Micron, a major global memory component manufacturer, has reportedly decided to discontinue—or has already discontinued—the production of 2GB GDDR7 memory components, which are commonly used in consumer-grade graphics cards.
Reports indicate that Micron has designated its 16Gb (gigabit) GDDR7 chips as having reached "End of Life" (EOL) status, meaning production will eventually cease. These 16Gb chips are typically combined to create 2GB GDDR7 memory modules—essential components for various consumer computing hardware builds.
This does not mean Micron is exiting the consumer memory component industry. The company also produces 24Gb GDDR7 chips, which can be combined to create 3GB GDDR7 memory modules. This decision may be aimed at boosting profitability by focusing exclusively on the higher-capacity modules; 3GB GDDR7 chips allow for total memory configurations of 12GB and 24GB, as opposed to the 8GB and 16GB configurations achieved with 2GB chips.
However, the move is considered somewhat unusual given that companies like Intel, AMD, and NVIDIA currently rely on 2GB GDDR7 chips for their graphics cards. While 3GB GDDR7 memory could technically be used for these cards, the reported cost—significantly higher than that of the 2GB version—could prove to be a major barrier preventing graphics card manufacturers from purchasing them in bulk. If reports that Micron is discontinuing production of these 16Gb chips are true, it means that only Samsung and SK Hynix will continue manufacturing 2GB GDDR7 memory chips. Demand for these components is expected to rise, particularly due to the NVIDIA RTX 5000 series graphics cards; most models in this lineup utilize these 2GB memory components to achieve 6GB, 8GB, 12GB, and 16GB memory configurations at a lower cost.
NVIDIA also utilizes Micron's 3GB GDDR7 memory, though exclusively for the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 laptop GPU and the NVIDIA RTX Pro 6000 Blackwell AI accelerator, which features a 96GB GDDR7 memory configuration.
