this should really show average install cost. Even phones have 8-12gb because the software is so atrocious. It would be like comparing cars by pricing per horsepower. Nobody is running a 12 horsepower vehicle on the highway, and doing so would be dangerous because of the change in average power & speed.
Historical memory prices 1960-2026
161–170 of 175 posts
Re: Historical memory prices 1960-2026
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
> adjusting those 1960-1980 prices for inflation would make the graph a lot taller. It won't though. One dollar in 1960 is just about ten dollars today. The graph is already in logarithmic scale so it won't make much difference.
Depressing to see how much discussion on HN (!!) has resulted from a objectively terrible graph reading. I mean... in the process of our infiltration by finance bros and VC money, have we genuinely forgotten how exponentials work?
Exponentials... that's the one with Sylvester Stallone and Jason Statham, right?
Re: Historical memory prices 1960-2026
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
Depressing to see how much discussion on HN (!!) has resulted from a objectively terrible graph reading. I mean... in the process of our infiltration by finance bros and VC money, have we genuinely forgotten how exponentials work?
Exponentials... that's the one with Sylvester Stallone and Jason Statham, right?
Yeah, I heard Statham got remaindered from the new Exponentials though, but don't worry, he's going to be joining The Mod Squad.
Re: Historical memory prices 1960-2026
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
I still don't get where all that memory goes.
Neither do the developers, because until recently, RAM was so cheap it didn’t matter, and we were in a situation where almost no one ever needed to consider “how much RAM will this take?” when writing code.
Like Homer Simpson said about alcohol: "To alcohol! The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems", we developers can say about AI (assuming AI-assisted coding can save memory in popular programs, OSes, etc)
Re: Historical memory prices 1960-2026
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
The most recent price listed is from a month ago and the prior prices are increasing. So really you can roughly compare years but not Today. There’s plenty of data to say prices in 2012 and 2016 overlap, which is wild.
It's crazy that a AAA video game cost $60 when I was a child in the 90s and costs $60 today, sticker price! Not adjusted for inflation!
And to think that AAA video game was distributed on cartridge with expensive memory in cardboard packaging with a manual while these days that same $60 game is just a digital download from a CDN.
Re: Historical memory prices 1960-2026
#166Tim Cook recently likened memory prices to a "hundred year flood." Looking here, it looks like 1988 was at least as bad, with prices going up 3X+ from $160/MB to $500/MB.
Re: Historical memory prices 1960-2026
#167Re: Historical memory prices 1960-2026
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
We're paying more now than we paid in the late 2010s, but less than we paid in the early 2010s.
I guess ‘per GB’ doesn’t really capture it, because the base number of gigabytes available to people (ie- the smallest compatible RAM kit you need to build a computer) and the base number of gigabytes you really need (OS bloat, feeling responsive, etc) have gone up so much.
And at the data center level too (AI). Not that we don't need some, but I don't see how this won't be another boom bust cycle eventually.
Re: Historical memory prices 1960-2026
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
The author clearly wasn't implying that these were 1GB chips. They just wanted to show a graph scaled per unit of memory. It could just as well have been per byte, and the graph would've been identical but the values on the left would be changed by a factor of a billion. You could argue that you'd rather see a "price per typical-sized RAM chip as sold at the time". That would also be a perfectly valid thing to graph…
The problem with "price per typical-sized RAM chip as sold at the time" is not so much that it's subjective, but you'd get artificial spikes in the data. For me, the key take home from the graph as stands is that price per GB right now is about the same as 2020. That seems reasonable, it's more expensive than it was, but only outrageous if you forget what it was like only a short while ago. But back in 2020, 4GB or 8…
IMO you'd really need to graph the price of how much RAM is needed to comfortably run contemporary OS + software combinations. That will get you an actual picture of the pain inflicted by the RAM prices.
And yes, RAM demand goes up with the average RAM in computers but it does lag and it's not yet clear if it will go down with increasing ram prices as IT corporations can still afford the more expensive RAM needed for the developers to run the RAM-hungry applications they need to run, which means they won't be dogfooding their software in a normal budget user environment and are less motivated to optimize for a reasonably priced amount of RAM.
Re: Historical memory prices 1960-2026
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
The most recent price listed is from a month ago and the prior prices are increasing. So really you can roughly compare years but not Today. There’s plenty of data to say prices in 2012 and 2016 overlap, which is wild.
It's crazy that a AAA video game cost $60 when I was a child in the 90s and costs $60 today, sticker price! Not adjusted for inflation!
How is it crazy? The marginal cost to produce a copy of a video game is ~$0 and the market is much larger now then it was so fixed costs can be spread around more. The sticker price was always more or less arbitrary chosen - i.e. to maximize profits, which includes how the number is perceived.