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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

#371

Post by jbverschoor »

chmod775 wrote: post #176
jbverschoor wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A waiver is a waiver. The cost is per square mm. It’s pure supply and demand

No, a wafer is very much not a wafer. DRAM processes are very different from making logic*. You don't just make memory in your fab today and logic tomorrow. But even when you stay in your lane, the industry operates on very long cycles and needs scale to function at any reasonable price at all. You don't just dust off your backyard fab to make the odd bit of memory whenever it is convenient. Nobody is going to do any…

Sure, yes the cost of producing a wafer is fixed. Opex didn’t change that much.

Following your reasoning, which is common in manufacturing, the capex needed is already allocated. So, where does the 2x price hike come from if not supply/demand?

The cost to produce did not go up 100%, or even 20%

Actually, DRAM fabs do get scaled down, very similar to the Middle East scaling down oil production.

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

#372

Post by zozbot234 »

wtallis wrote: post #352
drtgh wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intel's consumer processors (and therefore the mainboards/chipsets) used to have four memory channels, but around the year 2020 this was suddenly limited to two channels since the 12th generation (AMD's consumer processors had always two channels, with exception of Threadriper?). However this does not make sense, as for more than a decade the processors have only grown increasing the number of threads, therefore two…

> Intel's consumer processors (and therefore the mainboards/chipsets) used to have four memory channels, but around the year 2020 this was suddenly limited to two channels since the 12th generation (AMD's consumer processors had always two channels, with exception of Threadriper?). You need to re-check your sources. When AMD started doing integrated memory controllers in 2003, they had Socket 754 (single channel / 64…

At some point the best "enthusuast-oriented HEDT" CPU's will be older-gen Xeon and EPYC parts, competing fairly in price, performance and overall feature set with top-of-the-line consumer setups.

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

#373

Post by kbolino »

ls612 wrote: post #324
ksec wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am so glad both top rated and majority of comments on HN finally understands DRAM industry instead of constant DRAM is a cartel that is why things are expensive. Also worth mentioning DRAM and NAND's profit from Samsung is what keep the Samsung Foundry fighting TSMC. Especially for those who thinks TSMC is somehow a monopoly. Another things to point out which is not mentioned yet, China is working on both DRAM and…

DRAM manufacturers have literally been convicted of price fixing in the past why do you have to white knight for them?

Both stories can be true.

The firms can coordinate by agreeing on a strategy they deem necessary for the future of the industry, and that strategy requires significant capital expenditures, and the industry does not get (or does not want) outside investment to fund it, and if any of the firms defects and keeps prices low the others cannot execute on the strategy, so they all agree to raise prices.

Then, after the strategy succeeds, they have gotten addicted to the higher revenues, they do not allow prices to fall as fast as they should, their coordination becomes blatantly illegal, and they have to get smacked down by regulators.

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

#374

Post by neilv »

tempest_ wrote: post #25
neilv wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Nice that people are recognizing that they don't need DDR5 for most workloads. I have some DDR4 that I'm not currently using, so I just posted it for sale. :)

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

#375

Post by fragmede »

lazide wrote: post #242
fragmede wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just like the beautiful woman who's luxury bag purchase she doesn't actually need, we can sit here and judge her for it, but at the end of the day it's not our money she's buying Louis Vuitton with, and we're not the one she's going home with.

Non sequitur of the day? Anyone who owns shares in US companies (most people here) both are ‘going home with’ the companies involved, and are buying ‘the bags’. Not to mention all the people buying the bonds used to fund the whole AI data center buildout, which is a ton of probably pension funds and old folks planning for retirement (also probably more than a few millionaire/billionaires!).

Not to blame the victim, but if you're not in control of how you spend your money, that's really on you. Don't try and put that on someone else.

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

#376

Post by zozbot234 »

jbverschoor wrote: post #371
chmod775 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, a wafer is very much not a wafer. DRAM processes are very different from making logic*. You don't just make memory in your fab today and logic tomorrow. But even when you stay in your lane, the industry operates on very long cycles and needs scale to function at any reasonable price at all. You don't just dust off your backyard fab to make the odd bit of memory whenever it is convenient. Nobody is going to do any…

Sure, yes the cost of producing a wafer is fixed. Opex didn’t change that much. Following your reasoning, which is common in manufacturing, the capex needed is already allocated. So, where does the 2x price hike come from if not supply/demand? The cost to produce did not go up 100%, or even 20% Actually, DRAM fabs do get scaled down, very similar to the Middle East scaling down oil production.

DRAM/flash fab investment probably did get scaled down due to the formerly low prices, but once you do have a fab it makes sense to have it produce flat out. Then that chunk of potential production gets allocated into DRAM vs. HBM, various sorts of flash storage etc. But there's just no way around the fact that capacity is always going to be bottlenecked somehow, and a lot less likely to expand when margins are expected to be lower.

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

#377

Post by xpe »

1718627440 wrote: post #365
xpe wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Every corporation is a (not so) little pocket of centrally planned economy. This is confused. Here is how classical economists would frame it: a firm chooses how much to produce based on its cost structure and market prices, expanding production until marginal cost equals marginal revenue. This is price guided production optimization, not central planning. The dominant criticism of central planning is trying to set…

> This is confused. Here is how classical economists would frame it: a firm chooses how much to produce based on its cost structure and market prices, expanding production until marginal cost equals marginal revenue. This is price guided production optimization, not central planning. That's the case in a healthy competitive market. Once you have a monopoly or an oligopoly, you get into central planning territory.

Ok, but recall the context (see above): I’m saying one can understand how firms operate without making a connection to central planning (setting production targets and investment decisions from the top-down without prices).

Economists have concepts and models for monopolies and oligopolies — and the way they operate are quite different from the practice of central planning.

I’m talking from within the frame of economic concepts, and I’m striving to use words as understood in the field. At times I value metaphorical thinking, but here in the case of economics, we don’t need to bend words when other fitting concepts are readily available and battle-tested.

An example: If someone calls corporate consolidation “central planning,” they’ve lost the ability to analyze it properly. The relevant questions for oligopolies (strategic behavior, barriers to entry, tacit collusion) are completely different from central planning questions (calculation problems, information aggregation, incentive alignment).

When technical fields have already solved a conceptual problem through careful definition and model building, importing loose metaphorical language degrades analytical clarity.

If you want to point to or propose a different model than the usual economic dogma, I’m all ears, by the way.

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

#378

Post by lemoncookiechip »

autoexec wrote: post #370
philsnow wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox is particularly good at having lots of tabs open and not using tons of memory. $ ~/dev/mozlz4-tool/target/release/mozlz4-tool \ "$(find ~/Library/Application\ Support/Firefox/Profiles/ -name recovery.jsonlz4 | head -1)" | \ jq -r '[.windows[].tabs | length] | add' 5524 Activity monitor claims firefox is using 3.1GB of ram. Real memory size: 2.43 GB Virtual memory size: 408.30 GB Shared memory size: 746.5 MB P…

In my experience firefox is "pretty good" about having lots of tabs and windows open if you don't mind it crashing every week or two.

I've not had a crash on Firefox in like a decade, basically since the Quantum update in like 2016.

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

#379

Post by xpe »

scotty79 wrote: post #219
xpe wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Every corporation is a (not so) little pocket of centrally planned economy. This is confused. Here is how classical economists would frame it: a firm chooses how much to produce based on its cost structure and market prices, expanding production until marginal cost equals marginal revenue. This is price guided production optimization, not central planning. The dominant criticism of central planning is trying to set…

Company prices resources within itself completely arbitrarily. How much the hour of work of an employee A is worth with the company and and how much using paperclip costs has no relation how much these things actually cost in the real money. Once they are acquired by company they are utilized not according to their value but to central plans instead. This way paperclip might get vastly overvalued and scarce while hou…

To make sure we’re on the same page… In economics, “central planning” refers to a system where a central authority (typically the state) makes comprehensive decisions about production, investment, and resource allocation across an entire economy, replacing market mechanisms. This is associated with command economies like the Soviet Union’s Gosplan system.

And of course I will grant firms use hierarchical coordination mechanisms internally (managers allocate resources by command rather than prices).

I suppose my angle here is to be clear that firms are typically a kind of hybrid entity: they mix various coordination mechanisms (prices and hierarchy). This makes them quite different from centrally planned economies.

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

#380

Post by Y_Y »

kbolino wrote: post #373
ls612 wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DRAM manufacturers have literally been convicted of price fixing in the past why do you have to white knight for them?

Both stories can be true. The firms can coordinate by agreeing on a strategy they deem necessary for the future of the industry, and that strategy requires significant capital expenditures, and the industry does not get (or does not want) outside investment to fund it, and if any of the firms defects and keeps prices low the others cannot execute on the strategy, so they all agree to raise prices. Then, after the str…

> The firms can coordinate by agreeing on a strategy they deem necessary for the future of the industry

As long as it doesn't fall into the "collusion" prohibitions of the relevant competition law.

> “People of the same trade seldom meet … but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.”

Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations (1776)

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