Having “years of stock” of DDR2, Raspberry Pi guarantees that the prices of its older-generation boards will not rise.
The company had made this commitment at the start of the year. So far, it has kept its promise. It probably wouldn’t have done so without this stock. The RAM shortage indeed trickled down to DDR2. Quarter over quarter (Q1 to Q2 2026), OEMs/ODMs had to shell out 55 to 60% more to acquire it, according to TrendForce.
The Taipei-based research firm estimates the trend will continue into Q3 (+35 to +40%). All the more so as supply tightens, manufacturers preferring to concentrate production on later DRAM generations from which they derive higher margins.
The major suppliers have pivoted toward HBM, high-bandwidth memory that underpins AI infrastructure. Abandoning DDR4 and DDR5, they have “mechanically” caused demand to shift to DDR3. DDR2 logically became the next step… for machines that support it (network equipment, embedded systems, industrial computing…). A cycle that could be accelerated by players holding stock for speculative reasons.
Mobile HBM, another potentially disruptive element
The shift toward HBM production is likely to intensify with the arrival of this memory type in mobile devices. Samsung would be developing packaging technology adapted to these terminals. On the side of Huawei and Xiaomi, work is underway on low-latency DRAM “inspired” by HBM, with foldable smartphones in sight as they are better suited than traditional formats for heat dissipation.
On the SanDisk front, work is underway on High-Bandwidth Flash (HBF), which applies an HBM-like architecture to NAND. In this arena, AMD has taken an interest in MEXT. This American company is behind a predictive tiering technology that maximizes NAND usage in combination with RAM.
