Not sure if there is actual chip shortage (CPU prices don't seem to soar up and it's same fabs making them) but the circular financing/chips stuck in warehouse at the very least increased the DRAM shortage

It is very real. You dont need to trust me, any HN comments, or any article. We can all read annual or quarterly reports from TSMC, Samsung and many other suppliers downstream.

To the point even SMIC, foundry from China is getting 100 - 200% increase in revenue and out of capacity. Thanks to AI Boom, all the extra profits, which so many media reports assume it is just blatant rip off, can now go in to rapid foundry expansion. Samsung plans their largest investment in their memory and foundry expansion.

Even today I still can't quite fathom some of the numbers, but if we pick Github as example, they grew 10 - 50x between 2023 to 2026 and growth is still not levelling off. This is not normal. Not normal for a services as big as Github. Even if you dont use GPU, the CPU and memory required for these services are completely off the chart. And storing the code too. AI video on Youtube. Now you know where all the NAND for storage went to.

Oh, and if these are not enough. Go and read about motherboards. They are not coping well with demands either.

Everyone just expect Hardware manufacturing facility to scale up and down like they switch on and off a cloud server on Amazon. The reality is that even building one requires years of planning and execution. And that is after the building decision being made. And when a mostly commodity like industry, with perfect balance of supply and demand working on minimal margin and profits, any small changes on demand side will cause a huge spike in price.

For anyone who have trading experience with commodities would know this. And of course it comes with the usual boom and bust cycle.