Tech
Chip makers warn of a looming shortage in DRAM and SSD | Computer Weekly
Chip manufacturers are warning of a shortage in DRAM, NAND and probably HBM memory chips because demand from cloud providers is outstripping supply. The problem is compounded by the Trump administration’s recent ban on Chinese factories manufacturing these components.
The largest component manufacturer, Samsung, announced last week in the Korean press that it was going to focus on the production of DRAM chips to the detriment of NAND at its Pyeongtaek and Hwaseong factories in South Korea, which until now have manufactured both types of component.
The reason given is that RAM is receiving the highest demand from customers. This explosion in the need for DRAM stems from the high volumes of memory required in servers to load artificial intelligence (AI) models, the size of which – often many tens of gigabytes – far exceeds that of traditional web applications. And that’s just to cover inference needs – that is, the use of pre-trained AI by businesses.
The pressure on DRAM manufacturing will have an impact on internal HBM memories in the GPUs designed for AI training. These are the same circuits in both cases – they are etched on the same chains. The difference lies in the way they are assembled on a communication bus. The HBM bus is very large, because it is designed to interface directly with the pins of a computing chip, whereas the bus for DDR5 chips is smaller, to accommodate a portion of the connections behind a chipset.
60% on DDR5 prices and 100% by the end of 2026
Demand for more memory in servers is currently so great that the price of DDR5 DRAM components has rising by 60% on wholesale markets this month. Prices are set at the end of each month by manufacturers according to demand. Unusually, however, Samsung has delayed publication of its latest prices by a fortnight to take stock of the situation.
According to Tobey Gonnerman, head of memory wholesaler Fusion Worldwide, quoted by Reuters, “Most server manufacturers and datacentre operators now have to accept they will no longer get their memory components on time, and that prices for premium access to stocks are already… extreme”.
A 32GB DDR5 chip is trading at $239, up from $149 at the end of September. A 16GB chip now costs $135 and a 64GB chip $1,194.
One particular point is that Samsung, like its competitor and compatriot SK Hynix, has recently overhauled its production lines to engrave memories with greater finesse – generation 1c at Samsung (between 11 and 12 nanometres) and generation 1b at SK Hynix (between 12 and 13 nanometres). The problem is that the newness of these processes has resulted in a number of production failures. At Samsung, only 50-70% of the DRAM circuits engraved on a wafer are functional, compared with the usual 80%.
Another aggravating factor is Nvidia’s recently announced intention to use only LPDDR5 memory on its GPUs for inference by the end of 2026. This type of memory is more energy efficient than normal DDR5, which means that Nvidia’s GPUs will consume less power. But LPDDR5 is also more complicated to manufacture. According to Gonnerman, quoted by Reuters, the widespread use of LPDDR5 would mean doubling the price of memory in servers.
According to analysts, DRAM component prices are unlikely to stabilise before mid-2027.
A shortage of SSDs too
The fact that Samsung and SK Hynix are dismantling NAND production lines to install DRAM production lines will create a shortage of SSDs from the end of 2025 until the end of 2026.
The first to sound the alarm was SSD manufacturer Phison in its latest financial report, published earlier this month. According to its CEO Khein-Seng Pua, the price of a 1-terabit TLC NAND chip (it takes eight to make 1TB) is now trading at $10.70 on the wholesale market, up from $4.80 this summer. All the SSDs that Phison will be producing in 2026 have already been sold and prices will continue to rise until 2027.
Rival SanDisk also announced that all its NAND chip suppliers had increased prices by 50% between October and November. SanDisk also pointed out that it had had to wait an exceptional 15 days to obtain the updated monthly prices.
According to analysts, SSD production is not just suffering from a probable drop in production at Samsung – it also has to respond to growing demand from AI infrastructure providers, who now prefer SSDs to HDDs to load tens of GBs of RAM more quickly from large language models (LLMs).
As a result, Transcend, Innodisk and Apacer Technology, all three of which assemble NAND circuits into chips before reselling them to SSD manufacturers, have just posted unprecedented financial results – with sales up 27%, 64% and 70% in one year, respectively.
In response to this sudden shortage, server and PC manufacturer Lenovo told Bloomberg that it is stockpiling DRAM and NAND components to supply all the machines it intends to manufacture by the end of 2026. Media reports suggest its rival Acer has sent a delegation to buy components direct from Samsung’s factories, bypassing the usual wholesalers in the supply chain.
Tech
PSNI resorted to pen and paper after issues with ControlWorks command and control software | Computer Weekly
Unexpected problems in the Police Service of Northern Ireland’s (PSNI’s) ControlWorks software led to police having to resort to manual forms to record calls from the public soon after the software’s introduction in 2019, Computer Weekly has learned.
The force has not reported the incidents to the Northern Ireland Policing Board, which oversees the PSNI, and has not mentioned any incidents with ControlWorks in its annual reports.
While there is no legal duty to report failures with ControlWorks to the Northern Ireland Policing Board, the Policing Board has told Computer Weekly it would expect any serious incidents with ControlWorks to be reported to it.
The PSNI uses ControlWorks as part of its command and control system, for managing, logging and categorising calls received by the emergency services from the public and for dispatching police officers to incidents.
Computer Weekly has learned that the PNSI’s ControlWorks system had technical issues after it first went live in May 2019.
These included slow-downs of the system that required computer systems to be restarted or software to be patched.
On some occasions, police were forced to return to using paper forms to record incidents reported by the public after ControlWorks became unavailable. Information on the forms had to be typed back into the system when the service resumed.
ControlWorks aimed to improve response times
The PSNI announced it was using Capita Communications and Control Solutions’ ControlWorks software in 2018, replacing its 20-year-old Capita Atlas Command and Control System, which had reached the end of its life.
From February 2018, ControlWorks was installed across the PSNI’s three regional contact management centres, before going live in May 2019, but is understood to have had a series of issues during its first few months of operation.
Critical incidents, which affect force-wide availability of ControlWorks, are categorised as P1 or P2. Less serious incidents that do not require urgent remediation are categorised as P3 and P4, Computer Weekly has previously reported.
Computer Weekly understands that the PSNI runs a 24-hour help desk to deal with IT issues, and that it has the ability to escalate incidents with ControlWorks to its IT supplier.
Missing persons search
Computer Weekly understands that a “major issue” with ControlWorks may have delayed information being passed to police officers searching for missing teenager Noah Donohoe, who disappeared from his home in Belfast on 21 June 2020.
Donohoe’s disappearance sparked a massive search operation, as police reviewed hours of CCTV, and hundreds of volunteers joined the search for the vulnerable 14-year-old.
Computer Weekly has learned that on the evening of 23 June 2020, police recorded a “major issue” with ControlWorks that could have led to delays in information being passed to investigators.
Computer Weekly further understands that on the evening of 24 June, a member of the public called police to say they had seen an individual attempting to sell Donohoe’s missing laptop.
This potentially critical information was delayed in being brought to the attention of police officers investigating Donohoe’s disappearance because of a problem with ControlWorks, Computer Weekly has been told.
It is unclear exactly how long the information was delayed by and what its impact on the search for the missing teenager was. But it is understood that detectives on the case reported and noted the delay during the investigation.
The issue with ControlWorks was understood to have been reported during the live investigation at a critical time when Donohoe was missing – two days after he had gone missing, and four days before he was found dead in a Belfast storm drain.
Manchester had serious IT issues
Greater Manchester Police experienced problems when it went live with its Integrated Operational Policing System (iOPS), which included ControlWorks, in July 2019. iOps attempted to integrate Capita’s ControlWorks software with Capita’s PoliceWorks record management software used by police officers for managing day-to-day investigations and intelligence records.
An independent review found serious issues with the project. At one point, police were forced to revert to pen and paper for 72 hours while records were migrated to the new system.
“This consumed considerable time and capacity, causing a duplication of work,” the report found. “In addition, some legacy demand, which included ongoing investigations, did not successfully transfer from the old systems, so could no longer be worked on.”
Greater Manchester Police subsequently announced plans to replace PoliceWorks after concluding it could not be adapted or fixed, but it has continued to use ControlWorks.
The PSNI uses a different record management system to Manchester’s troubled PoliceWorks system. The PSNI signed a £9m contract with the Canadian company NicheRMS to deploy its Records Management System, which records information about people, locations, vehicles, incidents and evidence, in 2006.
NicheRMS keeps duplicate records of reports from the public that are recorded on ControlWorks when they are escalated as an “incident”. This means that should data be lost because of problems with ControlWorks, the PSNI would still have access to duplicate records reported by the public on NicheRMS if they have been escalated as an “incident”.
Policing Board seeks clarification from PSNI
The Northern Ireland Policing Board has confirmed that if a major system disruption or significant information or data loss occurred, the board would expect to be informed.
A spokesperson told Computer Weekly that the board’s Resources Committee, which has oversight responsibility for matters including the PSNI’s technology systems, has asked the PSNI for clarification about the issues raised by Computer Weekly.
A coroner’s inquest into the circumstances of Noah Donohoe’s death is due to begin on 19 January.
The PSNI said it would “not comment on investigative matters while legal proceedings are ongoing”.
“With regards to questions relating to ControlWorks, police can confirm that, to date, there has been no instance of major disruption which has led to data loss,” a spokesperson said.
Capita declined to comment.
ISC2, the non-profit cyber professional membership association, has joined the UK government’s recently launched Software Security Ambassador Scheme as an expert adviser.
Set up at the beginning of the year by the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) and the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT), the scheme forms part of a wider £210m commitment by Westminster to remodel approaches to public sector cyber resilience from the ground up, acknowledging that previous approaches to the issue have basically gone nowhere and that previously set targets for resilience are unachievable.
It is designed to incentivise organisations to pay more attention to the security of software products, and supports the wider adoption of the Software Security Code of Practice, a set of voluntary principles defining what secure software looks like.
ISC2 joins a number of tech suppliers, including Cisco, Palo Alto Networks and Sage; consultancies and service providers including Accenture and NCC Group; and financial services firms including Lloyds Banking Group and Santander. Fellow cyber association ISACA is also involved.
“Promoting secure software practices that strengthen the resilience of systems underpinning the economy, public services and national infrastructure is central to ISC2’s mission,” said ISC2’s executive vice-president for advocacy and strategic engagement, Tara Wisniewski.
“The code moves software security beyond narrow compliance and elevates it to a board-level resilience priority. As supply chain attacks continue to grow in scale and impact, a shared baseline is essential and through our global community and expertise, ISC2 is committed to helping professionals build the skills needed to put secure-by-design principles into practice,” she said.
Software vulns a huge barrier to resilience
A study of wider supply chain risks conducted last year by ISC2 found that a little over half of organisations worldwide reported that vulnerabilities in their software suppliers’ products represented the most disruptive cyber security threat to their overall supply chain.
And the World Economic Forum’s (WEF’s) Global Cybersecurity Outlook report, published on 12 January, revealed that third-party and supply chain vulnerabilities were seen as a huge barrier to building cyber resilience by C-suite executives.
A total of 65% of respondents to the WEF’s annual poll flagged such flaws as the greatest challenge their organisation faced on its pathway to resilience, compared to 54% at the beginning of 2025. This outpaced factors such as the evolving threat landscape and emerging AI technology, use of legacy IT systems, regulatory compliance and governance, and cyber skills shortages.
Pressed on the top supply chain cyber risks, respondents were most concerned about their ability to assure the integrity of software and other IT services, ahead of a lack of visibility into their supplier’s supply chains and overdependence on critical third-party suppliers.
The UK’s Code of Practice seeks to answer this challenge by establishing expectations and best practices for tech providers and any other organisations that either develop, sell or buy software products. It covers aspects such as secure design and development, the security of build environments, deployment and ongoing upkeep, and transparent communication with customers and users.
As part of its role as an ambassador, ISC2 will assist in developing and improving the Code of Practice, while championing it by embedding its guiding principles into its own cyber education and professional development services – the organisation boasts 10,000 UK members and associates.
It will also help to drive adoption of the Code of Practice through various awareness campaigns, incorporating it into its certifications, training and guidance, engaging with industry stakeholders and members to encourage implementation, and incorporating its provisions into its work with its own commercial suppliers.
The wheel on the left side has options to adjust actuation distance, rapid-trigger sensitivity, and RGB brightness. You can also adjust volume and media playback, and turn it into a scroll wheel. The LED matrix below it is designed to display adjustments to actuation distance but feels a bit awkward: Each 0.1 mm of adjustment fills its own bar, and it only uses the bottom nine bars, so the screen will roll over four times when adjusting (the top three bars, with dots next to them, illuminate to show how many times the screen has rolled over during the adjustment). The saving grace of this is that, when adjusting the actuation distance, you can press down any switch to see a visualization of how far you’re pressing it, then tweak the actuation distance to match.
Alongside all of this, the Falcata (and, by extension, the Falchion) now has an aftermarket switch option: TTC Gold magnetic switches. While this is still only two switches, it’s an improvement over the singular switch option of most Hall effect keyboards.
Split Apart
Photograph: Henri Robbins
The internal assembly of this keyboard is straightforward yet interesting. Instead of a standard tray mount, where the PCB and plate bolt directly into the bottom half of the shell, the Falcata is more comparable to a bottom-mount. The PCB screws into the plate from underneath, and the plate is screwed onto the bottom half of the case along the edges. While the difference between the two mounting methods is minimal, it does improve typing experience by eliminating the “dead zones” caused by a post in the middle of the keyboard, along with slightly isolating typing from the case (which creates fewer vibrations when typing).
The top and bottom halves can easily be split apart by removing the screws on the plate (no breakable plastic clips here!), but on the left half, four cables connect the top and bottom halves of the keyboard, all of which need to be disconnected before fully separating the two sections. Once this is done, the internal silicone sound-dampening can easily be removed. The foam dampening, however, was adhered strongly enough that removing it left chunks of foam stuck to the PCB, making it impossible to readhere without using new adhesive. This wasn’t a huge issue, since the foam could simply be placed into the keyboard, but it is still frustrating to see when most manufacturers have figured this out.
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