday to block what it called “illegal activities” during a strike. Union chairman Choi Seung-ho says that roughly 200 employees have left for SK hynix over the last four months, according to the Korea Herald.

The scale of these payouts marks a huge reversal of what we’ve seen in recent years. In 2024, Samsung paid no performance bonuses at all after the chip unit posted operating losses throughout 2023’s memory downturn, while SK’s own bonus rate collapsed during the same period. The turnaround has obviously been driven almost entirely by surging demand for HBM and other AI-oriented memory products.

This potential windfall for SK and Samsung employees has sparked unusual public backlash in South Korea, with posts on the anonymous workplace forum Blind arguing that companies benefiting from state infrastructure spending and the K-Chips Act’s 20% tax credits should share their profits more broadly. The combined tax benefits received by both companies over the last two years total an estimated 20 trillion won, which is roughly $13.6 billion.

Looking ahead, the potential bonuses could climb higher still, with investment bank Macquarie having forecasted SK’s operating profit at 447 trillion won ($304.5 billion) for next year, which would push average employee bonuses beyond 1 billion won under the existing 10% profit-sharing agreement.

Intel this week announced that Shawn 'Seung Hoon' Han will join the company as senior vice president and general manager of Foundry Services, where he will be responsible for working with external customers. Shawn Han will join the company from Samsung Foundry, where he had similar responsibilities, and will bring decades of valuable experience at a contract chipmaker, something that Intel Foundry needs these days.

"I am excited to welcome Shawn Han to our leadership team," wrote Naga Chandrasekaran, executive vice president and the head of Intel Foundry, in a LinkedIn post. "Shawn will be joining us in May as senior vice president and general manager of Foundry Services, reporting to me. Shawn brings valuable expertise in the semiconductor industry from his three decades at Samsung, including most recently overseeing sales at Samsung Foundry. He also offers impressive technical acumen from his work on multiple logic process nodes beginning in 1996."

As the head of Foundry Services — a structure within Intel Foundry responsible for working with customers in general and external customers specifically — Shawn Han will be responsible for sales and customer relations, which includes landing external customers. More recently, Shawn Han served as executive vice president of Samsung Foundry, which he joined from Samsung Semiconductor in 2021.

Shawn Han will become the highest-ranking executive focused on foundry customer engagement that Intel has hired to date. While the company has traditionally hired leaders focused on product or process technology development, Han has spent the last five years specifically on customer-facing roles.

The hire indicates that Intel Foundry understands its next bottleneck is not just process technology, but customer acquisition, trust, and long-term relationships. While Intel Foundry may have a great value and technology proposition with 18A, 14A, EMIB, and Foveros, external foundry customers do not sign multi-year deals because the node deck looks good, but because they believe Intel Foundry can behave like a real contract chipmaker offering predictable PDKs, realistic timelines, predictable yields, sufficient capacity, and responsive support. Hiring someone who has already lived in a customer-centric foundry world is a good way to achieve that trust and relationships with customers. At the end of the day, Intel yet has to persuade its potential customers that Intel Foundry can offer the same discipline, neutrality, and customer obsession that pure-play foundries have in their blood.

The timing of the hire seems to be right, too. Intel has been trying to land customers with its 18A, 18A-P,14A nodes, and advanced packaging for a while now, and while the company continues to say that the interest towards its process technology is high, interest is not the same thing as booked wafer volume. Therefore, one of Han's main tasks will be converting technical curiosity into committed business.

For sure, Shawn Han's knowledge of potential customers' needs as well as his personal relationships with Samsung Foundry customers will be added bonuses to Intel's Foundry Services. Kevin O'Buckley, the previous head of Foundry Services, left for Qualcomm in late February.

They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and since the Samsung 990 Pro is one of the best SSDs, it's easy to see why there are so many clones of the PCIe 4.0 drive on the market. Japanese news outlet Akiba PC Hotline! recently examined one of the latest fake Samsung 990 Pro drives, and the quality behind the clone is both impressive and frightening at the same time.

The box is the very first thing that catches your eye when you buy any product, and SSD counterfeiters are aware of this. They have poured more time and resources into perfecting the package to deceive even the most experienced customers. As highlighted in the Japanese publication, the box for the counterfeit SSD can be almost indistinguishable from that of the genuine drive. One subtle giveaway was that the fake box includes a header for hanging on display racks, a detail the original lacks. It’s a small detail that's easy to miss unless you’ve seen the authentic packaging before.

The fake Samsung 990 Pro features a sticker that closely mimics the original. This is where the technical know-how comes into play. The drive may look authentic on the surface, but a closer inspection reveals drastic discrepancies. For starters, the Samsung 990 Pro leverages the brand's proprietary Pascal SSD controller. The fake uses the Maxio MAP1602 SSD controller, which has a different design and is smaller than the Pascal controller. Tellingly, the rear of the counterfeit SSD even openly states the Maxio model number.

Another key distinction lies in DRAM and NAND. The Samsung 990 Pro features LPDDR4 memory, a component absent from the fake due to the DRAM-less nature of the Maxio MAP1602 SSD controller. As for the NAND, the original uses Samsung’s 176-Layer V-NAND TLC flash, while the type in the counterfeit remains uncertain. It’s likely QLC, though, since counterfeiters won't spend extra on TLC for a product whose primary purpose is to bamboozle the buyer.

Fake Samsung 990 Pro SSD Benchmarks

Typical Samsung 990 Pro lookalikes fall flat when you benchmark them. Some fakes are slower than a USB 2.0 pendrive, while others perform similarly to a PCIe 3.0 SSD. However, the one that Akiba PC Hotline! had in its possession exhibited a solid, very convincing performance. The drive delivered sequential read and write speeds of up to 7,255 MB/s and 6,090 MB/s, respectively, just a bit shy of the Samsung 990 Pro 1TB's rated speeds of 7,450 MB/s and 6,900 MB/s.

If you compare the specifications between the Maxio MAP1602 and the Samsung Pascal, it's evident that the former isn't too far behind in sequential performance. That's likely the reason why counterfeiters specifically choose the Maxio MAP1602. They know that the typical user is unlikely to look beyond the sequential performance numbers. However, the random performance is more pronounced if you look closely, specifically in the random 4K test using 32 queues and 16 threads, where the Maxio MAP1602 delivered just over half the performance of the Samsung Pascal.

Akiba PC Hotline! submitted the Samsung 990 Pro 1TB clone to the H2testw utility and confirmed that the reported capacity was indeed 1TB. At least on paper, the drive wasn’t lying about its size. A 976.6GB write test stretched out to around two hours, with the drive only managing a sluggish 132 MB/s. In a real-world scenario, the genuine Samsung 990 Pro completed the transfer of a 397.2GB video file in just 3 minutes and 33 seconds (1,861 MB/s), while the clone crawled along, taking a staggering 25 minutes and 20 seconds (261 MB/s) to complete the same task. The real drive maintained a sustained write speed of around 1,500 MB/; once the SLC cache was full, the fake drive stuck to 100 MB/s.

The best way to weed out clones from the real ones with Samsung SSDs is to use the Samsung Magician software to authenticate the drive. Furthermore, it doesn't allow you to use the software's features, such as the diagnostic scan and performance optimization, on fake drives.

Spotting Samsung clones has become routine for every generation of Samsung SSDs. Previously, we saw many Samsung 980 Evo and Samsung 980 Pro clones. Some entrepreneurs even invented SSDs that even Samsung didn't know were in its lineup, such as the Samsung 1080 Pro. The takeaway from all this is always to purchase your Samsung SSDs from trusted, reputable retailers. Even if your new drive passes the sniff test, run Samsung Magician for that extra peace of mind, as you can see, clones are getting better by the day.

Samsung has silently expanded its 2.5-inch SATA SSD lineup, as a new 8TB storage variant of the 870 EVO has been spotted by ComputerBase. The 8TB SSD with model number MZ-77E8T0B is reportedly available across various retailers in Europe with prices starting at €1,300 (about $1,389.99), which is roughly twice the current price of the 4TB version. Additionally, the report notes that Samsung does not currently list the 8TB model on its own website; however, upon inquiry, the company shared an official data sheet with the outlet.

The 870 EVO series was originally introduced five years ago as the successor to the widely popular 860 EVO. At launch, it was offered in capacities ranging from 500GB to 4TB and had quickly become one of the go-to choices for reliable SATA storage. Although the industry has shifted towards faster NVMe SSDs, the 870 EVO still holds relevance for users who are running older PCs and laptops or for mass storage in NAS setups. In our review, the drive impressed with its consistent performance, solid endurance ratings, and overall efficiency, further backed by Samsung’s five-year warranty.

The newly introduced 8TB variant is expected to deliver similar performance, including sequential read speeds of up to 560 MB/s and write speeds of up to 530 MB/s. According to the official datasheet, the drive continues to use Samsung’s 3-bit MLC (TLC) V-NAND technology, but with an upgraded 8GB LPDDR4 DRAM cache with a slight increase in power consumption. It also features a significantly higher endurance rating of up to 4,800TBW (terabytes written), making it suitable for heavy workloads and long-term usage.

This unexpected introduction is particularly noteworthy, as it comes at a time when NAND and DRAM prices have been at an all-time high due to limited supplies and growing demand primarily from the AI and data center sectors. While the 8TB 870 EVO will likely cater to a niche audience, it shows that even older SATA platforms are still relevant, offering higher capacities for users who prioritize storage over raw speed. We haven’t spotted the 8TB SSD at any major U.S. retailers yet, but we’ll update this article with a purchase link as soon as it becomes available.

In early February, reports of Samsung laptops, Galaxy Book4 devices in particular, affected by a weird storage issue started to pop up. Users were seeing error messages on their laptops saying "C:\ is not accessible," locking them out of their system's main drive. At first, this felt like a Windows Update problem since the timing coincidentally aligned with one, but deeper investigation revealed otherwise.

Microsoft and Samsung both came to the conclusion that the Galaxy Connect app that comes preinstalled in these devices was the culprit. The app is used to share or mirror your display to Samsung Galaxy phones, but apparently it interacted with Windows in a way that forced the OS to revoke permissions in the background. The exact details of what went wrong weren't disclosed.

But we do know that it would become impossible to access the drive once you faced the issue. You'd also be prevented from opening Office apps, system tools, web browsers, Quick Assist, and more that was stored on the C: drive. Administrative tasks or any other specific user operations might be affected, too, and users weren't able to uninstall updates or collect logs due to permission failures.

Around the same time, the February 2026 security update for Windows 11 had come out, leading some to believe it must've broken something, but that's not the case. Reports of this issue actually began emerging before the patch rolled out. Since the problem was discovered, Microsoft already logged it as a known issue on its website around ten days ago, and by March 16, it was marked as "externally resolved."

Microsoft has published a full recovery article for affected users that includes detailed steps to gain back control of your C: drive. To ensure something like this doesn't happen again, the company also pulled the Galaxy Connect app off the Microsoft Store and Samsung, and in the meantime, replaced it with an older version that's not broken. So, at the moment, only those already affected need to take action.

AMD and Samsung this week signed a rather unprecedented memorandum of understanding (MOU) that involves the strategic supply of memory for AMD's next-generation EPYC and Instinct MI455X products, as well as discussions of a potential foundry partnership. The MOU aims to ensure that AMD gets enough memory for its next-generation CPU and AI accelerator products throughout their life span, whereas Samsung will get a chance to serve as a foundry for a leading supplier of CPUs, AI GPUs, and other products.

Samsung has been the primary supplier of HBM3E for AMD's Instinct MI350X and MI355X AI accelerators, so it is not surprising that the core of the new agreement is Samsung’s role as a primary supplier of HBM4 memory for AMD's upcoming Instinct MI455X accelerator. As demand for all types of memory in general and HBM4 in particular exceeds supply, AMD must ensure that its next-generation MI455X accelerator (and possibly other Instinct MI400-series products) gets enough memory.

AMD's Instinct MI455X is projected to use 12 HBM4 12-Hi memory stacks for a total of 432 GB. Given such demands, it makes great sense for AMD to sign a strategic memory supply deal, though for now the two companies limited themselves to the MOU. Meanwhile, Samsung said that its HBM4 memory stacks are based on memory devices produced using its 1c (6^th Generation 10nm-class) process technology and use a base die made on a 4nm-class logic process, which enables them to achieve a rather unprecedented data transfer rate of 13 GT/s (thus provide up to 3.3 TB/s of bandwidth per stack), which is well above JEDEC's recommended 8 GT/s for HBM4. Yet, memory speeds supported by Instinct MI455X are considerably slower.

In addition to HBM4, the MOU between the two companies also includes DDR5 supply for AMD's 6^th Generation EPYC processors codenamed 'Venice,' as well as AMD's Helios rack-scale systems for AI data centers that rely on EPYC 'Venice' and Instinct MI455X. Again, the move aims to ensure a steady memory supply for next-generation AI systems running AMD's CPUs and AI accelerators to ensure a competitive position against Nvidia's Rubin-powered machines.

Perhaps the most intriguing part of the announcement is that the MOU can open the door for a potential foundry relationship, under which Samsung could manufacture future AMD products. While no specific nodes or chips were disclosed, this signals a willingness to expand cooperation into logic production alongside memory supply. To put this into context, AMD has been drifting away from GlobalFoundries since late 2018, and by now virtually all of its advanced products are made at TSMC. Shifting certain advanced production to Samsung is costly, though if this ensures that the South Korean company will provide much-needed memory to support AMD's AI efforts, then it looks like the developer of EPYC CPUs and Instinct accelerators may be willing to adopt a dual-source foundry strategy and make at least some of its products at Samsung Foundry.

"Samsung and AMD share a commitment to advancing AI computing, and this agreement reflects the growing scope of our collaboration," said Young Hyun Jun, Vice Chairman & CEO of Samsung Electronics. "From industry-leading HBM4 and next-generation memory architectures to cutting-edge foundry and advanced packaging, Samsung is uniquely positioned to deliver unrivaled turnkey capabilities that support AMD’s evolving AI roadmap."

An unusual new bug that prevents Windows 11 users from accessing their main C: drive on Samsung devices has been identified following a recent system update. A preliminary investigation by Microsoft and Samsung has placed the blame on a Samsung-specific app, rather than an issue with the Windows 11 update itself.

The message “C:\ is not accessible – Access denied” became visible when trying to launch apps or access files on affected devices after installing February 2026 security updates (KB5077181) on certain Samsung devices, including some Galaxy Book 4 laptops and Samsung Desktop models, according to Microsoft in a notice posted online.

The notice confirms that the issue prevents users from launching certain apps, “including Outlook, Office apps, web browsers, system utilities, and Quick Assist.” The report also notes that affected users are unable to access files on the C: drive or perform some administrative tasks. It also prevents users, in some cases, from removing updates, accessing certain system logs, or elevating their user access privileges.

Microsoft confirms that an investigation of the reports, alongside Samsung, identified an issue with the Samsung Galaxy Connect app. The app itself has been removed temporarily from the Microsoft Store, while Samsung has rolled back to a previous version of the app to stop it from appearing on other devices.

Unfortunately, Microsoft also confirms that “recovery for devices already impacted remains limited,” but the company is working with Samsung to “develop and validate solutions” for those who face problems.

No further information is available at the moment, although reports on Reddit suggest the problem relates to broken Access Control Lists in Samsung’s factory image for Windows that trigger when the Samsung Galaxy Connect and Galaxy Share Folder apps are updated. The same Reddit post in the r/sysadmin subreddit also suggests some potential workarounds, although these haven’t been tested or verified by Microsoft, and require some extensive changes to your drive permissions that change the ownership of your entire drive, which isn’t recommended in the long term.

If you’re running one of these devices, including models NP750XGJ, NP750XGL, NP754XGJ, NP754XFG, NP754XGK, DM500SGA, DM500TDA, DM500TGA, and DM501SGA, you may want to remove the affected app from your device or roll back to the currently recommended version as soon as possible. Should your device be affected by a loss of access to your files, however, you’ll have to hold tight for an official solution.

IDC on Thursday sharply slashed its expectations for the PC and tablet markets, citing memory shortages, rising prices for 3D NAND, DRAM, and other components, and intensifying supply chain disruptions amid the AI sector boom. While unit shipments are expected to decline significantly year-over-year, higher average selling prices (ASPs) are projected to push total market value slightly upward.

The firm now expects global PC shipments to drop 11.3% in 2026 compared to 2025, a steep revision from the -2.4% decline projected in November 2025 and -8.9% in January 2026. In absolute numbers, this means PC sales will decline by 32.17 million units, from 284.7 million in 2025 to 252.53 million in 2026. To put the 32.17 million PC number into context: Apple shipped 25.6 million computers last year compared to 41.1 million systems for Dell.

Tablet volumes are also set to contract, and IDC forecasts shipments to fall 7.6% this year. Last year, vendors shipped 151.9 million tablets (up 5% compared to the previous year), with Apple leading the pack by a significant margin. If the new IDC forecast holds, then this year the market will decline by 11.54 million to 140.36 million systems. To put the number in context, Apple sold 17.1 million iPads in Q4 2025, while Samsung sold just 6.4 million units.

Even though unit shipments of PCs and tablets will decline, IDC expects market revenue to increase due to rising device prices. The firm estimates that the PC market will expand by 1.6% in value to $274 billion in 2026, while the tablet segment will grow by 3.9% to $66.8 billion.

"The era of bargain-priced PCs and tablets is behind us for now, as rising ASPs and component costs shift the market’s balance of power," said Jitesh Ubrani, research manager for IDC’s Worldwide Mobile Device Trackers. "Memory shortages will persist well into 2027. While we anticipate some easing of prices beginning in 2028, the market is unlikely to return to the pricing levels seen in 2025. Instead, we expect a new normal defined by structurally higher ASPs and a corresponding softening in long-term demand."

IDC noted that, at the time it compiled its forecast, the conflict in the Middle East had not yet escalated to its current level, adding another source of risk for global technology supply chains and economic development. Therefore, the analysts may revise their forecast downwards.

"The overall tech industry, as well as many others, continues to face uncontrollable headwinds that, when compounded, result in massive disruption," said Ryan Reith, group vice president, Devices and Consumer. "The lists of industry and geopolitical events that continue to grow is making decision‑making — and even survival in some sectors — nearly impossible. What has turned all of this from a million‑dollar question into a trillion‑dollar question is the complete uncertainty around when these pressures will subside."

Sometimes, laptops aren't designed for budget customers, but rather those willing to pay top dollar for design and performance. Samsung’s Galaxy Book6 Ultra (starts at $2,449.99, with US availability not yet specified) fits in the latter category – this 16-inch creator-focused laptop courts those who might otherwise default to a 16-inch MacBook Pro. Final pricing wasn’t available as of this review, but the hardware configuration – the latest Intel “Panther Lake” Core Ultra H-class CPU and an Nvidia “Blackwell” RTX 5070 GPU – signal a flagship laptop. Complemented by a premium metal build and a superb AMOLED touch display, the Galaxy Book6 Ultra is clearly designed to compete at the top of the market.

Design of the Samsung Galaxy Book6 Ultra

Once glance at the Galaxy Book6 Ultra justifies Samsung’s reputation for quality and style, and also a strong resemblance to Apple’s MacBook Pro. The gunmetal chassis and contrasting black keyboard deck gives the system a clean, ultramodern aesthetic. The all-metal exterior feels unquestionably solid and shows virtually no flex under pressure. I also noted it showed almost no fingerprints after several days of use. There’s refreshingly minimal branding aside from Samsung’s lettering on the back of the lid and under the screen.

Despite housing a 16-inch display and powerful silicon, the Ultra maintains an impressively slim profile. Measuring 14.01 x 9.77 x 0.46 inches (WDH), it’s 0.2 inches thinner than the Apple MacBook Pro 16-inch (14.01 x 9.77 x 0.66 inches) and over a pound lighter, at 3.5 pounds versus the Apple’s 4.67 pounds. It also undercuts Dell’s 16 Premium (14.1 x 9.4 x 0.75 inches, 4.65 pounds) on both size and weight.

Connectivity is good for a system this thin. On the left edge, you’ll find two Thunderbolt 4 ports and HDMI 2.1, while the right edge offers USB-A, a 3.5 mm audio jack, and a full-size SD card slot, enough variety that most users shouldn’t need dongles. Wireless support is also up-to-date, with support for Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 from an Intel BE211 networking card.

Specifications

Productivity Performance on the Samsung Galaxy Book6 Ultra

Our Galaxy Book6 Ultra review unit features a Core Ultra 7 356H processor, an Nvidia RTX 5070 GPU, 32GB of RAM, and a 2TB SSD. This is a potent configuration for demanding tasks, especially content creation. Though this isn't a gaming laptop, the dedicated Nvidia GPU is also capable of some play.

For performance comparisons, we included the Apple MacBook Pro 16-Inch ($3,649 as tested) running the M4 Pro processor, the Dell 16 Premium ($2,799) featuring a Core Ultra 7 255H, and the Framework Laptop 16 ($2,396) with a Ryzen AI 7 350. These laptops all fit in the same class, though the MacBook ought to have the strongest CPU.

In the cross-platform Geekbench CPU test, the Samsung had the best overall showing among the Windows laptops, with 16,655 points in multi-core to practically tie the Dell (16,850) and lead the Framework (12,399). None challenged the MacBook’s commanding 22,822 points in multi-core, and it also dominated single-core, with 3,910 points to Samsung’s 2,852.

The situation improved for the Samsung in the Handbrake 4K-to-1080p video transcoding test, where it finished in just 3 minutes and 18 seconds, outpacing the Dell by 32 seconds. The MacBook again commanded the lead, with 2 minutes and 38 seconds.

In our 25GB file transfer test, Samsung was at the middle of the pack at a rate of 1,467.5 MBps, ahead of the Dell’s 1,080 MBps but trailing the Framework (1,725 MBps) and the MacBook (2,237.5 MBps).

To stress-test productivity laptops, we run 10 loops of Cinebench 2024. During the test, scores ranged between 1,212 and 1,221 points, an exceptionally tight range suggesting consistent performance for long-running CPU workloads.

Display on the Samsung Galaxy Book6 Ultra

What really makes this system a stunner is its AMOLED screen. With a 2880 x 1800 resolution, touch support, and 120 Hz refresh rate, it’s truly remarkable for any kind of content, particularly colorful media. Watching Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, I felt immersed by the strong contrast in space scenes, bright flashes of lightsabers and blaster bolts, and the vibrancy of Endor’s forests. I even fired up Borderlands II for a little gaming action, admiring the smooth picture courtesy of the high refresh rate. It’s truly a first-rate picture.

Display measurements confirm the Galaxy Book6 Ultra’s visual excellence, with 121.2% of sRGB color and 85.8% coverage of DCI-P3. Framework’s system had higher DCI-P3 coverage, but it wasn’t quite as bright, which is important considering Framework uses IPS while Samsung uses AMOLED, a technology that has historically trailed IPS in peak luminance. The Dell is the only other system using OLED, yet it falls well short in brightness at 367 nits versus Samsung’s 451 nits. The Galaxy Book6 Ultra not only outperforms its OLED peer but raises the bar for this type of panel.

Keyboard and Touchpad on the Samsung Galaxy Book6 Ultra

Samsung’s black keyboard contrasts nicely against the gunmetal gray palm rest, with three-level white backlighting for a professional look. The typing experience, however, doesn’t live up to the aesthetics. Shallow key travel and the resulting limited tactile feel makes it hard to build confidence while typing. I normally average between 115-120 words per minute and near-perfect accuracy in the MonkeyType typing test, but I only managed 102 wpm and 95% accuracy on this keyboard after several tries. Granted, my muscle memory would probably compensate over time, but it doesn’t compete with my daily-driver ThinkPad for responsiveness or assurance.

At least the keyboard layout is sensible, with arrow keys that are all the same size and no oddball key placements. The absence of dedicated home, end, page up, and page down keys is a downer, but not a dealbreaker since they are available pressing Fn + arrow keys.

Samsung fared better with the touchpad. Its massive size (5.9 x 4.1 inches) and smooth surface feel luxurious, making sweeping multi-figure gestures effortless. I thought the haptic feedback felt too light at first, but it can be adjusted for more intensity in the Windows Settings app > Bluetooth & Devices > Touchpad. It felt more responsive after I switched to Light click force and upped the click intensity.

Audio on the Samsung Galaxy Book6 Ultra

Though the grilles on either side of the Galaxy Book6 Ultra’s keyboard the actual speakers face downward under either side. Provided the laptop is on a solid surface, this setup produces remarkably full sound. Watching the F1 movie, I was taken by the fullness of the voices, convincing surround-sound effects when cars drove by, and the impactful bass. Music was equally impressive, with a wider soundstage than I expected and plenty of volume to entertain a few people sitting around the laptop to watch at once.

The key to the speakers sounding their best is the Dolby Access app, which provides Atmos effects. The usual music, movie, and game presets are present, but Dynamic mode unlocks the best sound and provides much more volume than the other equalizers.

Upgradeability of the Samsung Galaxy Book6 Ultra

User-upgradeable components in the Galaxy Book6 Ultra include the storage and battery, but most other components are soldered. The screw-free bottom suggests there’s no way to get inside, but Philips-head screws are hidden behind the rubber feet. I used a plastic toothpick to get leverage, then popped them off. The feet are secured by threads rather than adhesive, and are easily pressed back in. Note the front feet are shorter than the rear feet.

With the screws removed, I used a plastic trim tool to go in the speaker outlets and pry around the edges of the chassis, popping the clips free with minimal effort. Once I had worked my way to the rear corners, a lip along the rear edge allowed me to pry against the display hinge and pop all the clips there, at which point the entire panel came free.

Inside, the storage slots are below the battery. The main M.2 2280 slot is beneath a heatshield while the other extends to its right. Overall, there’s not a lot of upgradeability here, but it’s not uncommon these days for most components to be soldered.

Battery Life on the Samsung Galaxy Book6 Ultra

In our battery test, which includes web browsing, video streaming over Wi-Fi, and OpenGL workloads at 150 nits, the Galaxy Book6 Ultra lasted a respectable 15 hours and 21 minutes. While that doesn’t come close to matching the MacBook Pro’s 21-plus hours, it more than satisfies for all-day use. The Dell 16 Premium (7:15) and Framework Laptop 16 (8:20) barely managed half the Samsung’s runtime.

Heat on the Samsung Galaxy Book6 Ultra

The Galaxy Book6 Ultra uses a two-fan cooling system with airflow against the display hinge. It’s effective: during our Cinebench stress testing, which lasted almost an hour, surface temperatures peaked at 92 degrees Fahrenheit between the keyboard G and H keys, 83 F on the touchpad, and 103 F on the bottom panel. Internally, the Core Ultra 7 356H averaged 84 degrees C.

The fans operate quietly, with only the sound of air escaping through the vents and no motor noise or whine. While playing Borderlands II, the laptop’s speakers easily overpowered the fans and allowed me to hear small details, like footsteps.

Webcam on the Samsung Galaxy Book6 Ultra

The Galaxy Book6 Ultra’s webcam is properly placed over the center of the display but doesn’t stand out in visual quality. The soft-focus picture doesn’t look that sharp and tends to blow out highlights, with fuzzy details. There’s also noticeable grain in low-light situations. Its 1920 x 1080 resolution is the minimum expected on anything not considered a budget laptop; on one this expensive, a 1440p sensor would have been better. There’s no privacy shutter, but the webcam can be electronically disabled pressing Fn + F11.

There is no IR sensor for the camera for facial recognition, though. There’s a fingerprint reader built into the power button at the keyboard’s top right.

Software and Warranty on the Samsung Galaxy Book6 Ultra

Minimal software is included on the Galaxy Book6 Ultra beyond the usual smattering of Windows 11 default apps. The Galaxy Book Experience app is a generic app for launching other apps, most Samsung-centric. For instance, Multi Control lets you control your Galaxy phone or tablet from your PC, including file sharing. There’s also a nearby device app that lets you find other devices nearby, such as TVs, and share content.

I stumbled through Galaxy Book Experience for a while before finding the Samsung Settings app, which has Galaxy Book6 Ultra-specific settings. Display settings allow you to turn HDR on and off, automatic color temperature control, and a focus mode that darkens areas outside of your current window, a unique setting for OLED displays. There are also preferences, such as automatically starting the laptop when the display is opened or the charger connected, keyboard backlighting timeout, and a battery protection mode to limit charge to 80%. Tinkerers can also experiment with the laptop’s performance mode: Quiet minimizes fan noise at the expense of performance while High Performance results in higher fan noise, with a toggle for maximum fan speed.

Samsung backs the Galaxy Book6 Ultra with a one-year warranty.

Samsung Galaxy Book6 Ultra Configurations

We reviewed the Galaxy Book6 Ultra with a 2880 x 1880 OLED touch display, Core Ultra 7 356H processor, GeForce RTX 5070 GPU, 32GB of RAM, and a 2TB SSD. Availability isn’t certain yet, but this model’s projected price is $3,199.99.

Samsung’s international press release suggests that other models starting at $2,449.99 will be available with other “Panther Lake” CPUs, including the Core Ultra X7 and X9 chips featuring powerful Arc integrated graphics, as well as RTX 5060 models. Memory scales between 16GB and 64GB and storage between 512GB and 2TB. The OLED screen is standard across all models.

Samsung’s pricing comes on the lower side of Apple’s MacBook Pro 16-inch, which starts at $2,499. Adding the nano-texture display, the M4 Max chip with its upgraded GPU cores, and 36GB of RAM brings it to $3,649, and doubling the storage to 2TB brings it to $4,049. While that doesn’t make the Ultra a bargain, it isn’t outlandishly expensive.

Bottom Line

Samsung’s Galaxy Book6 Ultra makes an impressive statement. Premium design, top-tier quality, strong performance, and vibrant visuals coalesce for an elite computing experience. It’s a natural choice for those who gravitate towards a 16-inch MacBook Pro but prefer Windows or use software that only works on Microsoft's operating system. Though we didn’t have pricing when we did this review, it’s safe to say it will be priced to match what it’s offering. We’d like more communicative keyboard feedback the next time around, but otherwise, there’s very little not to love here.

Correction March 13, 2026: This review originally stated in the specs that the laptop had an IR webcam. It does not. The only biometrics are the fingerprint reader. We regret the error.

Memory pricing cycles are nothing new, but the way it’s being sold is changing. Over the past several months, Samsung and SK hynix have begun moving away from long-term, fixed-price supply contracts, replacing them with shorter agreements and post-settlement pricing mechanisms that allow prices to be adjusted after delivery. Micron is also understood to be following a similar path.

According to reporting cited by DigiTimes, these newer contracts are appearing at the same time as the sharp upswing in DRAM and NAND pricing we’ve been watching unfold with relentless escalation, driven primarily by AI infrastructure demand and constrained supply at advanced nodes. Memory makers are expected to make over $551 billion in revenue in 2026.

Where buyers once locked in prices for six to 12 months at a time with limited scope for renegotiation, suppliers are now favoring contracts measured in quarters or even months, with pricing that’s particularly exposed to market movements, which shifts the risk back onto buyers.

Post-settlement pricing reflects supplier confidence

Under traditional agreements, DRAM and NAND prices are set at the time of signing. Even if spot prices move sharply, quarter renegotiation typically adjusts pricing within a narrow band of roughly 10%. These arrangements gave the market’s largest buyers cost predictability and insulated them from short-term instability.

Post-settlement pricing does the opposite. While products are delivered at the agreed price during the contract term, the final payment is adjusted at the end of the term to reflect prevailing market prices. If prices rise materially — as with DRAM in recent months — customers pay the difference. On the other hand, suppliers absorb the loss if prices fall.

Now, according to industry sources cited by Digitimes, Samsung, SK hynix, and Micron have all signed such contracts, primarily with large North American technology companies. One source noted that, for major customers, securing memory supply has become a higher priority than locking in price certainty, even if that means paying more later. This is nothing more than fundamental supply and demand dynamics that were bound to come into play given the state of the market in recent months.

It’s important to note that these post-settlement pricing arrangements only work if suppliers are confident that prices will remain elevated, because why would they push for them otherwise? The willingness of all the big three memory makers to adopt post-settlement pricing, unfortunately, suggests they are.

Contract lengths shrink alongside price flexibility

Pricing is not all that's changing — contract durations are also getting shorter. Memory buyers, particularly hyperscalers, are understood to have pushed for longer-term agreements to guarantee supply as demand for high-capacity memory accelerates while supply tightens. Suppliers are obviously starting to push back against those terms, opting instead for contracts lasting mere months. DigiTimes, citing Korean-language publication ET News, gave the example of a North American data center operator failing to secure a two-year supply deal from one memory vendor, subsequently sourcing capacity from another supplier under a shorter contract that included post-settlement pricing.

These supplier-favoring terms are expected to persist at least through the second half of the year, when the pace of memory price increases is projected by some analysts to plateau somewhat. Even then, few expect a return to the long, fixed-price contracts that dominated during the initial post-pandemic years, and who's to say that pricing will start to slow down in any case?

The current state of the memory market is without precedent, strangled tighter and tighter with each passing day by the unrelenting demands of an out-of-control AI bubble. While we have seen some levelling off in recent weeks, it’s borderline impossible to make any meaningful predictions in good faith about where memory pricing may or may not be even next month; we can forget about where it might be six months or more from now because there’s simply no telling.

Operating margins now at 40-50%

Recent analysis from ZDNet shows just how favorable this market has become for suppliers. It projects that Samsung and SK hynix could post NAND operating margins of 40-50% for the first half of 2026, levels that would have seemed implausible during the oversupply conditions we saw in 2022 and early 2023. Those margins are predicated not just on higher prices, but disciplined supply management and a willingness to walk away from unfavorable contracts.

ZDNet notes that the industry expects that NAND products will reach record profitability for the first time since 2017, adding that its margins are estimated to have climbed into the 20% range in Q4 2025. NAND prices are expected to rise in stages across Q1 and Q2 of this year, with conservative capital spending continuing to tighten supply and contribute to what is becoming a chronic shortage.

Not all buyers are feeling the effects of this equally, though. Apple is one company that, according to TF International Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, has shifted its memory price negotiations from a six-monthly to quarterly cadence. He expects LPDDR prices to rise in Apple’s first fiscal quarter of 2026, with further increases likely in the following quarter. NAND price increases are expected to be more modest.

Kuo also notes that many smartphone brands are struggling to secure sufficient memory supply even when they’re willing to pay higher prices. Some Chinese vendors have reportedly delayed product launches or reduced hardware specifications as a result. But Apple’s position is different: While higher memory costs could pressure gross margins in the near term, Kuo suggests the iPhone maker is willing to absorb those costs to protect shipment volumes, adding that Apple is considering keeping its starting prices for its planned iPhone 18 lineup largely unchanged.

All these factors together demonstrate that there’s a structural shift taking place in how memory is allocated and sold. The balance of power has moved firmly back toward suppliers, and that’s causing contract terms to adjust accordingly.

This doesn’t mean that prices will rise indefinitely. Memory remains a cyclical, capital-intensive industry, and periods of high profitability tend to attract overinvestment. But the current contract changes suggest that suppliers are prioritizing margin discipline and pricing flexibility over volume stability, and will continue to do so in at least the medium term.

The artificial intelligence supercycle is reshaping the semiconductor and electronics industries, as the scale of the AI infrastructure buildout strains the entire supply chain. While developers of AI accelerators like Nvidia are cashing in on the AI boom, it's memory makers that will earn the most cash, according to estimates from TrendForce. Arguably, this is a result of the different business models and expansion strategies memory makers use compared to foundries, in addition to the behavior of the commodity market.

Demand outstrips supply

The company projects that while global foundry revenue is expected to total $218.7 billion, 3D NAND and DRAM revenue will reach $551.6 billion, which means that the total market for memory is more than twice as large as contract chip production. TrendForce attributes this to structural market changes caused by AI buildouts. The latter creates elevated demand for specific types of memory, creating shortages of all types of memory, and therefore affecting prices across the industry. As a consequence, while the AI industry does not need low-capacity commodity memory devices, they also become substantially more expensive amid tight supply. This creates the perfect conditions for memory makers to capitalize upon.

Indeed, the spot price of a 16 Gb DDR5 chip at DRAMeXchange was $38 on average, with a daily high of $53 and a daily low of $25. By contrast, the very same chip used to cost $4.75 on average just one year ago ($3.70 session low, $6.60 session high). Similar changes occurred to the prices of 3D NAND memory in recent quarters.

Fundamental differences

Just like some other analyst firms, TrendForce calls the AI megatrend a 'supercycle,' indicating its overwhelming ubiquity, which affects multiple industries, and its potential length.

There were two periods in the last few decades when revenue of memory makers grew significantly year-over-year for two years in a row: in 2017 – 2018, when hyperscalers built their vast data centers (+62% in 2017 and +27% in 2018), and in 2020 – 2021, when people increased purchases of PCs amid the COVID-19 pandemic. In both cases, memory makers increased capacity to meet demand and maintain their market share, which caused sharp drops in revenue back in 2019 and 2022.

The foundry industry — which is much more capital-intensive than the 3D NAND or DRAM industries — uses fabs that are harder and longer to build, and only suffered a year-over-year revenue decline in 2023.

The situation today is vastly different. On the one hand, leading developers of frontier AI models need the most powerful clusters to train their models, therefore creating demand for leading-edge hardware with expensive HBM3E memory and plenty of storage. On the other hand, these companies and their clients need more powerful inference systems to use those models. Therefore, demand for CPUs, AI accelerators, memory, and storage does not decline over time. Meanwhile, buyers like cloud service providers (CSPs) tend to be less sensitive to price increases, which is why 3D NAND and DRAM suppliers are expected to raise average selling prices more aggressively than in the past cycles.

Foundry vs. Commodity

3D NAND and DRAM are commodities, so their prices behave like prices of commodities, almost immediately reacting to tightening supply, increasing demand, or sentiment among buyers. While large PC makers purchase their memory at prices agreed upon every six months, a significant portion of memory is sold on the spot market.

This dynamic is reflected in TrendForce's projections that show memory revenue growth accelerating after the downturn of 2022 – 2023, including an expected 80% increase in 2024, followed by 46% growth in 2025, and a projected 134% surge in 2026.

By contrast, foundries tend to operate under long-term agreements that smooth price fluctuations, which prevents sharp swings that characterize memory markets. Even during periods of strong demand, foundry pricing adjustments occur gradually, which means slower revenue growth compared to memory vendors.

TrendForce models that following a 19% year-over-year revenue increase in 2024, the foundry market grew 25% in 2025 and will grow another 25% this year.

As a result, boosted by the AI supercycle and not constrained by long-term agreements, memory vendors will earn more than two times more this year alone compared to producers of logic, which have to adhere to their long-term contracts.

The biggest question

With HBM4 memory devices using four times more silicon than typical DRAM ICs, it is obvious that memory makers cannot meet all the demand that exists because of insufficient capacity, which results in price adjustments. However, the biggest question is how significantly current commodity 3D NAND and DRAM prices are influenced by insufficient supply, and how significantly they are influenced by typical commodity memory market behavior that dictates that customers buy more memory when it is getting more expensive, as it may get even more expensive in the future?

In one of the most hotly competitive and profitable tech industries, the three major memory makers, Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron, are individually investigating their customers to prevent memory hoarding, according to Nikkei Asia. They’re asking customers to disclose their own customers and order volumes to ensure that no one is hoarding more memory than they need, exacerbating memory supply problems.

The immediate impact of this may well be to accelerate price increases for consumer devices. After all, if a company can’t buy cheaper memory now, it could be more expensive to buy it later. But this may help give memory makers the confidence they need to effectively invest in increased production, and it might just give smaller customers a chance to compete fairly.

Fool me twice… you can’t fool me again

Since memory demand started skyrocketing in 2025, memory makers have been inundated with calls to increase supply while brands panic-bought what was available. Ramping up production lines and retooling fabs is required, but it’s not that easy. NAND flash, particularly the newest and most capable chips, uses cutting-edge facilities, and those manufacturing lines take years to bring online.

Production can and is being increased, but the required investment for such an endeavour is enormous. Though the potential upsides are excellent – increased supply should mean the memory makers can sell more in turn – the potential downsides are there too. Most notably, if supply and demand equalize, any industry changes could swing the ratio in the other direction, leaving the memory companies oversupplied and competing with each other to sell what they have.

This isn’t some theorized scenario, either. It’s already happened, which is why Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron are twice shy about increasing production.

During the pandemic, as everyone rushed to buy desktops and laptops to work from home, memory was once again in short supply, and the memory makers scrambled to catch up. They invested in new facilities, taped out new production lines, and pivoted the enterprise to adjust to a new world where memory wasn’t plentiful.

But it wasn’t to last. Just a few years later, as demand started to fall, problems arose. Because during those pandemic months and years, customers of the major memory manufacturers overbooked and built up stockpiles of their own, they didn’t continue to replace them when their own orders dwindled. By the end of 2022, memory sales had dropped by almost a third, and revenue was crashing right behind it as the going price for memory cratered.

This led to companies like Samsung actually cutting production of its 3D NAND and DRAM products. Although it claimed to be continuing R&D expansion and infrastructure building, it wasn't on the same scale as it would have been had orders remained strong. SK Hynix followed suit several months later, and those cuts continued throughout 2023 across a range of companies.

Which brings us back to 2026. This time, the memory makers are looking to ensure that the memory hoarding doesn’t happen, so that if and when demand and supply are realigned, there’s less chance of the swing continuing into oversupply, under-demand territory.

That’s good for them, because it means demand should remain stable even if there are wobbles in the AI industry, or even an eventual bubble burst and collapse. If memory customers don’t have their own stockpiles, they’ll still need at least some memory, even if demand falls dramatically.

But won’t this just keep memory prices permanently high? Won’t it help prevent a big pricing correction if and when that bubble bursts, just keeping us all paying over the odds for memory forever?

Perhaps.

A boon to consumers

In the near term, it might actually stop memory prices from rising as quickly. If customers of Micron, Samsung, and SK Hynix have been overbuying – and why wouldn’t they, if they can afford it – then preventing that immediately should curb demand. That could help slow the current parabolic price rises for memory specifically. While that might mean the major customers who had planned on stockpiling cheaper memory end up raising their prices sooner than they had planned, the overall effect should see a slowdown.

Similarly, cutting the overbooked orders should make it easier for smaller memory customers to gain access to orders. If they aren’t trying to compete with not only major companies but also major companies overbuying, they should find it easier to get stock of memory at fairer prices. That has the potential to stabilize industries and prevent smaller brands from being pushed out of markets entirely, keeping competition healthier, which is always good for customers.

It could also help give the memory manufacturers the confidence they seek to build out production faster and more effectively. Whereas previously their efforts in boosting supply ended up with them having to reduce supply down the line, this way they can be more confident of a longer tail for their business.

We just had a flurry of new investment announcements from Micron, SK Hynix, and Samsung, all of which are building new fabrication lines and packaging facilities. They won’t really come online until 2027-2028, but that at least gives us some time frame for when memory supply and demand could stabilize, with or without an AI bubble collapse.

Here’s hoping

What Micron, SK Hynix, and Samsung are doing in looking over the books of their customers feels like them expanding their influence even beyond being one of the most important technological bottlenecks facing the world right now. It feels intrusive, and even a little oppressive. They’re looking to control not only this limited supply of incredibly important hardware, but what their customers do with it, too.

But what’s good for them may be better for us, too. Demand policing doesn’t create new chips, but in reducing the phantom demand, they do lower overall demand, and bring back a little more predictability to an industry that has been racing ahead of everyone’s best guesses as the world panic bought what was available in a rush against one another.

Now, maybe the smaller buyers can compete because they aren’t trying to compete against capital and stockpiles. The memory makers can commit to capacity expansion without fearing a post-AI cliff face, as they did with the pandemic aftermath.

None of that is guaranteed, and the bigger buyers will continue to outweigh their smaller contemporaries and garner the priority they seek. But if it can slow things down just a little, it might make the next hard year ahead a little softer while we wait for that new capacity to come online in the years to come. Cutting that overbuying now is one of the few levers the industry can pull to prevent this cycle from getting far worse before it may get better.

Update 17/02/2026 9:30am PT: Article introduction amended to reflect that the memory makers are operating independently of one another.

ASML this week posted its highest yearly result ever as demand for its chipmaking tools set records. The company's revenue for the fiscal year 2025 totaled €32.7 billion ($39 billion USD), up 15% from the previous year. As expected, sales of lithography and other wafer fab equipment to China-based entities decreased in 2025 due to export rules imposed by the U.S. and the Netherlands. When it comes to sales of lithography systems, EUV tools became the leading source of ASML's revenue.

Fewer sales in China

Driven by the Made in China 2025 program and the buildout of the Chinese semiconductor industry amid tightening export curbs by the U.S. in recent years, ASML's sales to the People's Republic set records and culminated with 41% of the company's system unit share in 2024. Last year, sales of ASML's fab tools to China dropped, but 33% of ASML's tools (in terms of units) were sold to the PRC, meaning that Chinese chipmakers kept buying dozens of lithography and other machines for their fabs that use trailing nodes. Some of those older DUV systems are reportedly being upgraded by grey-market means.

China is followed by sales of wafer fab equipment to customers in South Korea (25%) and Taiwan (22%). By contrast, only 12% of ASML-produced tools (by unit count) were shipped to the U.S.

High-end EUV

U.S.-based Intel bought the world's first High-NA EUV Twinscan EXE:5200B lithography tool with 0.55 numerical aperture optics, designed for mass production of chips using next-generation process technologies, such as Intel's 14A (1.4nm-class). Another system was assembled at SK hynix's fab M16 in Icheon, South Korea. Meanwhile, ASML has supplied eight High-NA EUV tools (including six EXE:5000 and two EXE:5200B machines) to additional partners so far.

Speaking of EUV lithography systems, it's important to note that both current-generation Low-NA EUV scanners and next-generation High-NA EUV machines accounted for 48% of ASML's system revenue in 2025 (or €11.6 billion / $13.8 billion USD), up from 38% a year earlier. For the whole year, the company shipped 48 EUV systems and 131 immersion DUV tools, up from 44 EUV scanners and 129 immersion DUV machines in 2024.

Sales of EUV and sophisticated DUV tools are primarily driven by leading-edge logic fabs that build chips for AI infrastructure as well as smartphones and PCs. In fact, logic fabs accounted for 66% of ASML's system sales, whereas memory accounted for 34%. Although both logic and memory makers strive to increase their output and procure new tools, logic producers buy more expensive EUV systems.

"In advanced Logic, our foundry customers have become more positive on the long-term sustainability of demand on a number of fronts," said Fouquet. "AI accelerators are migrating from the 4nm node to the more litho-intensive 3nm node. At the same time, customers continue to ramp the 2nm node in support of next-generation HPC and mobile applications."

However, as DRAM vendors adopt more sophisticated fabrication processes that rely on EUV, they will also intensify procuring EUV scanners, which will significantly increase demand for this type of equipment as memory makers tend to operate very large fleets to fab commodity products in the most cost-efficient way.

"In memory, our customers are reporting very strong demand for both HBM and DDR products with supply remaining very tight through at least 2026 as they ramp both their 1b and 1c nodes in support of the demand," Fouquet added. "In addition, DRAM customers continue to adopt more EUV layers on these nodes. This is expected to continue on their future nodes as they migrate more multi-patterning DUV to single-exposure EUV, resulting in an increase in litho intensity."

Record results

ASML closed 2025 with a record fourth quarter and its strongest year ever. In Q4 2025, the company's revenue totaled €9.7 billion ($11.5 billion USD), its gross margin reached 52.2%, and net income hit €2.8 billion ($3.3 billion USD).

For the full year, the company generated €32.7 billion ($39 billion USD) in net sales, up from €28.3 billion ($33.8 billion USD) in 2024, with a 52.8% gross margin and €9.6 billion ($11.4 billion) in net income.

ASML's net bookings reached €28.0 billion ($33.4 billion USD), whereas their year-end backlog grew to €38.8 billion ($46.3 billion USD), another record for the company.

During the final quarter of 2025, the company supplied 94 new photolithography systems as well as eight used lithography machines. For the whole year, ASML sold 300 new lithography tools and 27 used lithography systems.

For the first quarter of 2026, ASML expects revenue of €8.2 billion – €8.9 billion ($9.7 - $10.6 billion USD), which is up year-over-year but down sequentially. Full-year 2026 revenue is projected to be between €34 billion and €39 billion ($40 billion - 46 billion USD), this reflects growing demand for lithography tools and EUV scanners, primarily due to the wide AI infrastructure buildout. Gross margins at ASML are projected to be between 51% and 53%.

"In the last months, many of our customers have shared a notably more positive assessment of the medium-term market situation, primarily based on more robust expectations of the sustainability of AI-related demand," said Christophe Fouquet, chief executive of ASML. "This is reflected in a marked step-up in their medium-term capacity plans and in our record order intake. Therefore, we expect 2026 to be another growth year for ASML's business, largely driven by a significant increase in EUV sales and growth in our installed base business sales. We continue to invest in people and footprint to support that growth in 2026 and beyond."

Looking ahead

Being the only supplier of EUV and advanced DUV tools on the planet, ASML has every reason to expect sales of these scanners to increase in the coming years. The number of EUV layers increases with the upcoming process technologies, driving its revenue all the way to €44 billion - €60 billion ($52 billion - 71 billion USD) in 2030. Indeed, EUV tools accounted for 65% of ASML's backlog in late 2025, up from 62% a year before. If the demand for their tools continues apace, then ASML will be sitting as one of the most important companies in the ongoing AI boom, right alongside Nvidia.

Samsung Foundry is reportedly on track to hit the 'first light' milestone with ASML's EUV lithography systems at its Taylor Fab 1 in the coming month and commence risk production at the facility in the second half of the year, according to Hankyung. The new fab will not be Samsung's first fab with EUV scanners; however, it seems that the facility will be the company's largest logic fab when fully ramped. It will also be the first fab to adopt pellicles for EUV patterning, something that drastically changes production flows. Implementing pellicles and the sheer scale of the fab signal that it may well be a breakthrough facility for the company.

Samsung's biggest campus yet

When Samsung announced plans to build a new leading-edge semiconductor production facility near Taylor, Texas, the intention was to build a sophisticated fab that would cost $17 billion, with construction starting in 2022, and operations beginning in 2024.

Back then, the company only said that the new site would span more than 5 million square meters (1235 acres), which is larger than the company's domestic South Korea-based campuses near Pyeongtaek and Hwaseong. To put that number into context, Intel's Silicon Desert campus near Chandler, Arizona, which houses Fab 52 and Fab 62, is around 700 acres.

Samsung did not announce which nodes the new site would use initially, aside from mentioning that it would use advanced technologies to make chips for 5G, AI, HPC, and other demanding applications. Meanwhile, the whole project got bigger in April 2024, when Samsung disclosed plans to invest as much as $44 billion in the campus, building two advanced semiconductor fab modules, an advanced packaging facility, and an R&D center. In fact, given the area of the site, it is reasonable to expect Samsung to eventually build additional fab modules.

While the shell of the first fab module was completed in late 2024 – early 2025, the company delayed moving in expensive wafer fab equipment (WFE) because it was uncertain about the node strategy, volume demand, and the lack of a big-ticket customer. Following Tesla's announcements to use Samsung Foundry's Texas capacity to build AI6 chips through 2033 and AI5 chips before that, the questions surrounding a large customer and volume were answered. So, Samsung began to install advanced tools. The company is on track to reach the 'first light' milestone with ASML's EUV tools this March.

With the Tesla contracts signed, Samsung Foundry is now targeting 50,000 wafer starts per month (WSPM) of capacity using the SF2/SF3P process technology at the Taylor fab (according to TrendForce.) Though it is unclear whether this number only describes the first module, or the capacity of the whole $44 billion project that includes two fab modules.

In any case, 50,000 WSPM capacity is much higher compared to what Intel's Fab 52 can offer (40,000 WSPM), as well as higher than what TSMC's typical fab modules can process (around 20,000 WSPM). As a result, Samsung's Taylor fab will likely be the company's largest logic production site that the company has ever operated.

Possible Pellicle pilot

But in addition to being one of Samsung Foundry's largest fabs ever, the new facility will be the company's first fab to use pellicles for EUV lithography (according to Citrini analyst via @jukan05), something it has never done before, which will fundamentally change manufacturing flow at the fab.

Industry sources reportedly indicate that Samsung has ordered dedicated EUV pellicle attachment, detachment, and inspection systems for the Taylor fab. The contract, reportedly worth 25 billion won ($17.5 million), was awarded to FST, a Korean equipment supplier that has been developing pellicle handling solutions for several years.

These are production-grade systems designed to insert pellicles into a high-volume EUV flow. Readiness of these tools should confirm that Samsung intends to qualify pellicles for mass production rather than limited pilot use; however, this has not been officially confirmed by Samsung, and should therefore be taken with a grain of salt. The tools are said to support both conventional metal-silicide (MeSi) EUV pellicles and next-generation carbon nanotube pellicles, which gives Samsung an upgrade path.

For those not familiar, an EUV pellicle is an ultra-thin protective membrane mounted above a photomask during exposure to prevent particles from landing on the mask surface and printing defects onto the wafer. While pellicles have long been standard in deep ultraviolet lithography, EUV pellicles are far more difficult to make and use due to strict requirements for optical transmission, thermal durability, and mechanical stability under EUV radiation. For this reason, Samsung has so far avoided EUV pellicles because they were a net negative for its manufacturing economics and tool stability.

Early EUV pellicles transmitted only around 80% – 88% of 13.5-nm light, causing a 12–20% loss of photons at a time when ASML EUV sources had a performance of around 250W (early NXE:3400B/3400C machines), which would have cut wafer throughput and raised cost per wafer significantly due to longer exposures. At the same time, first-generation pellicles suffered from limited lifetime and thermal instability: they warped or even cracked as well as degraded under sustained EUV radiation, which increased downtime and pellicle failure risk.

Each pellicle can cost from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars, so if its replacement cycle were short enough, it would inflate Samsung's costs to something that Samsung's margin structure could absorb. So instead of using pellicles, Samsung bet on a pellicle-free EUV flow based on ultra-clean mask handling, frequent reticle inspection and cleaning, and short mask reuse cycles, which preserved throughput and kept defect risk manageable for smaller dies and few EUV layers. However, the flip side of this decision is reportedly inconsistent yields and variability.

Now, ASML has delivered much more capable Twinscan NXE:3600D and NXE:3800E machines with much more powerful light sources and higher throughput. Also, the industry has introduced metal-silicide (and even carbon-nanotube pellicles, but Samsung will reportedly stick to MeSi pellicles) with better transmittance and durability, so using pellicles makes the most sense right now.

Furthermore, as Tesla's AI5 and other chips use SF2/SF3P and other advanced nodes use many more EUV layers than earlier EUV-based designs, the usage of pellicles becomes compulsory even for Samsung.

Pellicles sharply reduce stochastic mask-borne defects, which are increasingly dominant at the 2nm scale. For large logic dies (such as Tesla's AI5), a single particle on a critical EUV mask layer can destroy an entire chip or even repeat across multiple fields. By shifting the particle plane out of focus, pellicles dramatically lower this risk, thus improving yields and, more importantly, yield stability, something that Tesla clearly demands.

Fundamental shift for Samsung

Ultimately, Samsung will use its Taylor fab to make chips for other clients in addition to Tesla and perhaps introduction of pellicles to the flow will greatly improve the company's positions on the foundry market as inconsistent wafer-to-wafer and lot-to-lot yields and performance variability is what has historically plagued Samsung Foundry's EUV-based nodes and prevented their usage by clients with larger dies.

Samsung was quick to respond this morning when speculators rapidly spread reports of an unprecedented 80% price hike on its entire memory product line. Taiwanese newspaper United Daily News reports that both Samsung and a number of memory module manufacturing partners are claiming that the 80% number is a total fabrication.

While Samsung, like every other semiconductor manufacturer on Earth, is beginning to raise prices as supply shrivels, a unilateral 80% upcharge is reportedly not part of the plans. Rumors supporting this steep upcharge began swirling yesterday, when an alleged memo from a Samsung distributor surfaced claiming that "due to significant changes in the global semiconductor market", all Samsung memory products were set to be hit with an 80% price increase.

The rumors of a price explosion found seeming legitimacy when an X investment account retweeted the above document, claiming it to be confirmed via a "DS Giheung employee's firsthand account". DS Giheung refers to Samsung's Giheung Device Solutions campus, the branch of Samsung focused on manufacturing and memory design.

According to the Taiwanese press, Samsung has fully denied claims of an across-the-board 80% price rise on its entire memory product suite. While some Samsung distributors have raised prices on their end to respond to market pressures, all interviewed manufacturers at Samsung and elsewhere state they have not seen any correspondence from Samsung relating to a price increase, according to the report.

While the document above might not be legit, the frenetic nature of the current RAM market and news have seen stranger things happen over the last few months, making such a claim of a sudden 80% price increase almost totally believable.

From 2024 to 2025, DRAM prices grew 171% year-over-year, outpacing the value of gold, thanks to AI data center clients stifling the world's supply. Samsung's own prices on individual memory chips grew 60% in just two months last year, from September to November. And while Samsung did announce that it would delay its DDR4 end of life deadline in the wake of the chaos, this reportedly only came due to a deal with a "key customer", funnelling all of Samsung's DDR4 production into the server market, and leaving the outside market still dying of thirst.