The Zhitong Finance App learned that CaiTong Securities released a research report saying that if production starts on schedule and the planned projects of existing mainstream storage vendors, the pattern of tight HBM supply is expected to continue in 2028, and the pattern of tight DRAM and NAND supply is expected to ease relatively. In the long run, market space expansion in the clean room industry mainly comes from: 1) a new round of production expansion brought about by maintaining steady growth in AI server shipments; 2) advanced packaging upgrades expand the scale of single-chip systems, thereby simultaneously driving advanced logic wafers, HBM, package testing, and high-grade clean space; 3) process upgrades drive an increase in clean room area and unit value.
The main views of Caitong Securities are as follows:
Demand side: Demand for DRAM and NAND continues to increase, and HBM has the strongest growth momentum
AI servers are the main terminals contributing to storage requirements, and the HBM capacity of a single server continues to increase. Taking the NVIDIADGX series AI server as an example, the B300 HBM capacity reached 3.6 times that of the H100. Global HBM demand is expected to increase from 2594 MGB in 2025 to 9783 MGB in 2028, with a CAGR of about 55.7% during the period. At the same time, the expansion of AI infrastructure will also drive increased demand for server DDR and enterprise-grade SSDs, and the increase in storage demand will be further concentrated on AI-related products.
Supply side: 2027-2029 is the peak of DRAM and NAND production expansion
According to TrendForce data, global DRAM production capacity is expected to increase from 1.966 million pieces/month in 2025 to 2.181 million pieces/month in 2026, +10.9% over the same period last year. According to the bank's already counted projects, under the assumption that the production capacity of the existing production line remains unchanged, DRAM production capacity is expected to increase by 21.7, 55.0, 50.2, and 126,000 pieces/month, respectively; HBMTSV wafer processing capacity is expected to increase from 365,000 pieces/month in 2025 to 471,000 pieces/month in 2026, and several advanced packaging projects will be put into operation one after another in 2027; NAND's production capacity will drop from 1.365 million pieces/month in 2025 to 1.33 million pieces/month in 2027, which mainly depends on Production of the existing plant was increased, and the new plant was gradually put into operation from 2028 to 2029.
Long-term clean room market space mainly comes from AI servers, advanced manufacturing processes, process upgrades, etc.
Looking at the long term, 1) Assuming that AI server growth remains at 20% in 2027 and beyond, demand for corresponding GPUs and supporting HBMs is also expected to maintain the same growth rate. The demand gap is expected to increase by about 6.37 million units every year from 2027 to 2030, and corresponding storage and wafer foundries still have plenty of room to expand production. 2) Advanced packaging technologies such as glass substrates, CoWoS, SoIC, hybrid bonding, and Chiplet are also expected to drive collaborative expansion between front-end wafer manufacturing and back-stage sealing and testing by increasing the integrated density of logic chips, HBM, I/O, and intermediate layers within the package; 3) In terms of unit cost, high-standard clean areas require more intensive filtration systems and enhanced control of temperature, humidity, molecular contamination, and microvibration. According to LabPro's US market data, the unit cost of a clean room has increased from 150 to 250 US dollars/square foot for ISO 8 to more than 800-1,500 US dollars/square foot for ISO 4 and higher.
Risk warning: Risk of macroeconomic fluctuations, semiconductor production expansion falling short of expectations, risk of measurement bias.