Google has unveiled a new AI memory compression technology called "TurboQuant," which reportedly reduces AI model memory usage during inference to one-sixth of its original amount. According to Ming Pao, this technology also enhances the speed of attention logic operations by seven times while maintaining model accuracy without any loss. Following the announcement, concerns arose in the market that this innovation could dampen memory demand, leading to a decline in the stock prices of major memory chip manufacturers.
In South Korea, the stock prices of two leading chipmakers, SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics, fell by over 6% and nearly 5%, respectively. In Japan, memory chip company Kioxia saw its stock price drop by 5.7%. In the United States, Micron Technology and Western Digital experienced early trading declines of over 4%, while SanDisk's stock fell by more than 7%. These three major U.S. chip stocks had already seen declines on Wednesday.