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Samsung's 60% DRAM price hike signals a new phase of global memory tightening

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Re: Samsung's 60% DRAM price hike signals a new phase of global memory tightening

#21

Post by fabian2k »

mrsilencedogood wrote: post #3

All I can say is, - the insane frothing hype behind AI is showing me a new kind of market failure - where resources can be massively misallocated just because some small class of individuals THINK or HOPE it will result in massive returns. Even if it squeezes out every single other sector that happens to want to use SDRAM to do things OTHER than buffer memory before it's fed into a PCIE lane for a GPU. - I'm really R…

They're treating it as a "winner takes it all"-kind of business. And I'm not sure this is a reasonable bet.

The only way the massive planned investments make sense is if you think the winner can grab a very large piece of a huge pie. I've no idea how large the pie will be in the near future, but I'm even more skeptical that there will be a single winner.

Re: Samsung's 60% DRAM price hike signals a new phase of global memory tightening

#22

Post by neilv »

wmf wrote: post #19
neilv wrote: post #4

If we're going to see retailers price-gouging on DDR5, maybe people will be willing to buy slightly older gear with DDR4 (and corresponding motherboard and CPU). Especially for systems for which the workloads are actually bound by GPU compute, network, or storage.

DDR4 will be just as expensive because it's made in the same fabs.

I'm thinking second-hand and new-old-stock, with less demand for it.

Re: Samsung's 60% DRAM price hike signals a new phase of global memory tightening

#23

Post by testartr »

mrsilencedogood wrote: post #3

All I can say is, - the insane frothing hype behind AI is showing me a new kind of market failure - where resources can be massively misallocated just because some small class of individuals THINK or HOPE it will result in massive returns. Even if it squeezes out every single other sector that happens to want to use SDRAM to do things OTHER than buffer memory before it's fed into a PCIE lane for a GPU. - I'm really R…

why do you think allocating hardware to gamers is proper usage?

maybe AI cures cancer, or at least writes some code

Re: Samsung's 60% DRAM price hike signals a new phase of global memory tightening

#24

Post by tempest_ »

sbarre wrote: post #6

I'm so mad about this, I need DDR5 for a new mini-PC I bought and prices have literally gone up by 2.5x.. 128GB used to be 400$ in June, and now it's over $1,000 for the same 2x64GB set.. I have no idea if/when prices will come back down but it sucks.

Ordered some servers 6 months ago ~12k USD per unit.

Same order, same bill of materials, 17.5K USD per unit today.

That is roughly a 5.5k increase for 768GB of DDR5 ECC memory and the 4 2tb nvme ssds.

Re: Samsung's 60% DRAM price hike signals a new phase of global memory tightening

#25

Post by tempest_ »

neilv wrote: post #22
wmf wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DDR4 will be just as expensive because it's made in the same fabs.

I'm thinking second-hand and new-old-stock, with less demand for it.

Nope, second hand is already evaporating.

2 months ago there were a load of second gen xeon scalable servers on offer. Now every one of them has had the ram stripped out and its just the chassis on offer.

Fabs are not wasting their time on DDR4 now.

Re: Samsung's 60% DRAM price hike signals a new phase of global memory tightening

#26

Post by automatic6131 »

epistasis wrote: post #8
mrsilencedogood wrote: post #3

All I can say is, - the insane frothing hype behind AI is showing me a new kind of market failure - where resources can be massively misallocated just because some small class of individuals THINK or HOPE it will result in massive returns. Even if it squeezes out every single other sector that happens to want to use SDRAM to do things OTHER than buffer memory before it's fed into a PCIE lane for a GPU. - I'm really R…

It is a weird form of centralized planning. Except there's no election to get on to the central committee, it's like in the Soviet era where you had to run in the right circles and have sway in them. There's too much group-think in the executive class. Too much forced adoption of AI, too much bandwagon hopping. The return-to-office fad is similar, a bunch of executives following the mandates of their board, all becau…

We need better antitrust and anti-monopoly enforcement. Break up the biggest companies, and then they'll have to actually participate in markets.

Re: Samsung's 60% DRAM price hike signals a new phase of global memory tightening

#27

Post by loeg »

sbarre wrote: post #6

I'm so mad about this, I need DDR5 for a new mini-PC I bought and prices have literally gone up by 2.5x.. 128GB used to be 400$ in June, and now it's over $1,000 for the same 2x64GB set.. I have no idea if/when prices will come back down but it sucks.

> I have no idea if/when prices will come back down but it sucks.

Years, or when the AI bubble pops, whatever comes first.

Similar situation with QLC flash and HDDs btw.

Re: Samsung's 60% DRAM price hike signals a new phase of global memory tightening

#28

Post by scotty79 »

mrsilencedogood wrote: post #3

All I can say is, - the insane frothing hype behind AI is showing me a new kind of market failure - where resources can be massively misallocated just because some small class of individuals THINK or HOPE it will result in massive returns. Even if it squeezes out every single other sector that happens to want to use SDRAM to do things OTHER than buffer memory before it's fed into a PCIE lane for a GPU. - I'm really R…

> resources can be massively misallocated just because some small class of individuals THINK or HOPE it will result in massive returns

That's basically what the rich usually do. They command disproportionate amount of resources and misallocate them freely on a whim, outside of any democratic scrutiny, squeezing incredible number of people and small buisness out of something.

Whether that's a strength of the system or the weakness, I'm sure some rearch will show.

Re: Samsung's 60% DRAM price hike signals a new phase of global memory tightening

#29

Post by swatcoder »

Retr0id wrote: post #9
mrsilencedogood wrote: post #3

All I can say is, - the insane frothing hype behind AI is showing me a new kind of market failure - where resources can be massively misallocated just because some small class of individuals THINK or HOPE it will result in massive returns. Even if it squeezes out every single other sector that happens to want to use SDRAM to do things OTHER than buffer memory before it's fed into a PCIE lane for a GPU. - I'm really R…

I wonder, is there any way to avoid this kind of market failure? Even a planned economy could succumb to hype - promises that improved societal efficiency are just around the corner.

> Is there any way to avoid this kind of market failure?

There are potentially undesirable tradeoffs and a whole new game of cheats and corruption, but you could frustrate rapid, concentrated growth with things like an increasing tax on raised funds.

Right now, we basically let people and companies concentrate as much capital as they want, as rapidly as they want, with almost no friction, presumably because it helped us economically outcompete the adversary during the Cold War. Broadly, we're now afraid of having any kind of brake or dampener on investments and we are more afraid of inefficiency and corruption if the government were to intervene than we are of speculation or exploitation if it doesn't.

In democratically regulated capitalism, there are levers to pull that could slow down this kind of freight train before it were to get out of control, but the arguments against pulling them remain more thoroughly developed and more closely held than those in favor of them.

Re: Samsung's 60% DRAM price hike signals a new phase of global memory tightening

#30

Post by epistasis »

automatic6131 wrote: post #26
epistasis wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a weird form of centralized planning. Except there's no election to get on to the central committee, it's like in the Soviet era where you had to run in the right circles and have sway in them. There's too much group-think in the executive class. Too much forced adoption of AI, too much bandwagon hopping. The return-to-office fad is similar, a bunch of executives following the mandates of their board, all becau…

We need better antitrust and anti-monopoly enforcement. Break up the biggest companies, and then they'll have to actually participate in markets.

This was Lina Khan's big thing, and I'd argue that our current administration is largely a result of Silicon Valkey no longer being able to get exits in the form or mergers and IPOs.

Perhaps a better approach to anti-monopoly and anti-trust is possible, but I'm not sure anybody knows what that is. Khan was very well regarded and I don't know anybody who's better at it.

Another approach would be a wealth and income taxation strategy to ensure sigmoid income for the population. You can always make more, but with diminishing returns to self, and greater returns to the rest of society.

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