TrendForce's latest research points out that since the second half of 2025, general DRAM prices have risen sharply, reflecting market conditions in which supply exceeds demand. However, the HBM annual bargaining mechanism of the three major original manufacturers has caused HBM contract prices to be unable to reflect the quarterly price increase trend in a timely manner.
As buyers and sellers begin to negotiate the supply of mainstream product HBM4 in 2026 in the second quarter of 2026, TrendForce believes that due to the short supply of DRAM, the high manufacturing difficulty and high cost of new and old generation HBM, the three major original manufacturers will significantly increase their HBM quotations in 2027.
Single-wafer output data tracked by TrendForce shows that HBM has been overtaken by DDR5 64GB RDIMM in the first quarter of 2026, and HBM's profit margin is therefore lower than DDR5 64GB RDIMM.
This means that the original manufacturer will adjust the production capacity allocation between HBM and general DRAM based on the price level negotiated by HBM to ensure that HBM continues to drive the development of the AI ecosystem while simultaneously driving the overall demand for RDIMM, Server LPDDR and even DRAM required for edge devices.
From the demand side, HBM demand will continue to be strong from 2026 to 2027, but the momentum is slightly different in the two years. HBM demand in 2026 will mainly come from the capacity upgrade of AI ASICs, which will significantly increase the HBM capacity of AI chip configuration from 96/192GB to 216/288GB;
Demand momentum in 2027 will be driven by Rubin Ultra and AI ASICs. Although the HBM capacity of a single GPU on the NVIDIA Rubin platform is the same as that of the previous generation, the growth in shipments has simultaneously pushed up overall demand. In 2027, the NVIDIA Rubin Ultra platform will push the HBM capacity of a single GPU to 384GB, and AI ASICs such as Google TPU will also increase the demand for HBM due to the increase in the number of chips.
TrendForce estimates that the HBM wafer production volume of the three major OEMs from 2025 to 2027 will account for 18%, 22%, and approximately 30% of the overall DRAM wafer production volume (calculated based on the end-of-year wafer production volume). HBM bit supply will account for 8%, 9%, and approximately 13% of the overall DRAM bit supply.
With the evolution of HBM in 2027, the die size will expand again and demand will rise simultaneously. The crowding out effect on general DRAM production capacity will be further strengthened, giving the original manufacturers sufficient reasons to increase HBM and gain clear pricing dominance in HBM price negotiations in 2027.
