Some DRAM now has a higher nominal value per square millimetre than a wafer processed on TSMC’s advanced N2 or N3 nodes.
Kurnal Insights puts the potential selling value of 1b DRAM at $0.654 per square millimetre, assuming a price of $1.50 per gigabit. Its estimated figure for a 300mm N2 wafer is $0.424 per square millimetre, based on a $30,000 wafer price. N3 comes in at $0.283, assuming a $20,000 wafer price.
The DRAM assumption is close to a reported spot price on 21 September. DDR5 eTT chips averaged $24.80 for 16 gigabits, or about $1.55 per gigabit, according to DRAMeXchange data cited by PixelNerd. At that price, 1b DRAM’s theoretical value rises to about $0.676 per square millimetre.
The TSMC numbers estimate what customers pay to have a wafer processed. The DRAM number estimates what the finished memory occupying that area could sell for. Comparing those figures does not establish that DRAM is more expensive to manufacture than an advanced processor.
The wafer prices are unofficial estimates, and dividing them by total wafer area ignores unusable edges, test structures, defects, yields and packaging. The memory calculation uses spot prices, while large manufacturers sell much of their output through contracts whose prices are not included here.
TrendForce has warned that DDR5 spot purchases remain limited and sporadic. A price from that market cannot tell us what Samsung, SK hynix or Micron receive for most of their production. Anyone claiming the calculation proves memory makers earn more per wafer than TSMC has skipped the paragraph containing the arithmetic’s brakes.
It does show how far memory prices have climbed during the AI infrastructure rush. Even with this many caveats, a comparison like this would have sounded absurd when ordinary DRAM was still expected to get cheaper with age.
