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PS5 now costs less than 64GB of DDR5 memory. RAM jumps to $600 due to shortage

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Re: PS5 now costs less than 64GB of DDR5 memory. RAM jumps to $600 due to shortage

#261

Post by nottorp »

retrac wrote: post #79
debo_ wrote: post #65

The oft-snickered-at "smuggling 3mb of hot RAM" line from Neuromancer may have been prophetic after all.

If you are a scifi author, it's a mistake to give any hard numbers in real-world units. You will, most likely, greatly underestimate. Even trying to greatly overestimate, you will underestimate. Commander Data's specifications in the Star Trek TNG episode The Measure of a Man from 1989: 800 quadrillion bits of storage, computing at 60 trillion operations per second. 100 petabytes. That's a big machine. A very big mac…

Pretty sure Commander Data's software wasn't written in Electron so the hardware was enough :)

Re: PS5 now costs less than 64GB of DDR5 memory. RAM jumps to $600 due to shortage

#262

Post by nottorp »

beeflet wrote: post #224
cyberjunkie wrote: post #207

Crypto: GPUs AI: RAM Thanks for taking away years of affordable computing from people. Time is more valuable; there's no getting it back.

I am skeptical of the narrative that crypto caused GPU demand to meaningfully increase. I think it was always AI

"We have always been at war with Eastasia" ?

Re: PS5 now costs less than 64GB of DDR5 memory. RAM jumps to $600 due to shortage

#263

Post by igleria »

pmdr wrote: post #98

So, like, we were already pretty much priced out of higher-end graphic cards, and now it's happening to RAM. All this while jobs are disappearing, layoffs are ongoing and CEOs are touting AI's 'capabilities' left and right. Next is probably CPUs, even if AIs don't use them that much, manufactures will shift production to something more profitable, then gouge prices so that only enterprises will pay for them. What's n…

Given that everyone already answered what I had in mind, what can we do about it? What happened in the past where we might get answers from?

Re: PS5 now costs less than 64GB of DDR5 memory. RAM jumps to $600 due to shortage

#264

Post by noobermin »

timschmidt wrote: post #16

Potentially unpopular take: memory manufacturers have been operating on the margins of profitability for quite a while now. Their products are essentially an indistinguishable commodity. Memory from Samsung or Micron or another manufacturer may have slight differences in overclockability, but that matters little to folks who just want a stable system. Hopefully the shortage leads large purchasers to engage in long-te…

So this would have been great may be 15 years ago, or am I mistaken? New fabs for DRAM would take a while, no?

Re: PS5 now costs less than 64GB of DDR5 memory. RAM jumps to $600 due to shortage

#265

Post by Tuna-Fish »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #144
Aurornis wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hopefully the shortage leads large purchasers to engage in long-term contracts with the memory manufacturers which give them the confidence to invest in new fabs and increased capacity. Most DRAM is already purchased through contracts with manufacturers. Manufacturers don't actually want too many extremely long term contracts because it would limit their ability to respond to market price changes. Like most commodi…

> Manufacturers don't actually want too many extremely long term contracts because it would limit their ability to respond to market price changes. I don't agree with this sentence. Why would not the same apply advice to oil and gas contracts? If you look at the size and duration of oil and gas contracts for major energy importers, they often run 10 years or more. Some of the contracts in Japan and Korea are so large…

> Except silicon, power, and water (and a tiny amount of plastic/paper for packaging), what else does a fab need that only produces DRAM? If true, then power is far and away the most variable input cost.

Borrowing costs can be wildly variable and are the main cost of making silicon. All the "inputs" over the lifecycle of a fab are so completely dwarfed by the initial capital costs that you can pretty much ignore them in any economic analysis. The cost of making chips is the cost of borrowing money to pay for capital costs, and the depreciation of the value of that capital.

Re: PS5 now costs less than 64GB of DDR5 memory. RAM jumps to $600 due to shortage

#266

Post by igleria »

charcircuit wrote: post #250
phil21 wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's only meaningful if you have enough disposable income to invest that it eventually (and I don't mean in 50 years) makes a dent against your living expenses. If you make $4k/mo and rent is $3k, it's pretty silly to state that it's a meaningful thing for someone to scrimp and invest $100/mo into a brokerage account. They definitely should do this, but it's not going to have any meaningful impact on their life for d…

Rent should not be more than 1/3 of your income so moving to an appropriate place will let that person save an extra 2k a month. It would take a year instead of a decade to have invested 24k.

> moving to an appropriate place

like under a bridge or something? Pardon the hyperbole, but you would have to assume people with no disposable income are idiots in order to suggest that solution.

Re: PS5 now costs less than 64GB of DDR5 memory. RAM jumps to $600 due to shortage

#268

Post by charcircuit »

igleria wrote: post #266
charcircuit wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rent should not be more than 1/3 of your income so moving to an appropriate place will let that person save an extra 2k a month. It would take a year instead of a decade to have invested 24k.

> moving to an appropriate place like under a bridge or something? Pardon the hyperbole, but you would have to assume people with no disposable income are idiots in order to suggest that solution.

Or at their parent's house or going to find roommates. If you can't afford to move out by yourself than you shouldn't do it if you want to be financially responsible.

Re: PS5 now costs less than 64GB of DDR5 memory. RAM jumps to $600 due to shortage

#269

Post by chickensong »

throwaway48476 wrote: post #180
overfeed wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why would not the same apply advice to oil and gas contracts? Because oil & gas suppliers only ever sell one product, and memory fabs can dynamically switch product mix in response to supply & demand to optimize profits. The same sand, power and water can make DDR4, HBM or DDR5

Oil and gas suppliers have several products: gas, diesel, jet a, propane, naptha, asphalt etc.

The factory must grow

Re: PS5 now costs less than 64GB of DDR5 memory. RAM jumps to $600 due to shortage

#270

Post by 2WSSd-JzVM »

citizenpaul wrote: post #236
dboreham wrote: post #69

Quick reminder that DRAM futures have existed since the 1980s so you all could have protected your price with calls.

i deeply hope this is /s

Well the alternative is that GP solved the world hunger as people can just buy future food contracts to protect themselves from drought.
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