Hot Chips 2026: Micron warns HBM wafer penalty is widening with every generation — AI memory uses 3x more silicon than DDR5, company says memory wall is 'getting worse' as prices rise

Micron said HBM uses about three times the wafer area of DDR5 for the same capacity.

As bandwidth rises, greater parallelism, larger dies, and more complex stacking increase HBM’s silicon penalty with each generation.

If AI-focused HBM consumes more wafer capacity, DRAM supply could tighten and put further upward pressure on consumer memory and PC prices.