APAC Wrap: 2 August 2026
HBM, NAND, Renesas, Mediatek, Intel.
Hello,
It was quieter than usual here last week - my travel and gearing up for the Future of Memory and Storage conference coincided with a very unusual week in the markets. I think the further drawdown was anticipated, as evidenced by the numerous comments in the chat about how we needed to go lower, though the manner and time of the slide ending was not.
Looking ahead, there are many hot topics that will benefit from a discussion with the big memory players and other memory analysts next week.
We will also get to meet some smaller names like Macronix and Penguin Solutions.
There will obviously be some notes circulated next week but I am also interested in how the Funda platform will draw on everything we learn at these conferences going forward, whether you specifically query it about the conference or not.
SK Hynix / Samsung Electronics: -7/8%
Nvidia has been making Rubin Ultra less powerful than promised - when first shown off in 2025, it was supposed to have a big 4-chip package with 1TB of memory.
That's been cut back step by step, and following two weeks of rumours, it appears to ends up with just 192GB — actually less memory than the standard Rubin it is meant to replace, though the memory runs slightly faster, and 576 GPUs can be linked together instead of 72.
I have been hearing debate about whether this is demand destruction due to price increases or supply constraints, and whether HBM despec causes DRAM price to dip because more DRAM wafers are freed up.
It appears to have at least spooked the market. SemiAnalysis also has a note out highlighting that spend is being reallocated from HBM to interconnect, to connect the 576 GPUs.
Kioxia: MS survey of 73 investors
Interesting results: