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RAM now represents 35 percent of bill of materials for HP PCs

arstechnica.com

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Re: RAM now represents 35 percent of bill of materials for HP PCs

#71

Post by throwaway2037 »

throw_m239339 wrote: post #11
Aerroon wrote: post #9

I think Europe should invest into manufacturing RAM. RAM isn't going anywhere, all of modern compute uses it. This would be an opportunity to create domestic supply of it.

> I think Europe should invest into manufacturing RAM. RAM isn't going anywhere, all of modern compute uses it. This would be an opportunity to create domestic supply of it. It's easy to build factories, much more difficult to train the engineers required to run them... and let's not even talk about all the crazy regulations & environmental rules at the EU level that make that task even more difficult, because yes, c…

A parallel reply from me: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47162226

The same applies to your comment.

Re: RAM now represents 35 percent of bill of materials for HP PCs

#72

Post by malshe »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #60

Will this RAM shortage also affect the price of mobile phones?

I read that Apple will start feeling the heat in the third quarter of this year although nobody knows for sure. That will either shrink their margins a bit or iPhones prices will go up.

Re: RAM now represents 35 percent of bill of materials for HP PCs

#73

Post by josephg »

dijit wrote: post #39
Gigachad wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The worry is that these high prices aren't going to last long. And by the time you spend years building the capacity, the prices plummet making your facility uneconomical to run. Ram will always be in some demand, but that doesn't mean it's viable for everyone to start building production.

There's a few things to note here: 1) Prices aren't returning to "normal". The only way they will is if the hyperscalers and AI companies start to implode -- which will kill a huge portion of the US economy and lead to global recession, so, cheap RAM but nobody can afford it 2) By building up capacity you influence the outcome. If someone else enters the DRAM space, the duopoly has to actually start thinking about co…

> The only way they will is if the hyperscalers and AI companies start to implode -- which will kill a huge portion of the US economy and lead to global recession, so, cheap RAM but nobody can afford it

I disagree.

Modern RAM is made in fabs, which are ridiculously expensive to manufacture. Modern EUV lithography machines cost around 500M each. They're manufactured by hand. Only one company in the world knows how to manufacture them right now. So we can't exactly increase global manufacturing capacity overnight.

The way I see, there's 2 ways this goes:

1. AI is a fad. RAM and storage demand falls. Prices drop back to normal.

2. AI is not a fad. Over time, more and more fabs come online to meet the supply needs of the AI industry. The price comes down as manufacturing supply increases.

Or some combination of the two.

The high prices right now are because there's a demand shock. There's way more demand for RAM than anyone expected, so the RAM that is produced sells at a premium. High prices aren't because RAM costs more to manufacture than it did a couple years ago. There's just not enough to go around. In 5-10 years, manufacturing capacity will match demand and prices will drop. Just give it time.

Re: RAM now represents 35 percent of bill of materials for HP PCs

#74

Post by malshe »

tehlike wrote: post #7
locusofself wrote: post #2

Jeez. I'm glad I "splurged" for the 24gb RAM in my macbook air. Should last me a few more years..

My canonical example is I bought 12 sticks of 64GB DDR4LRDIMM for 400-430$. Now each stick costs 320$... Just a year ago...

That's insane! I think SSD prices have also skyrocketed but to a lesser extent

Re: RAM now represents 35 percent of bill of materials for HP PCs

#76

Post by codebje »

Cyph0n wrote: post #46
blackoil wrote: post #24

Maybe this RAMmageddon will trigger a wave of optimized softwares that don't need GBs of memory for anything and everything.

Or you won’t need RAM because everything will be hosted in the cloud and used via browser or just desktop streaming :)

Sure, but if the browser is the only thing that becomes more memory efficient that's still a substantial win.

Re: RAM now represents 35 percent of bill of materials for HP PCs

#77

Post by bigfatkitten »

Gigachad wrote: post #25
Aerroon wrote: post #9

I think Europe should invest into manufacturing RAM. RAM isn't going anywhere, all of modern compute uses it. This would be an opportunity to create domestic supply of it.

The worry is that these high prices aren't going to last long. And by the time you spend years building the capacity, the prices plummet making your facility uneconomical to run. Ram will always be in some demand, but that doesn't mean it's viable for everyone to start building production.

> And by the time you spend years building the capacity, the prices plummet making your facility uneconomical to run.

People forget quickly why we only have a handful of DRAM manufacturers today.

Re: RAM now represents 35 percent of bill of materials for HP PCs

#78

Post by jacquesm »

travisgriggs wrote: post #50

I had my formative years in programming when memory usage was something you still worried about as a programmer. And then memory expanded so much that all kinds of “optimal” patterns for programming just become nearly irrelevant. Will we start to actually consider this in software solutions again as a result?

> And then memory expanded so much that all kinds of “optimal” patterns for programming just become nearly irrelevant.

I don't think that ever happened. Using relatively sparse amount of memory turns into better cache management which in turn usually improves performance drastically.

And in embedded stuff being good with memory management can make the difference between 'works' and 'fail'.

Re: RAM now represents 35 percent of bill of materials for HP PCs

#80

Post by Ray20 »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #66
Aerroon wrote: post #9

I think Europe should invest into manufacturing RAM. RAM isn't going anywhere, all of modern compute uses it. This would be an opportunity to create domestic supply of it.

Idea: Take the money that Germany promised to Intel if they build a state of the art fab. Instead, ask SK Hynix, Samsung, or Micron to build a DRAM fab in Germany.

It may seem that these are very similar processes, but this is only if you do not take into account the bribes from Intel to specific officials and their relatives who make decisions about subsidizing Intel.

SK Hynix, Samsung, or Micron don't treat good people well enough to give them taxpayer money.

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