It is one of the thing with consumer when they remember they brought it at the absolutely lowest price point when DRAM maker were bleeding money.
Those are not normal pricing. Before the pricing collapse in early 2020, 96GB DDR5 would have cost about $450 to $500. And I will need to restate again the cost of DRAM hasn't really changed much in the past 20 years. Its price just goes up and down in cycles.
So in reality it is more like going from $500 to $1300. But consumer felt it was more like going from $200 to $1300.
Crucial are already selling DRAM made by CXMT. And China are already throwing money at it. I doubt the memory bubble will burst in next 12-24 months. As in going back to money losing DRAM pricing. As they will all pivot to HBM or other money making products. But the bulk of lower end consumer DDR5 or LPDDR5 will goes to Chinese Foundry. Assuming they have figure out how to do them well. Which they have improved but are still so far away from industry leaders.
Normally memory maker will push the next DDR standard to market just to push out Chinese competitors, I am not sure it will work the same this time around. DDR5 have plenty of other usage / demands.
I'm not moving past my DDR4 build (and the 32 GB of DDR4 2133 MHz backup chips I still have around from way back, before I got the current 3200 MHz ones) until the prices go back to being at least partially sane. This also means that CPU manufacturers are not getting my money (since the 5800X is fine for now) and I have no reason to get a new GPU either (though admittedly the B580 isn't perfect).
Bought a second hand Dell server a week ago. The entire rig with a 12-core CPU and 32GB DDR4 ecc RAM cost as much as I'd pay to buy 64 GB of DDR RAM alone. I hope there's an end to this absurdity soon enough otherwise the pain will affect other markets too. I read the other day that PC case sales have collapsed by more than 40%.
Here’s the thing, what if memory manufacturers take this opportunity to collude and basically never reduce the price of memory below the current levels since it’s too hard for a new competitor to just rise up and undercut them? Everything I hear about is how hard and risky it is to spin up a new fab.
And by doing this, they ensure local LLMs never become feasible for the vast majority of people and AI companies solidify subscriptions forever.
Keeping prices at this level is precisely how one or more competitor will rise up. Making memory isn’t super hard. That’s why it is a commodity. The problem with the memory market is that up and down cycles have bankrupted the vast majority of players in the past. Now we only have 3 players left except for a few smaller ones in China.
The reason memory prices can stay high for years in this mega cycle is because the 3 players will be very cautious on overbuilding. They’d rather under build, make great profit (not maximum) and reduce the risk of going bust if this suddenly ends.
Same for TSMC in chips.
Great opportunity for Chinese companies though. This shortage is exactly what Chinese companies need to scale.
If the collude to say make the price $1000 for a component that costs them $100(including opportunity costs), then either a new company or a greedy company in the collusion can make their price secretly $900 and get massively more profit.
Right now their opportunity cost is too high.
> risky it is to spin up a new fab
You don't need a new fab. You can build memory in 20 years old fab.
I bought 96GB of RAM a couple of years ago for ~$250. That same RAM now costs $1200!
It is one of the thing with consumer when they remember they brought it at the absolutely lowest price point when DRAM maker were bleeding money.
Those are not normal pricing. Before the pricing collapse in early 2020, 96GB DDR5 would have cost about $450 to $500. And I will need to restate again the cost of DRAM hasn't really changed much in the past 20 years. Its price just goes up and down in cycles.
So in reality it is more like going from $500 to $1300. But consumer felt it was more like going from $200 to $1300.
Crucial are already selling DRAM made by CXMT. And China are already throwing money at it. I doubt the memory bubble will burst in next 12-24 months. As in going back to money losing DRAM pricing. As they will all pivot to HBM or other money making products. But the bulk of lower end consumer DDR5 or LPDDR5 will goes to Chinese Foundry. Assuming they have figure out how to do them well. Which they have improved but are still so far away from industry leaders.
Normally memory maker will push the next DDR standard to market just to push out Chinese competitors, I am not sure it will work the same this time around. DDR5 have plenty of other usage / demands.
I'm not moving past my DDR4 build (and the 32 GB of DDR4 2133 MHz backup chips I still have around from way back, before I got the current 3200 MHz ones) until the prices go back to being at least partially sane. This also means that CPU manufacturers are not getting my money (since the 5800X is fine for now) and I have no reason to get a new GPU either (though admittedly the B580 isn't perfect).
Bought a second hand Dell server a week ago. The entire rig with a 12-core CPU and 32GB DDR4 ecc RAM cost as much as I'd pay to buy 64 GB of DDR RAM alone. I hope there's an end to this absurdity soon enough otherwise the pain will affect other markets too. I read the other day that PC case sales have collapsed by more than 40%.
A commodity rapidly increasing in price. What could go wrong?
Awful time for gamers and PC hobbyists not fully into AI.
also for ones fully into AI
I assume that memory manufacturers don’t really care where the money is coming from, as long as the "numbers go up" game is working.
NVIDIA in their recent quarterly report stopped categorizing "Geforce" as a single category, and merged it into "Edge-Computing".
If you are a PC Gamer or PC Enthusiast as I am, then we have some dark times ahead.
[delayed]
Anyone invested in Micron stock?
Here’s the thing, what if memory manufacturers take this opportunity to collude and basically never reduce the price of memory below the current levels since it’s too hard for a new competitor to just rise up and undercut them? Everything I hear about is how hard and risky it is to spin up a new fab.
And by doing this, they ensure local LLMs never become feasible for the vast majority of people and AI companies solidify subscriptions forever.
Keeping prices at this level is precisely how one or more competitor will rise up. Making memory isn’t super hard. That’s why it is a commodity. The problem with the memory market is that up and down cycles have bankrupted the vast majority of players in the past. Now we only have 3 players left except for a few smaller ones in China.
The reason memory prices can stay high for years in this mega cycle is because the 3 players will be very cautious on overbuilding. They’d rather under build, make great profit (not maximum) and reduce the risk of going bust if this suddenly ends.
Same for TSMC in chips.
Great opportunity for Chinese companies though. This shortage is exactly what Chinese companies need to scale.
> up and down cycles have bankrupted the vast majority of players in the past
Exactly, so what’s the incentive for anyone to sink half a billy into building out more capacity.
The existing players get to rest on their laurels and succeed whether or not the AI bubble busts.
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If the collude to say make the price $1000 for a component that costs them $100(including opportunity costs), then either a new company or a greedy company in the collusion can make their price secretly $900 and get massively more profit.
Right now their opportunity cost is too high.
> risky it is to spin up a new fab
You don't need a new fab. You can build memory in 20 years old fab.
Then that's a cartel and hopefully regulators will act.
They won’t.
Then China will come and eat their lunch. I for one will only buy Chinese RAM from now on, no matter the prices.
[dead]
The algorithm advances are going to crash this so hard.
Or will more efficient algorithms just mean we run even more AI models, increasing the demand for AI chips even more?
I mean, god willing, but it'll be just as likely that we'll blissfully consume 100 million token contexts in that case.
isn't there a law for that? as things become cheaper you consume more?
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