Samsung says memory shortages will get worse in 2027, and supply constraints will persist into 2028, with up to 70% of capacity secured by long-term agreement customers. 🔗

Samsung's advanced EUV process leak mentions temperature and a solvent. There are 2 places this could be used, both for Metal Oxide Resist (MOR). Heated solvent developer has been published on for this, although AFAIK no benefit has been observed yet. And industry is leaning toward dry develop anyway which has clear benefits. Edge Bead Removal (EBR) for wet MOR. In the spin coat process, the photoresist at the edge of the wafer needs to be cleaned off in the track to prevent contamination of the robotics that grip the wafer. It's very hard to clean MOR with a solvent; it leaves trace metals behind. Since a single metal atom could kill a chip, this is a problem. There are 2 ways the industry is dealing with this now. One is a formulated EBR solvent plus an acid. It's unclear whether this will prove to be 100% reliable. The other is an expensive edge protection layer process that protects the wafer edge before MOR is coated. This is known to work, but it adds a lot of extra steps and cost. So a heated, formulated EBR chemical could also be used to enhance the first method. I've not seen anything on this yet; it would be a brand-new process tech.

Samsung’s earnings next year are going to be phenomenal... Take a look at this comment from Samsung’s earnings call today. Jaejune Kim, Executive Vice President of the Memory Business in Samsung Electronics’ Device Solutions (DS) division, said on the conference call following the company’s third-quarter earnings release on the 29th: “Next year’s HBM supply is already sold out, with pricing negotiations concluded at our target levels,” adding that “requests for additional volume continue to come in.” “At our target levels”... Do you realize what that means? Korean media previously reported that Samsung had quoted HBM4 prices in the mid-to-high $4 range per gigabit (Gb). (Reference: There were also rumors that NVIDIA was pushing back because it did not want to pay those prices. But judging by Samsung’s comments today, it looks like NVIDIA has ultimately accepted Samsung’s asking price. It now appears confirmed that Samsung will be selling HBM4 at the highest price among the Big Three memory makers. We believe Rubin variants equipped with Samsung’s HBM4 will be sold as a separate, higher-priced SKU compared with those using SK hynix or Micron memory. In effect, they would command a premium.