The RAM shortage comes for us all • Hacker News Board

Re: The RAM shortage comes for us all

#151

Post by UncleOxidant » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 8:18 PM UTC

Reason077 wrote: post #76

nish__ wrote: post #18

Anyone want to start a fab with me? We can buy an ASML machine and figure out the rest as we go. Toronto area btw

A dozen or so well-resourced tech titans in China are no doubt asking themselves this same question right now. Of course, it takes quite some time for a fab to go from an idea to mass production. Even in China. Expect prices to drop 2-3 years from now when all the new capacity comes online?

I think it would be more like 5-7 years from now if they started breaking ground on new fabs today.

Re: The RAM shortage comes for us all

#152

Post by parineum » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 8:19 PM UTC

fullstop wrote: post #125

MPSimmons wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Undoubtably the cost would go up, but nobody is building out datacenters full of DDR4, either, so I don't figure it would go up nearly as much as DDR5 is right now.

https://pcpartpicker.com/trends/price/memory/ You can see the cost rise of DDR4 here.

That's the Avarage price for new DDR4 which has dwindling supply. Meanwhile used DDR4 is being retired in both desktops and data centers.

Re: The RAM shortage comes for us all

#153

Post by f055 » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 8:19 PM UTC

Bullwhip effect on this will be funny. At least, we are in for some cheap ram in like… a dozen months or so.

Re: The RAM shortage comes for us all

#154

Post by nish__ » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 8:20 PM UTC

dylan604 wrote: post #90

nish__ wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just need a half billion in upfront investment. And thank you for the support :)

So, playing the Mega Powerball are you?

I made a website: https://ontario-chips.vercel.app/

Re: The RAM shortage comes for us all

#155

Post by fullstop » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 8:20 PM UTC

MPSimmons wrote: post #132

fullstop wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://pcpartpicker.com/trends/price/memory/ You can see the cost rise of DDR4 here.

Awesome charts, thanks! I think it bears out that the multiplier for older hardware isn't as extreme as the newer hardware, right?

~2.8x for DDR4, ~3.6x for DDR5. DDR5 is still being made, though, so it will be interesting to see how it changes in the future.

Either way, it's going to be a long few years at the least.

Re: The RAM shortage comes for us all

#156

Post by phil21 » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 8:21 PM UTC

fullstop wrote: post #101

MPSimmons wrote: post #89

This reminds me of the recent LaurieWired video presenting a hypothetical of, "what if we stopped making CPUs": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2OJFqs8bUk Spoiler, but the answer is basically that old hardware rules the day because it lasts longer and is more reliable of timespans of decades. DDR5 32GB is currently going for ~$330 on Amazon DDR4 32GB is currently going for ~$130 on Amazon DDR3 32GB is currently goin…

If everyone went for DDR4 and DDR3, surely the cost would go up. There is no additional supply there, as they are no longer being made.

Currently trying to source a large amount of DDR4 to upgrade a 3 year old fleet of servers at a very unfortunate time.

It's very difficult to source in quantity, and is going up in price more or less daily at this point. Vendor quotes are good for hours, not days when you can find it.

Re: The RAM shortage comes for us all

#157

Post by XorNot » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 8:21 PM UTC

asdfman123 wrote: post #36

I can't help but be the pessimist angle. RAM production will need to increase to supply AI data centers. When the AI bubble bursts (and I do believe it will), the whole computing supply chain, which has been built around it, will take a huge hit too. Excess production capacity. Wonder what would happen if it really takes a dive. The impact on the SF tech scene will be brutal. Maybe I'll go escape on a sailboat for 3…

Prices are high because no one believes it's not a bubble. Nvidias strategy has been careful careful with volume this whole time as well.

The thing is it's also not a conventional looking bubble: what we're seeing here is cashed up companies ploughing money into the only thing in their core business they could find to do so with, rather then a lot of over exuberant public trading and debt financing.

Re: The RAM shortage comes for us all

#158

Post by parineum » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 8:22 PM UTC

hodgehog11 wrote: post #126

Grosvenor wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could this generate pressure to produce less memory hungry models?

There has always been pressure to do so, but there are fundamental bottlenecks in performance when it comes to model size. What I can think of is that there may be a push toward training for exclusively search-based rewards so that the model isn't required to compress a large proportion of the internet into their weights. But this is likely to be much slower and come with initial performance costs that frontier model…

> so that the model isn't required to compress a large proportion of the internet into their weights.

The knowledge compressed into an LLM is a byproduct of training, not a goal. Training on internet data teaches the model to talk at all. The knowledge and ability to speak are intertwined.

Re: The RAM shortage comes for us all

#159

Post by teamonkey » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 8:24 PM UTC

AceJohnny2 wrote: post #87

> And those companies all realized they can make billions more dollars making RAM just for AI datacenter products, and neglect the rest of the market. I wouldn't ascribe that much intent. More simply, datacenter builders have bought up the entire supply (and likely future production for some time), hence the supply shortfall. This is a very simple supply-and-demand situation, nothing nefarious about it.

That makes it sound like they are powerless, which is not the case. They don’t have to have their capacity fully bought out, they could choose to keep a proportion of capacity for maintaining the existing PC market, which they would do if they thought it would benefit them in the long term.

They’re not doing that, because it benefits them not to.

Re: The RAM shortage comes for us all

#160

Post by mrob » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 8:24 PM UTC

bullen wrote: post #124

MPSimmons wrote: post #89

This reminds me of the recent LaurieWired video presenting a hypothetical of, "what if we stopped making CPUs": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2OJFqs8bUk Spoiler, but the answer is basically that old hardware rules the day because it lasts longer and is more reliable of timespans of decades. DDR5 32GB is currently going for ~$330 on Amazon DDR4 32GB is currently going for ~$130 on Amazon DDR3 32GB is currently goin…

Yes, DDR3 is the lowest CAS latency and lasts ALOT longer. Just like SSDs from 2010 have 100.000 writes per bit instead of below 10.000. CPUs might even follow the same durability pattern but that remains to be seen. Keep your old machines alive and backed up!

CAS latency is specified in cycles and clock rates are increasing, so despite the number getting bigger there's actually been a small improvement in latency with each generation.