The high demand for memory, particularly flash and dynamic random access memory, continues to drive up prices, according to attendees of SC25.
SC25, the 2025 International Conference for High-Performance Computing, Networking, Storage, and Analysis, was held last week in St. Louis, Mo.
The event was dominated by presentations related to artificial intelligence and high-performance computing. Conversations also centered around the supply deficit for NAND and DRAM, which is leading to price spikes, according to Wedbush analysts.
“Memory remains tight, with NAND more recently seeing the same sharp price increases that characterized the DRAM industry starting in October,” said Wedbush analysts Matt Bryson and Antoine Legault in an investor note. “Price increases have been abrupt, often in the double digits, and sometimes coming multiple times over the past month.”
SK Hynix, Samsung (OTCPK:SSNLF) and Micro Technology (MU) hold the top market share among DRAM producers. The most prolific NAND producers include Samsung, SK Hynix, Western Digital (WDC), Intel (INTC) and Micron.
Wedbush also highlighted the increased interest in quantum computing at the event.
“While much of the activity around quantum remains focused on supporting large labs/universities, we would point out the seemingly growing commercial interest in quantum computing and the various modalities currently under development from companies like IBM (IBM), Fujitsu, D-Wave (QBTS), IonQ (IONQ), Quantum Computing (QUBT), Qunova, IQM, and more,” Bryson noted.
Finally, Wedbush looked at the processors utilized in the Top 500, which is a list of the best-performing supercomputers in the world. This year’s list featured 45 new entrants, but interestingly, none of them cracked the existing top 10. However, with several new U.S. Department of Energy projects featuring AMD (AMD) and Nvidia (NVDA) based systems currently under development, this should change next year.
Of the new systems to make the list, AMD, Intel and Nvidia were featured the most. Arm (ARM) accounted for 10% of the new processors.
“NVDA once again represented the single leading supplier into supercomputing sockets with 30 GPU sockets as well as 6 CPU sockets,” Bryson said. “Intel garnered 25 total sockets (all CPU), while AMD received 18 sockets (14 CPUs and 4 GPUs).”
Wedbush has assigned a Neutral rating to Intel, while AMD and Nvidia are both rated Outperform.