(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

A tech analyst said that HP is allegedly looking to source memory modules from Chinese suppliers to help address the ongoing shortage. According to Tae Kim’s X post, the tech giant reportedly told Bank of America that it’s “qualifying additional suppliers (China)” for products intended to ship to Asia and other parts of Europe. While it isn’t yet confirmed that HP will move forward with sourcing memory chips from China, it’s certainly taking initial steps to find other sources beyond the big three chip suppliers, namely Micron, Samsung, and SK hynix.

“Unlike the proprietary AI chips made by Nvidia, memory chips are commodities, meaning they can be easily replaced. There is a higher degree of disruption risk,” says Kim. “It may be a year from now or later, but there is a real potential for Chinese companies to expand aggressively into the memory chip and flash memory space.”

Because of this, some smaller Chinese memory manufacturers are poised to capitalize on the shortage of consumer memory. For example, CXMT (ChangXin Memory Technologies), based in Hefei, Anhui Province, China, recently launched DDR5-8000 and LPDDR5X-10667 memory chips, despite U.S. export restrictions on the company. It’s also reportedly preparing for a massive IPO, hoping to capitalize on the tight memory market worldwide. YMTC (Yangtze Memory Technologies Corp.) from Wuhan, China, is also preparing to start DRAM fabrication, and is said to be seeking a partnership with CXMT to start HBM production.

Although CXMT is accused of stealing technology from Samsung to build its first DDR5 chips, the limited global memory supply could lead desperate companies to overlook this and buy memory chips from the company. After all, most end users wouldn’t care where the memory chips in their laptops and pre-built PCs come from, as long as they perform well and are competitively priced.