The RAM shortage comes for us all • Hacker News Board

Re: The RAM shortage comes for us all

#161

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

phil21 wrote: post #156

fullstop wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We're looking to buy 1TB of DDR5 for a large database server. I'm pretty sure that we're just going to pay the premium and move on.

Re: The RAM shortage comes for us all

#162

Post by fullstop » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 8:25 PM UTC

parineum wrote: post #152

fullstop wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

DDR4 production is winding down or done. Only "new old stock" will remain, or used DDR4 modules. Good luck buying that in quantity.

Re: The RAM shortage comes for us all

#163

Post by phil21 » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 8:27 PM UTC

School-Cotton wrote: post #95

Reason077 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

China cannot buy ASML machines. All advanced semiconductor manufacturing in China is done with stockpiled ASML machines from before the ban.

Would you really need ASML machines to do DDR5 RAM? Honest question, but I figured there was competition for the non-bleeding edge - perhaps naively so.

Re: The RAM shortage comes for us all

#164

Post by dylan604 » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 8:27 PM UTC

nish__ wrote: post #154

dylan604 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, playing the Mega Powerball are you?

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

wonder which one will find a winner faster...

Re: The RAM shortage comes for us all

#165

Post by dbbr » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 8:27 PM UTC

philsnow wrote: post #147

Red chip supply problems in your factory are usually caused by insufficient plastic bars, which is usually caused by oil production backing up because you're not consuming your heavy oil and/or petroleum fast enough. Crack heavy oil to light, and turn excess petroleum into solid fuel. As a further refinement, you can put these latter conversions behind pumps, and use the circuit network to only turn the pumps on when…

You don't happen to play Foxhole [0] do you?

Because if not, the logistics Collies in SOL could make good use of a person with your talents. :-)

[0] https://store.steampowered.com/app/505460/Foxhole/

Re: The RAM shortage comes for us all

#166

Post by piekvorst » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 8:27 PM UTC

roadside_picnic wrote: post #37

I know this is mostly paranoid thinking on my behalf, but it almost feels like this is a conscious effort to attempt to destroy "personal" computing. I've been a huge advocate for local, open, generative AI as the best resistance to massive take-over by large corporations controlling all of this content creation. But even as it is (or "was" I should say), running decent models at home is prohibitively expensive for m…

I believe that while centralized computing excels at specific tasks like consumer storage, it cannot compete with the unmatched diversity and unique intrinsic benefits of personal computing. Kindle cannot replace all e-readers. Even Apple’s closed ecosystem cannot permit it to replace macOS with iPadOS. These are not preferences but constraints of reality.

The goal shouldn’t be to eliminate one side or the other, but to bridge the gap separating them. Let vscode.dev handle the most common cases, but preserve vscode.exe for the uncommon yet critical ones.

Re: The RAM shortage comes for us all

#167

Post by leeoniya » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 8:29 PM UTC

1. Buy up 40% of global fab capacity

2. Resell wafers at huge markup to competitors

3. Profit

Re: The RAM shortage comes for us all

#168

Post by prmoustache » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 8:30 PM UTC

Aardwolf wrote: post #29

Night_Thastus wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

16GB is more than fine if you're not doing high-end gaming, or heavy production workloads. No need for debloating. But it doesn't matter either way, because both 16 and 32GB have what, doubled, tripled? It's nuts. Even if you say "just buy less memory", now is a horrible time to be building a system.

I found web browser tabs eating too much memory when you only have 16GB

Use adblock, stop visiting nasty websites and open less tabs. Problem is easily solved.

Re: The RAM shortage comes for us all

#169

Post by squigz » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 8:30 PM UTC

School-Cotton wrote: post #95

Reason077 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

China cannot buy ASML machines. All advanced semiconductor manufacturing in China is done with stockpiled ASML machines from before the ban.

As someone who knows next to nothing about this space, why can China not build their own machines? Is ASML the only company making those machines? If so, why? Is it a matter of patents, or is the knowledge required for this so specialized only they've built it up?

Re: The RAM shortage comes for us all

#170

Post by hajile » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 8:32 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 doesn't matter so much as ns of total random-access latency and the raw clockspeed of the individual RAM cells. If you are accessing the same cell repeatedly, RAM hasn't gotten faster in years (around DDR2 IIRC).