Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Samsung, SK Hynix, Micron Sued in US over Memory Price Fixing

en.sedaily.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 209 posts

Re: Samsung, SK Hynix, Micron Sued in US over Memory Price Fixing

#141

Post by GeekyBear »

mywittyname wrote: post #96
mrtksn wrote: post #38

What happens if Samsung and SK Hynix simply stop selling to US at all? Micron is in US but are the rest still in the US jurisdiction? They are selling the hottest commodity of the day. It’s made outside of the US using non-American tooling.

Micron is forced to stop under-investing in plants and will increase production. This will trigger everyone else to expand production and lower prices. The whole point of the collusion is to ensure everyone is producing the same volumes and keeping prices high. The company that expands is the company that "wins" because memory is a volume game and it's all about hanging on the longest during the glut. So once one com…

Oddly enough, Samsung and SK Hynix decided that they needed to expand production on the same day another lawsuit accused them of colluding to keep production low and prices high.

> South Korea announces $520bn chip plant project with Samsung, SK Hynix

https://asia.nikkei.com/business/tech/semiconductors/south-k...

Re: Samsung, SK Hynix, Micron Sued in US over Memory Price Fixing

#142

Post by fennecbutt »

Stitch4223 wrote: post #112
mywittyname wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have to decide what part is damaging to society: the actual physical agreement, or the effects of the agreement? If it's the actual physical agreement that's the problem - the system is working as intended. But if we are looking to prevent the negative outcomes associated with price fixing and collusion, our system is failing us. They are never going to find proof of conspiracy. The people involved covered their t…

You'll have to create a case that harm is taking place. Harm does not mean a PlayStation 5 is now $200 more expensive or that inflation exists. I would look at questions regarding what harm is created: Is it discriminatory? Are parts of society shutting down, and is that unreasonable? Are groups of people now unable to afford a living? Does it move the poverty line? Is that permanent? And how do you prove this is exc…

>Harm does not mean a PlayStation 5 is now $200 more expensive or that inflation exists.

Yes it does lmao. If consumers can't get access to devices then they cannot be used for work or education. It's counterproductive.

How many "attention is all you need" papers aren't being written because as soon as there's a sniff of money the rabid suit and tie MBA fucks leap onto any opportunity like a dog in heat and fuck it to death.

Re: Samsung, SK Hynix, Micron Sued in US over Memory Price Fixing

#143

Post by fennecbutt »

cosmic_cheese wrote: post #84
zarzavat wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're running a business not a charity. Their job is to manufacture what the market as a whole demands. If they can make more money making HBM than DDR4 then they have to make HBM. Why would a business go out of its way to make less money?

1. The AI bubble is an insane distortion and the gravy train isn’t going to last forever. Betting the farm on everlasting datacenter demand is myopic. 2. In a healthy, competitive market there would be smaller manufacturers that’d be happy to take up the big guys’ discarded business.

>the gravy train isn’t going to last forever.

Have you seen how the modern stock markets works lmao? It hasn't been based on reality in a long time.

Hell just look at Trump, should've run outta money from all his bad deals ages ago but the grift continues.

Re: Samsung, SK Hynix, Micron Sued in US over Memory Price Fixing

#144

Post by cosmic_cheese »

thewebguyd wrote: post #137
cosmic_cheese wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Switching off DDR3 manufacturing I can understand, but DDR4 machines are still quite relevant and usable… Ryzen 5000 series boxes for example don’t feel meaningfully weaker than they did when new. My 5950X tower certainly doesn’t, and it’d really be nice to be able to upgrade its RAM should I need to because it will continue to be useful for quite some time. AMD just re-released their 5800X3D for AM4 board users who…

> My 5950X tower certainly doesn’t That's what I have in my gaming tower, and yeah I feel zero pressing need to upgrade. I did manage to put 64GB of DDR4 in it just before prices went totally bonkers, thankfully. Where I'm falling behind is my GPU I'm still on an nvidia 1660 super, but I just can't justify paying what they cost right now. I would gain pretty much nothing moving to a newer board w/ DDR5.

Exactly what I'm feeling. The CPU is great for what I'm using it for and I have a killer motherboard. Have a nice GPU capable of current gen games, too. The equivalent current gen board and CPU cost a small fortune for marginal readily visible gain.

Unfortunately, I opted for only 32GB of RAM because at that point more felt like overkill, which as a decision has aged poorly. I should've gotten more while it was still cheap.

Re: Samsung, SK Hynix, Micron Sued in US over Memory Price Fixing

#145

Post by cosmic_cheese »

fennecbutt wrote: post #143
cosmic_cheese wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. The AI bubble is an insane distortion and the gravy train isn’t going to last forever. Betting the farm on everlasting datacenter demand is myopic. 2. In a healthy, competitive market there would be smaller manufacturers that’d be happy to take up the big guys’ discarded business.

>the gravy train isn’t going to last forever. Have you seen how the modern stock markets works lmao? It hasn't been based on reality in a long time. Hell just look at Trump, should've run outta money from all his bad deals ages ago but the grift continues.

It's true that markets have no need to be rational, but everything has an end and it's usually sooner than anybody ever expects.

Re: Samsung, SK Hynix, Micron Sued in US over Memory Price Fixing

#146

Post by BeetleB »

lightedman wrote: post #76
bryanlarsen wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Identical prices are often a sign of intense competition. Every gas station on a corner has the same price because it's a highly competitive market not because of collusion. The prices of the much more lucrative chocolate bars inside the gas stations are less likely to be identical.

"Every gas station on a corner has the same price because it's a highly competitive market not because of collusion." Huh? I can go to most any gas station-occupied intersection and you will always find two that match and one (usually a Persian-owned Chevron) which is consistently a dollar or more higher per gallon across all grades of fuel.

Same here. I've never seen 2 gas stations near each other offer the same price. And large price disparities are common.

Re: Samsung, SK Hynix, Micron Sued in US over Memory Price Fixing

#147

Post by toast0 »

cosmic_cheese wrote: post #10
Neywiny wrote: post #7

HBM is also DRAM. I also think it's kind of a weak argument to say that them discontinuing ddr3 (which while in use still today in industrial/embedded was on the way out for consumers 10 years ago) and ddr4 which last had consumer CPUs for it 3 years ago is meaningful. What we need now is ddr5. Turning off the old fabs and moving those resources including people to ddr5 is a good thing. That's not price fixing. It's…

Switching off DDR3 manufacturing I can understand, but DDR4 machines are still quite relevant and usable… Ryzen 5000 series boxes for example don’t feel meaningfully weaker than they did when new. My 5950X tower certainly doesn’t, and it’d really be nice to be able to upgrade its RAM should I need to because it will continue to be useful for quite some time. AMD just re-released their 5800X3D for AM4 board users who…

DDR4 machines are relevant and usable, but it's pretty unusual that new systems on older ram are still big sellers. The 5800x3d was originally released in 2022, AM5 processors were also originally released in 2022. We'll probably see Zen6 soon, the third generation on AM5... I don't think AMD released new AM3 processors after the introduction of AM4, certainly not when Zen3 was coming soon.

When making long term plans in 2022, I don't think anyone expected DDR4 to need significant production in 2026. Since ram makers can pretty much sell whatever they make in today's marketplace, it makes sense (for those fabs that can) to stop making DDR4 and repurpose those fabs to make newer generation ram.

Re: Samsung, SK Hynix, Micron Sued in US over Memory Price Fixing

#148

Post by AnthonyMouse »

thewebguyd wrote: post #136
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why not ask the same ridiculous amount of money your competitors do? People seem to be paying for it. Their fault. That's not how commodity markets work. This stuff is essentially sold at auction with the price set by supply and demand. The way they would fix the price is by constraining supply so that people have to outbid each other on a smaller amount of inventory. But that's not that hard to measure -- are they…

> but that they're not increasing it fast enough That also isn't illegal. A business can choose to artificially restrict supply if they want, there's no mandate that they must meet demand. It only crosses into illegal territory if multiple companies get together and secretly agree to cap production to keep prices high. Then it becomes collusion. It also becomes illegal if there's a monopoly power that is intentionall…

> A business can choose to artificially restrict supply if they want, there's no mandate that they must meet demand.

There is, however, no incentive to do this when prices are high unless you expect competitors to do likewise, since otherwise you're just handing the business to the others when they increase production. Which strongly implies that if that's what everybody is doing, they're colluding.

> The hard part is how do you prove Samsung, SK Hynix, Micron are acting as a unified cartel when there obviously isn't going to be a paper trail for secret meetings.

Which is the problem when that's what's happening, and why we should maybe change the law to infer the collusion from the outcome in cases where prices are high yet nobody is responding by increasing their market share.

Re: Samsung, SK Hynix, Micron Sued in US over Memory Price Fixing

#149

Post by brookst »

Stitch4223 wrote: post #99
mywittyname wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The arguments made by the Plaintiff are thoroughly convincing to me. The fact that those 8 points are not enough to convict indicate the industry is fucked. Of course the defendants didn't leave a paper trail - they've already been convicted of collusion before. It's the people and country that suffer when our government fails to ensure markets are free and fair.

If there is no agreement, then the magic term is "tacit collusion." Why not ask the same ridiculous amount of money your competitors do? People seem to be paying for it. Their fault. If suppliers have sufficiently different products, they can make some more expensive, others cheaper; on average, everybody pays more. A high barrier to entry might help such practices. That doesn't mean I'm saying this is what is happen…

Yeah your qualifier is important. If I have zyngots and suddenly the price goes through the roof, it is not collusion or illegal for me to raise my prices.

Tacit collusion requires at least signaling. There has to be some intent. Like in the US rental market where Realpage coordinates tacit collusion.

But if there is legitimately demand for far more memory than can be produced, it seems silly to claim collusion to raise prices.

Re: Samsung, SK Hynix, Micron Sued in US over Memory Price Fixing

#150

Post by brookst »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #148
thewebguyd wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but that they're not increasing it fast enough That also isn't illegal. A business can choose to artificially restrict supply if they want, there's no mandate that they must meet demand. It only crosses into illegal territory if multiple companies get together and secretly agree to cap production to keep prices high. Then it becomes collusion. It also becomes illegal if there's a monopoly power that is intentionall…

> A business can choose to artificially restrict supply if they want, there's no mandate that they must meet demand. There is, however, no incentive to do this when prices are high unless you expect competitors to do likewise, since otherwise you're just handing the business to the others when they increase production. Which strongly implies that if that's what everybody is doing, they're colluding. > The hard part i…

> There is, however, no incentive to do this when prices are high unless you expect competitors to do likewise

This imagines a world where water production can be dialed up and down instantly, at no cost, with no risk.

It doesn’t work that way though. Hiring people, scaling up factories, converting to 24/7 all have costs and risks.

Just google (or Claude, or whatever) memory companies that went backrupt overbuilding to meet a spike in demand. There are many. You probably don’t even know their names. Because Micron/etc stood pat and survived.

Post reply on HN