The Hot Take: HBM competitor would be good bringing Ai accelerator competition for RAM. Intel bringing it should help Intel to catch up in the Ai game for sure.
Japanâs SaiMemory, a SoftBank subsidiary collaborating with Intel, has secured NEDO funding to develop Z-Angle Memory (ZAM), a next-gen DRAM architecture addressing HBM limitations
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The Hot Take: We get DDR5 that's handicapped... This is ridiculous.
Intel is working with partners to release a cost-effective DDR5 memory design called HUDIMM, but it will lead to much lower performance. DDR5 HUDIMM Memory May Look Great For Budget Builders, But The Performance Impact Is So Huge, It Makes DDR4 Look Better Last week, Intel introduced a new DDR5 memory standard, along with its partners, called HUDIMM. The HUDIMM standard stands for Half-UDIMM & what it does is switch from two 32-bit channels that are featured on normal memory modules to just one 32-bit channel. This should allow memory makers to build cost-effective memory by populating half of the [âŚ]Read full article at https://wccftech.com/hudimm-ddr5-standard-promises-cheaper-memory-but-testing-shows-half-bandwidth/
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The Hot Take: When do we start looking at these folks for price fixing again????
Memory shortages are expected to last several years, with no sign of stabilization anytime soon, as DRAM makers fail to meet demand. Despite Creating New Production Factories, DRAM Makers Will Fail To Meet Memory Demand For Many Years Memory supply constraints continue to grip the industry as the rise of Agentic AI has led to severe shortages. The demand is so massive that it will take years before we see any hint of relief. The latest report from Nikkei Asia seems to agree with this matter. It is stated that DRAM manufacturers are expected to meet only 60% percent of [âŚ]Read full article at https://wccftech.com/memory-makers-only-meet-60-percent-dram-demand-through-2027/
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The Hot Take: Oh yay more lower end options because of shortages....
Motherboards used to be the quiet workers in the background. Now they act like mini memory labs, and Gigabyte is stepping up its game in this very area. With the Z890 Plus series, the manufacturer is turning a CES showcase project into a broader platform statement: more focus on signal integrity, two DIMM slots instead [âŚ]
Source
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The Hot Take: With Apple sharing chips between platforms and now this. Seems like hardware consolidation is happening faster.
Qualcomm is reportedly exploring a partnership with China's Changxin Memory Technologies (CXMT) to develop custom DRAM tailored for smartphones, a move that reflects mounting pressure across the mobile supply chain as memory shortages and rising costs reshape industry dynamics.
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The Hot Take: When you fix RAM prices you'll get this. Wonder when the Class Action Suites for pricing fixing get started.
Samsung Electronics is expected to deliver one of its strongest quarterly performances on record, driven largely by a sharp upswing in the global DRAM market. Forecasts for Q1 2026 point to operating profit reaching approximately $23.
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The Hot Take: Did they set the goal AFTER stating 32GB ram is more than enough for windows 11? I'm sorry loving my 64GB and would double it if I didn't have to sell a kidney.
A recent X post by Mikhail Parakhin, who was the former boss of Windows and Bing, revealed that years ago, Microsoft engineers had an internal â20/20 projectâ that had a goal of reducing Windowsâs idle RAM usage and installation size.
Parakhin, who had several titles at Microsoft, was replying to a post by the present Windows President, Pavan Davuluri, about Microsoftâs commitment to Windows quality, which, if you havenât heard already, is the companyâs attempt at fixing Windows 11 from the ground up.
Mikhail Parakhin talking about 20/20 project that couldâve reduced RAM usage by 20%
The then Microsoft executive expressed appreciation that Pavan Davuluri was ârestartingâ a push he and Jeff Johnson (present-day CTO at Microsoft) had started many years ago, called the â20/20 project,â which aimed to reduce Windowsâ idle memory consumption and the fresh install size on disk, both by 20 percent.
If it worked out, the idle Windows 11 RAM usage wouldâve been around 4.8GB, but unfortunately, as Prakhin said, âWe never got to finishâ.
Now, fast forward to 2026, and Microsoft is once again talking about improving performance, responsiveness, and memory efficiency. Itâs the same problem Microsoft tried to solve years ago.
Which brings up the obvious question. If Microsoft couldnât complete something as fundamental as reducing RAM usage back then, what has changed now? And more importantly, can Windows 11 become efficient, or is this just another attempt that may run into the same challenges?
Why is Windows 11 RAM usage high?
Windows 11 runs more background services than all previous versions, including telemetry systems, indexing, and security features. Components like Windows Defender run continuously, search indexing is always active, and features such as Widgets and feeds keep refreshing content in the background. Add cloud integration like OneDrive syncing, and the system is constantly doing something even when it appears idle.
Everything is preloaded, pre-indexed, and always available, which improves perceived responsiveness but increases baseline memory usage.
Web-based apps are inflating memory usage in Windows 11
Even if Microsoft optimizes Windows itself, there is a much bigger problem sitting on top of it.
A large number of popular apps today are built using Chromium-based frameworks like Electron or on WebView2 inside Windows. Apps like WhatsApp Desktop and Discord are well-known examples.
âWhatsAppâ is new version and âWhatsApp Betaâ is old UPW/WinUI in the screenshot
Even Microsoftâs own apps, including Teams, Clipchamp, and Widgets, are already using WebView2, and these come built in.
Whatâs surprising is that despite pushing AI like itâs the most important technology in the world, Microsoft is apparently ditching the native Copilot app in favour of a web wrapper.
Web apps like thus runs its own instance of a Chromium engine, along with multiple processes for rendering, scripting, and background tasks. So, a single app can easily consume hundreds of megabytes of RAM. Now imagine using them togetherâŚ
Fragmented UI stack increases overhead
Windows 11 is not based on a single unified UI framework. Instead, it uses a mix of legacy Win32 components, UWP elements, modern WinUI layers, and web-based technologies like WebView2 and React.
Microsoft developers explaining the use of React Native in Windows 11 Start menu in 2023
This hybrid approach gives Microsoft flexibility, but when different parts of the OS rely on different rendering pipelines and system resources, it leads to additional memory usage.
Microsoft has already acknowledged this problem and is now moving more components toward WinUI3, which, being a native framework, will have lower latency and better efficiency. However, this transition will take time because Microsoft developers have to rewrite core parts of the OS.
Why the original 20/20 project likely stalled
Mikhail Parakhin hasnât mentioned why the 20/20 project never got finished, but itâs safe to assume that it needed more time and resources. Reducing RAM usage in Windows requires some deep architectural changes.
To cut memory usage, Microsoft would have had to remove or rethink background services, simplify its UI stack, and potentially limit the expansion of web-based components. But at the same time, the company was adding more features, integrating cloud services, and later pushing AI experiences into the OS.
You cannot aggressively reduce system overhead while simultaneously expanding platform capabilities.
The 20/20 project likely ran into these trade-offs and became impractical without sacrificing features or slowing down development. And instead of making those compromises, Microsoft chose to continue expanding Windows.
Can Microsoft fix Windows 11 RAM usage in 2026?
In its latest Windows Insider communication, Microsoft says itâs working to lower the baseline memory footprint of Windows, which should make more available RAM for apps and smoother day-to-day usage.
Windows 11 PCs are getting a performance boost in 2026. Source: Microsoft
At the same time, Microsoft is targeting responsiveness under load. Instead of Windows slowing down when multiple apps are open, the goal is to keep interactions consistent throughout the day. That also includes improving multitasking behavior so switching between apps feels instant.
Microsoft is focusing on reducing interaction latency, improving the shared UI infrastructure, and moving more components toward native frameworks like WinUI3.
Why 2026 might be different for Windows 11
Windows is facing more public scrutiny than it has in years. Performance complaints have become mainstream conversations. Microsoft cannot afford to ignore that anymore.
Then thereâs the hardware and market pressure. Appleâs efficiency-focused chips have reshaped expectations, and the MacBook Neo has brought RAM usage into the limelight. Add to that the global rise in memory prices, and Windows 11 performance improvements become a business priority.
For the first time in years, user expectations, competitive pressure, and Microsoftâs internal priorities are all pointing in the same direction.
The post Microsoft once tried to cut Windows 11 RAM usage, install size by 20%, now itâs trying again in 2026 appeared first on Windows Latest
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The Hot Take: Is this why they left the consumer market? Going to a different market other than Ai to make more money with?
Micron has outlined a significant increase in memory requirements for future autonomous vehicles, with the company stating that Level 4 (L4) self-driving systems could demand more than 300GB of RAM per vehicle.
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The Hot Take: Only going to shoot costs up on Ai accelerators and RAM or Samsung Chips.
Samsung Electronics' labor union has voted overwhelmingly to initiate dispute proceedings following a breakdown in wage negotiations, raising concerns over potential disruptions to the supply of HBM4 memory for Nvidia's next-generation AI accelerators.
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The Hot Take: So we can lock in that price gouging?
Samsung is reportedly pushing memory customers into surprise three- to five-year supply contracts.
It thinks it can spot price swings âearly onâ and adjust investment before it gets caught with too much new capacity and nowhere to ship it.
Samsung chief executive Jun Young-hyun said, âWe are now working with our major customers to shift this transaction environment toward fixed-term supply contracts, three- to five-year contracts. We expect to be able to identify fluctuations [in the market] early on and, because we are aware of them in advance, we will be able to flexibly adjust our investment scale accordingly.â
That is a sharp turn from a few months ago, when Samsung was reportedly so slammed it barely had room for quarterly contracts, never mind multi-year ones.
Under the cunning plan, Samsung gets a longer view of demand for planning and expansions, while customers get a âslight discountâ off todayâs prices in exchange for less uncertainty.
The arrangement would help Samsung keep DRAM pricing steadier by âlocking inâ peak shortage levels, even if demand cools and the cycle normally rolls downhill.
For consumers, it risks prolonging the pain, since earlier estimates of the DRAM cycle easing in 2027-2028 seem optimistic if supply is already tied up.
Suppliers have been muttering that the boom might not last âToo Longâ, and multi-year deals look like another way to avoid over-investment while keeping everyone else boxed out.
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