My 2022 GPU has 24GB of ram. It's like 50% more than what is similarly affordable today. It's fucked up and I'd rather slow down my spending and see the whole market go down than get scammed by hype.
Samsung's 60% DRAM price hike signals a new phase of global memory tightening
131–140 of 449 posts
Re: Samsung's 60% DRAM price hike signals a new phase of global memory tightening
#132Haven't these memory companies been caught price fixing multiple times over the years? Just how sure are we the AI bubble is the entire reason for these absurd prices?
> Just how sure are we the AI bubble is the entire reason for these absurd prices?
We're not, and market dictates that they don't have to talk to know to jack up the prices.
This ram price spike is leading Nvidia reporting for this quarter: gross margins were 70 percent. It's looking like their year over year increase in margins (double) is not because it came anywhere close to shipping double the number of units.
Meanwhile if you look at Micron their gross margin was 41% for fiscal year 2025, and 2024 looks to be 24%.
Micron and its peers, are competing with Nvidia for shareholder dollars (the CEO's real customer). Them jacking up prices is because there is enough of the market, dumb enough, to bear it right this second. And every CEO has to be looking at those numbers and thinking the same things: "Where is my cut of the pie, why aren't we at 60 percent".
We're now at a point where hardware costs are going to inhibit development. Everyone short of the biggest players are now locked out, and thats not sustainable. Of the AI ventures there is only one that seems to have a reasonable product, and possibly reasonable financials. Many of the other players are likely going to be able to weather the write downs.
The music will stop, the question is when.
Re: Samsung's 60% DRAM price hike signals a new phase of global memory tightening
#133Re: Samsung's 60% DRAM price hike signals a new phase of global memory tightening
#134All 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
Unless I get all the resources I want, when I want, all at low prices, the market has obviously failed.
Re: Samsung's 60% DRAM price hike signals a new phase of global memory tightening
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's around 16% of the total federal budget. To be fair about 1/3 of "military spending" is actually Salaries, Medical, Housing and GI/Retirement costs. It's also the case that none of the CIA, NSA or DHS budgets show up under the military, even though they're performing some of the same functions that would be handled by militaries in other countries. We also have "black appropriations." So the total of the spending…
Just want to point out that the NSA is part of the DoD. (Or DoW now)
This is true; however, their agency budget is not part of the DoD's budget and is not included in the reported "total" for DoD.
At least not in the data set I use:
Re: Samsung's 60% DRAM price hike signals a new phase of global memory tightening
#136All 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…
New type? Lol. It’s a classic ‘tulip bubble’.
Not even. Tulips were non-productive speculative assets. NFTs were what the tulip was. The AI buildout is more like the railroad mania in the sense that there is froth but productive utility is still the output.
Re: Samsung's 60% DRAM price hike signals a new phase of global memory tightening
#137All 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…
Just like some of the crypto booms and busts if you time it right this could be a good thing. Buy on a refresh cycle when AWS dumps a bunch of chips and RAM used or refurbished (some places even offer warranty which is nice).
And if the market crashes or takes a big dip then temporarily eBay will flood with high end stuff at good prices.
Sucks for anyone who needs to upgrade in the next year or two though !
Re: Samsung's 60% DRAM price hike signals a new phase of global memory tightening
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's around 3.4% GDP. That puts us in the top 10% or so worldwide, but it's not ridiculously high. It's on a similar level as countries such as Morocco and Colombia, which aren't known for excessive military spending. It's still kind of high for a country with no nearby enemies, but for the most part, US military spending is large because the US economy is large.
It's around 16% of the total federal budget. To be fair about 1/3 of "military spending" is actually Salaries, Medical, Housing and GI/Retirement costs. It's also the case that none of the CIA, NSA or DHS budgets show up under the military, even though they're performing some of the same functions that would be handled by militaries in other countries. We also have "black appropriations." So the total of the spending…
I think the number is probably much higher than we think - there is probably a ton of not so obvious spending on research and development.
Re: Samsung's 60% DRAM price hike signals a new phase of global memory tightening
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
We need better antitrust and anti-monopoly enforcement. Break up the biggest companies, and then they'll have to actually participate in markets.
Samsung lost a large percentage of market share to their competitors in the last couple years, so I'm pretty sure they already have to participate in markets. Well, assuming they haven't revived the cartel.
Yea when I think of DRAM I think of SK Hynix and Micron with Samsung far behind.
Re: Samsung's 60% DRAM price hike signals a new phase of global memory tightening
#140Earlier 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…
The funniest thing is that somehow the executive class is even more out of touch than they used to be. At least before there was a certain common baseline derived from everyone watching the same news and reading the same press. Now they are just as enclosed in their thought bubbles as everyone else. It is entirely possible for a tech CEO to have a full company of tech workers despising the current plan and yet that p…
No surprise, the CxO class barely lives in the same physical world as us peasants. They all hang out together in their rich-people restaurants and rich-people galas and rich-people country clubs and rich-people vacation spots, socializing with other rich-people and don't really have a lot of contact with normal people, outside of a handful of executive assistants and household servants.