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Average DRAM price in USD over last 18 months

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Re: Average DRAM price in USD over last 18 months

#221

Post by markbao »

kortilla wrote: post #172
markbao wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people have phones that can handle webpages with 1-5MB JS bundles. Why artificially limit what you can do on the web? Why limit ourselves to 1GB RAM when more resources means tech becomes more useful? Returning to simple webpages is popular idea on HN but it’s like wanting a car with no backup camera and crank windows. If your goal is to have your car be as simple as possible, then sure, but that’s not the case…

Your mistake is assuming there is some correlation with usefulness and size. The JS Gmail UI from 15 years ago was just as functional as the one today. Websites that are supposed to be simple lists end up bloated and laggy because of really poor JS that makes one request per item iteratively to populate a list.

I do like the old JS Gmail UI. But the current JS Gmail UI doesn’t feel any slower. It is cluttered with more features, but some of them I find useful. (Displaying my calendar and being able to accept invites right in Gmail being a big one.)

Re: Average DRAM price in USD over last 18 months

#222

Post by perks_12 »

omgmajk wrote: post #215
bluescrn wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Starting to make Apple's RAM upsell prices look competitive...

I just checked our local apple store website and going from 48gb of ram on a M4 MacBook Pro it's 1500€ to get 128gb. Seems about the same :E

You actually get more, for the 1500€ you don't have to mess with sticks yourself. They solder it directly on your mainboard. If that isn't great service, I don't know what is.

Re: Average DRAM price in USD over last 18 months

#223

Post by mxfh »

wtallis wrote: post #73
mxfh wrote: post #7

To put this in long term relation. Even current DDR4 3200 DIMM prices are at an all time high. These are 6+ year old chip specs now! I even thought stuff was overpriced four years ago in mid-2021 already, but this is a whole new level. Some sample long term data for those: https://geizhals.eu/?phist=2151624&age=9999

Between inflation generally, and DDR4 being obsolete and unsupported by current desktop or server CPUs, it would be unsurprising for DDR4-3200 DIMMs to be at an all-time high even without the current DRAM price shock. You can never count on old memory types dropping to bargain prices, because the major manufacturers are always eager to migrate the bulk of their production capacity to current-generation memory.

That process usually takes years.

Here the price hike was pretty instant as secondary effect of DDR5 evasion in two waves. I July and now in October.

There is usually no shortage of old working PC components as they also are avalable used and tested from people decommissioning and upgrading systems. These are not some rare parts in normal market situations.

I made a habit of maxing out motherboards a year or two before upgrading to an new platform. This was always dirt cheap until like 5 years ago.

Re: Average DRAM price in USD over last 18 months

#224

Post by ponector »

phito wrote: post #114
snek_case wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can buy old rackmount servers on ebay for relatively cheap and used them as desktop PCs AFAIK (though they can be on the noisier side).

... and paying it back in power use

Use it during colder months for heating.

Re: Average DRAM price in USD over last 18 months

#225

Post by Fokamul »

01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote: post #195
AndrewDavis wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To those who haven't heard how colossal the size of OpenAIs contracts are. 900,000 wafers monthly. Tom's hardware estimates that is equal to 40% of global dram production capacity. https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/dram/openais-star...

At that point even if the AI bubble bursts you have a solid business as a RAM scalper

If AI bubble bursts -> global market crash. Ehm, with what you will be scalping, with bottle caps fallout money? :D

Re: Average DRAM price in USD over last 18 months

#226

Post by euroderf »

jack_tripper wrote: post #220
01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At that point even if the AI bubble bursts you have a solid business as a RAM scalper

You mean OpenAI will profit selling their RAM stocks if the AI bubble bursts? I doubt it honestly. If the AI bubble bursts, then global demand will collapse altogether crashing the value of HW.

Free GPUs for everyone! Bring a truck!

Re: Average DRAM price in USD over last 18 months

#227

Post by gbil »

AndrewDavis wrote: post #186
Aurornis wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The big news story this cycle is that OpenAI secured two large contracts with two separate DRAM companies at the same time, carefully timing the deals so that neither DRAM company knew about the deal with other. Had either company known about the true demand from OpenAI they would have charged a lot more, but each only saw about half. In other words, there was no collusion between the DRAM manufacturers. They were bo…

To those who haven't heard how colossal the size of OpenAIs contracts are. 900,000 wafers monthly. Tom's hardware estimates that is equal to 40% of global dram production capacity. https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/dram/openais-star...

Now thinking of this from the other side, 2 big DRAM producers are taking the risk to dedicate a very big part of their production to AI and if we assume they also have similar deals with other AI companies or big datacenters, what is their risk profile if the AI bubble bursts? Are they viable as companies then ? What is their plan B ?

Re: Average DRAM price in USD over last 18 months

#228

Post by avhon1 »

markbao wrote: post #221
kortilla wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your mistake is assuming there is some correlation with usefulness and size. The JS Gmail UI from 15 years ago was just as functional as the one today. Websites that are supposed to be simple lists end up bloated and laggy because of really poor JS that makes one request per item iteratively to populate a list.

I do like the old JS Gmail UI. But the current JS Gmail UI doesn’t feel any slower. It is cluttered with more features, but some of them I find useful. (Displaying my calendar and being able to accept invites right in Gmail being a big one.)

As someone who used the HTML gmail interface right up until google pulled the plug: the JS version is much slower to load. Every morning, I get to have about 10 seconds thinking about how it used to be faster.

Re: Average DRAM price in USD over last 18 months

#229

Post by Snoozus »

Maxion wrote: post #138
Snoozus wrote: post #121

Maybe it's time we make a simple web page 100KB again? Is there some kind of CDN minification, adblocking and compression service? Maybe even server side rendering of websites? Then a smartphone would work fine with 1GB of RAM and everyone could be happy.

Simple web pages can be made small with modern tooling, e.g. AstroJS. The problem is that most web pages these days fundamentally are not simple. Rather than trying to make web pages small, the real effort would be in designing web pages to be simple. The large majority of software devs, PMs and the like don't really know how to do anything else than a Node + React webapp.

I agree, most websites allow complex flows. But I suspect, that most loads don't ever touch those. There is probably an automated way to deliver just a flat page, and maybe even allow for the top 5 interactions without loading all the frameworks and libraries.

Re: Average DRAM price in USD over last 18 months

#230

Post by atwrk »

AndrewDavis wrote: post #186
Aurornis wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The big news story this cycle is that OpenAI secured two large contracts with two separate DRAM companies at the same time, carefully timing the deals so that neither DRAM company knew about the deal with other. Had either company known about the true demand from OpenAI they would have charged a lot more, but each only saw about half. In other words, there was no collusion between the DRAM manufacturers. They were bo…

To those who haven't heard how colossal the size of OpenAIs contracts are. 900,000 wafers monthly. Tom's hardware estimates that is equal to 40% of global dram production capacity. https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/dram/openais-star...

I find it very telling that both Samsung and SK Hynix already stated that they don't plan to expand capacity - officially to prevent overcapacity in the future. It would also be plausable that both doubt OpenAI will follow through with the contract.
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