Memory prices have skyrocketed like never before. NVIDIA Corporation (NVDA.US) can't sit still either? GF SEC: AI servers "downgrade" to control costs.

Due to the "unprecedented" surge in memory chip prices, which continues to drive up the overall cost of AI servers, GF SEC believes that NVIDIA Corporation (NVDA.US) may implement a series of measures to control costs. GF SEC analyst Jeff Pu stated in a research report: "We believe the supply chain has taken action and is also working to boost server shipments. Specific measures include: 1) According to SemiAnalysis's report, the capacity of the SOCAMM (small form factor compressed-attached memory module) in the new generation VR200 CPU configuration has been reduced; 2) It is expected that the Vera series CPU racks will follow suit, with the SOCAMM of a single Vera CPU reduced to 96GB, meaning the total LPDDR5X capacity per CPU is 768GB, lower than the officially specified 1.5TB; 3) General servers will also see a reduction in memory configuration, with RDIMM and/or MRDIMM capacities reduced by about 50%." The analyst added: "Therefore, we expect a slight increase in shipments of general servers in the second and third quarters of 2026, but a strong increase of 20-30% in the fourth quarter." Pu emphasized that reducing the capacity of LPDDR5X memory is crucial, as this memory accounts for approximately 61% of the material cost in the Vera Rubin 200 rack. Pu estimated that through the above downsizing measures, NVIDIA Corporation is expected to keep the memory cost of AI servers stable at around 20% before 2027. According to the latest report from market research firm SigmaIntell, due to severe imbalance in memory supply and demand, consumer DRAM prices surged across the board in the second quarter of this year, with prices of LPDDR4X 4GB products rising by 75% and LPDDR5X 12GB products seeing an even higher increase of 89%.