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Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

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Re: Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

#141

Post by georgemcbay »

luma wrote: post #107
1saadcodes wrote: post #105

500% in a year is just insane. I knew RAM prices were going up, but $3k+ for 128GB of DDR5 makes me wonder how much of this is actually AI demand, and how much is this just manufacturers taking advantage of it. They have done this in the past after all

There are only 3 manufacturers (about to be 4 soon) total. This is a demand crunch the likes of which the market hasn't seen before, prices are doing the natural thing.

> There are only 3 manufacturers (about to be 4 soon) total.

...3 manufacturers with a long history of price fixing...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRAM_industry_price_fixing

Re: Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

#142

Post by benlivengood »

minraws wrote: post #119
cm2187 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand the distinction you are making. If you have a massive excess of demand ready to pay any price, and a limited supply, of course the sellers will take advantage, that's how any market works. They can do that because of the lack of supply. Over the long term demand will rationalise and supply will adjust. But in between there is a squeeze, and the right price is the maximum price buyers are willing to…

In an absolutely free market? sure. But we don't live in an absolutely free market, the memory manufacturers have refused to budge on creating new fabs until recently out of caution and to be able to create a demand excess. They have slow rolled rollouts and everything, if there wasn't CXMT they would probably still wouldn't have budged on building new fabs for a while longer. You can absolutely price fix/manufacture…

Feel free to spin up a fab and undercut the current prices, I'd certainly appreciate it!

I don't know if I would personally fund such a venture though, for roughly the same reason existing manufacturers aren't expanding production.

Re: Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

#143

Post by t-writescode »

dist-epoch wrote: post #139
solarengineer wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"that the limited supply goes to the buyer who need it the most" - I would say that the limited supply goes to the buyer who can afford to pay higher than others. Someone may need the memory more, but may not have the deeper pockets to pay for it like NVidia and Apple might.

Gamers may need the memory more, but AI labs can use the memory more productively

Profitably-for-the-fabs*

Re: Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

#144

Post by SoftTalker »

cm2187 wrote: post #128
minraws wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In an absolutely free market? sure. But we don't live in an absolutely free market, the memory manufacturers have refused to budge on creating new fabs until recently out of caution and to be able to create a demand excess. They have slow rolled rollouts and everything, if there wasn't CXMT they would probably still wouldn't have budged on building new fabs for a while longer. You can absolutely price fix/manufacture…

I think everyone is aware now that you don't build a fab by snapping your fingers, and you need to amortise it over many years. The said manufacturers are just out of a massive slump in demand during covid, when they were selling at a loss, and these cycles happened many times in this industry. It is understandable that they don't jump all-in on the AI bandwagon, which, god knows where it is going and for how long. I…

Yes when there are large fixed costs to expanding production, that will happen more slowly, after determining that the high demand isn't just a short term spike.

It's not like wheat, where you just can just plant more at marginal cost (I'm sure someone in farming will now explain why that isn't exactly true either).

Re: Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

#146

Post by dist-epoch »

t-writescode wrote: post #140
dist-epoch wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the memory manufacturers have refused to budge on creating new fabs That's EXACTLY how a free market is supposed to work. The existing memory manufacturers are FREE to not build new factories, and anyone else is FREE to build those factories in their place.

Then perhaps we’re seeing one of the downsides of that. When 0->1 is prohibitively expensive, existing players can continue to raise prices *very* high because cost-of-entry is extreme, until it’s not sufficiently extreme. And then we have bubble issues because the introduction of a new, cheaper player, causes the bottom to fall out and for the circumstances that allowed the new manufacturer to exist to completely go…

This is also caused by the FREE market - consolidation, all markets tend to consolidate around a few companies due to economy of scale.

The fix is regulation - we are going to have NOT-FREE-MARKET electricity, NOT-FREE-MARKET water supply, .... for vital services.

I'm not talking about you, it's funny to see anti-regulation HN complain about a FREE MARKET working as such. Suddenly it's not so fun where you are at the losing end of the free market when it turns out some are willing to pay way more for RAM than you are.

Re: Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

#147

Post by lvzw »

ncallaway wrote: post #129
cm2187 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand the distinction you are making. If you have a massive excess of demand ready to pay any price, and a limited supply, of course the sellers will take advantage, that's how any market works. They can do that because of the lack of supply. Over the long term demand will rationalise and supply will adjust. But in between there is a squeeze, and the right price is the maximum price buyers are willing to…

> If you have a massive excess of demand ready to pay any price, and a limited supply, of course the sellers will take advantage, that's how any market work The question is how quickly the supply adjusts. In a free market, the suppliers would respond to the price signal by quickly expanding their production to meet the elevated demand. But a market captured by a cartel will be much slower to expand the supply. So, th…

Memory fab build out times are years not months. The existing ones already run 24/7. If these companies could pull more supply out of thin air they would, but they cannot.

Re: Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

#148

Post by mvdtnz »

florakel wrote: post #134
preg_match wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's probably for the best, the hyperconsumerism around electronics was getting out of hand. Computers are fast and have been fast for a while now. An iPhone 12 is probably more than fine to do iPhone things, if Apple didn't sabotage their old phones with poorly-written poor-performance software.

Can you provide evidence for your claim? Most people take this statement at face value and I don’t understand why. I do some volunteer work supporting elderly people that have issues adapting to a digital only world and I am always pleasantly surprised by the performance of their old iPhones all the way down to the 8 (old phones they get from their kids) Also the coming iOS 27 release supposedly has some big performa…

Apple is known to slow older devices intentionally. They have admitted it.

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-67911517

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