2027 memory capacity is reportedly sold out • Hacker News Board

Re: 2027 memory capacity is reportedly sold out

#181

Post by wao0uuno » Fri, Aug 07, 2026, 11:02 PM UTC

gaigalas wrote: post #50

AdamN wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lines that would have made consumer-level stuff are being reduced in favor of the higher profit margin/demand products. That means more supply of those other products (but still not enough) and lower supply of the consumer-level stuff (driving up prices).

Isn't DDR4 like, old and obsolete? From my knowledge, you can't just take a fab that produces DDR4 and make it produce DDR5 or higher. It's kind of a leap that requires replacing a lot of stuff. I would expect that old DDR4 machinery to end up somewhere else, still chugging along. Maybe someone buys the old production and keeps chugging low quality DDR4 or something. To me, it sounds like that didn't happened. Fabs t…

>Isn't DDR4 like, old and obsolete?

I built a new gaming PC with DDR4 two months ago and it's pretty great. For servers RAM speed usually matters even less.

Re: 2027 memory capacity is reportedly sold out

#182

Post by TZubiri » Fri, Aug 07, 2026, 11:05 PM UTC

So.. memory futures? Sounds like a signal of an efficient and mature market to me, manufacturers sell their stock way beforehand, keep production steady, and wholesalers can hold stock and absorb risk in exchange of profit.

Nothing prevents wholesalers from selling their memory or memory futures at a loss, as that is a risk that is justified by equal possibiltiy of the memory appreciating in excess of inflation.

Re: 2027 memory capacity is reportedly sold out

#183

Post by GMoromisato » Fri, Aug 07, 2026, 11:06 PM UTC

I just bought 16 GB DDR4 for my (somewhat old) Dell tower for $120 + shipping from Techyparts.com. Looking around that seemed like a really decent price (but maybe I'm wrong).

I had previously ordered from Aeonfly, but they cancelled my order--likely because they wanted to raise the price.

Re: 2027 memory capacity is reportedly sold out

#184

Post by haroldp » Fri, Aug 07, 2026, 11:07 PM UTC

1970-01-01 wrote: post #158

Seems like we need a USB equivalent standard to RAM sticks. I have lots and lots of old (1-2GB), intercompatible sticks sitting. Sometimes you just need the space and not the speed.

> Sometimes you just need the space and not the speed.

Your computer already supports that. It's called "swap".

Re: 2027 memory capacity is reportedly sold out

#185

Post by TZubiri » Fri, Aug 07, 2026, 11:08 PM UTC

eek2121 wrote: post #176

1970-01-01 wrote: post #158

Seems like we need a USB equivalent standard to RAM sticks. I have lots and lots of old (1-2GB), intercompatible sticks sitting. Sometimes you just need the space and not the speed.

No, we absolutely do not: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB For starters, The slowest sticks of DDR(x) are often slower than DDR(x-1). The issue is never capacity, but rather, performance. The real nonsense? USB? It's a mess. Pick a USB cable and buy it from ANY retailer, let's make it easier, buy a USB-C cable. What is the data rate (depends on cable quality and length), Does it support power delivery? If so, how ma…

USBism has a lot of elements similar to the "connect your agent to your data with this 'curl | sh' script and do anything. Maybe some friction and incompatibility is useful in some cases.

Re: 2027 memory capacity is reportedly sold out

#186

Post by hdb2 » Fri, Aug 07, 2026, 11:09 PM UTC

undersuit wrote: post #165

1970-01-01 wrote: post #158

Seems like we need a USB equivalent standard to RAM sticks. I have lots and lots of old (1-2GB), intercompatible sticks sitting. Sometimes you just need the space and not the speed.

Grab the cheapest Intel Optane M10 drive from eBay with a 1x PCI-E adapter from them too. 16GB of Swap for less than $20. The M10 are over produced and only PCI-E 3.0 2x lane devices but 16GB of DDR5 is going to cost over $200. You can do the same with USB-C M.2 adapters but the adapters cost more and eww USB for Swap, hope the device never drops.

Hey, I apologize for using you as tech support, but I found tons of those M10 sticks you are talking about, but what should I be looking for in terms of an adapter? All I can find are adapters listed as M.2:

https://www.amazon.com/GLOTRENDS-Adapter-Aluminum-Heatsink-P...

Re: 2027 memory capacity is reportedly sold out

#187

Post by tverbeure » Fri, Aug 07, 2026, 11:09 PM UTC

bob1029 wrote: post #141

One unit of HBM capacity consumes roughly the wafer capacity that could have produced three units of DDR5 capacity. HBM dies need to be larger than ordinary DRAM dies because of how the final packaging works. > As discussed previously, the ramp of HBM production will constrain industry supply growth in non-HBM products. Industrywide, HBM3E consumes approximately three times the wafer supply as D5 to produce a given n…

> HBM3E consumes approximately three times the wafer supply as D5 to produce a given number of bits in the same technology node

That's really interesting, and I wonder why? I believe HBM has redundant ECC bits by default, which would add a few %, but other than that, is it just that the yield is much lower due to die stacking? Of course, this is a 2024 document so things may have changed a bit since.

Re: 2027 memory capacity is reportedly sold out

#188

Post by freeone3000 » Fri, Aug 07, 2026, 11:12 PM UTC

vannevar wrote: post #175

bob1029 wrote: post #141

One unit of HBM capacity consumes roughly the wafer capacity that could have produced three units of DDR5 capacity. HBM dies need to be larger than ordinary DRAM dies because of how the final packaging works. > As discussed previously, the ramp of HBM production will constrain industry supply growth in non-HBM products. Industrywide, HBM3E consumes approximately three times the wafer supply as D5 to produce a given n…

>As the memory industry is still recovering from the challenging environment in 2023, this tight supply environment will help drive the considerable improvements in profitability and ROI (return on investment) that are needed to enable the investments required to support future growth. The problem is that they need actual chips tomorrow. I fear we are reaching the point in the semiconductor industry where, in order t…

The alternative is they could charge more. They could. And people would pay it.

Re: 2027 memory capacity is reportedly sold out

#189

Post by dabinat » Fri, Aug 07, 2026, 11:14 PM UTC

inigyou wrote: post #109

ghtbircshotbe wrote: post #80

The boom cycle looks like it's going to last a while, but it never lasts forever. If the current memory manufacturers all conspire to not build more capacity, I'm sure someone else will (eg China).

CXMT is now producing as much as one of the big three. Only for China, of course.

That’s less that China needs to buy from the rest of the world, so it’s still a win.

Re: 2027 memory capacity is reportedly sold out

#190

Post by vannevar » Fri, Aug 07, 2026, 11:15 PM UTC

freeone3000 wrote: post #188

vannevar wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>As the memory industry is still recovering from the challenging environment in 2023, this tight supply environment will help drive the considerable improvements in profitability and ROI (return on investment) that are needed to enable the investments required to support future growth. The problem is that they need actual chips tomorrow. I fear we are reaching the point in the semiconductor industry where, in order t…

The alternative is they could charge more. They could. And people would pay it.

The problem isn't the price. No matter how much you pay, you can't take delivery of a chip that doesn't exist. Now, you could raise prices to the point where you destroy demand. But that's a tricky window to maneuver through.