Live data from Hacker News

Average DRAM price in USD over last 18 months

pcpartpicker.com

291–300 of 423 posts

Re: Average DRAM price in USD over last 18 months

#291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is called a price ceiling The act of eliminating surge pricing is not a price ceiling. That's a different thing. That requires more than simply swapping surge pricing with first come first served. You've created a strawman. > I'd rather pay extra and get what I need with 100% chance False dichotomy. Neither approach increases supply. Of course according to economists who can hand wave away bullwhip effects wit…

> The act of eliminating surge pricing is not a price ceiling. If you force companies to price products lower than what they want, then you have a price ceiling by definition. > Neither approach increases supply. I didn't mention or allude to supply at all, although it's true that price ceilings also decrease supply (less so if there is monopoly or collusion, but they still do). I was talking about resource allocatio…

>> you have a price ceiling by definition

Price ceiling definition: a government-imposed legal maximum price

My original comment: First come first served is a better

This is not a legal maximum price, this is a legal maximum in the derivative of price.

> I didn't mention or allude to supply at all

>> get what I need with 100% chance than get what I need cheaply with 5% chance

How do you square these two statements? One claims 100% supply certainty when no such thing exists in this context. Without making certain assumptions (unstated, but ludicrous, assumptions are rife in economics discourse), you can't state much of value about which buyer will get the goods in the surge pricing model, you especially cannot say that the buyer with the larger wallet will always win. Think for a second what assumptions you've made to this point in the conversation - you're still down the rabbit hole of price ceilings in the comment chain thus far.

>> The empirical history of price ceilings is there

Not disputed but as per your call out of definition above, not relevant.

To make the point further - the name for a limit on rate of change of price is not a price ceiling, anymore than the 0-60 time of a car is its top speed limit.

>> you thought that I was talking about supply instead of resource allocation

My challenge to you is to name the assumptions you've identified in your reasoning around resource allocation. I'm confident i can point out the deficiencies in your model because that is the nature of models.

>> you should study elementary economics

That's a great idea, a really good follow on from that is to identify logical fallacies you discover i. that process, especially those so accepted that it's not a stretch to say they are underpinning the discipline. A good example of that would be the conjectural origin theory of money but i digress.

Re: Average DRAM price in USD over last 18 months

#292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Novice question: If they built something other than classic dram modules with the wafers maybe they could achieve faster bus speeds? How does Apple do it?

That's what HBM is actually. The memory dies are directly next to the GPU die, on the same substrate. The main difference between Apple SoC and GPUs is the former use regular LPDDR while GPUs use HBM. One of the key points of HBM is that dies are stacked up with many, MANY, more signals and channels. That's how NVIDIA has a memory bandwidth an order of magnitude higher than M4: 550GB/s for the M4 Max, 4.6TB/s for H20…

> while GPUs use HBM.

some GPUs use HBM. Most use GDDR. AMD and Nvidia still extract huge bandwidth from GDDR via high bus speeds + wide buses (like the 1.79 TB/s on the 5090)

Re: Average DRAM price in USD over last 18 months

#293
post #275
post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dotcom companies were basically stuff like pets.com, not things considered strategic with de-facto government backing.

Cisco was very much not "stuff like pets.com". Most of the money lost in the dotcom crash wasn't in pets.com, it was the infrastructure companies like Cisco and Sun.

Funnily enough Cisco’s stock has recently recovered back to its dotcom peak.

Re: Average DRAM price in USD over last 18 months

#294
post #75

Apple system config upgrades not looking so bad anymore

On this graph, the most expensive RAM is $12.5 / GB ($400 for DDR5-6000 2x16GB). Apple charges - $25 / GB ($200 for 8 GB for the M5 MacBook Pro and the M4 MacBook Air) - $16 / GB ($400 for 24 GB for the cheapest M4 Pro MacBook Pro) - $12.5 / GB ($200 for 16 GB and then $800 for 64 GB more for the most expensive M4 Pro and M4 Max MacBook Pros) and Apple's RAM is faster than PC RAM.

> Apple's RAM is faster than PC RAM

Are you sure about that? The M5 memory has a max bandwidth of ~150 GB/s, meanwhile there is PC memory that reaches 200 GB/s

Re: Average DRAM price in USD over last 18 months

#296
post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their risks are none. They are not increasing capacity, only selling the available one to the highest bidder. Whenever these AI companies run out of money, these producers can simply resume their regular business.

Not sure about DRAM companies, but many businesses would still go under if they sold their annual production to a company that then goes bankrupt and won't pay anything for the delivered goods.

e.g. dotcom DSL and CLEC providers, https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/dsl-providers-droppin...

Re: Average DRAM price in USD over last 18 months

#297
post #230

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...

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.

"prevent overcapacity" is just a fancy way of saying "we prefer to gouge consumers at little risk to us."

Hopefully the Chinese manufacturers ram(p) up rapidly and spike Hynix and Samsung with heavily undercut prices.

Re: Average DRAM price in USD over last 18 months

#299
post #230

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...

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.

Expanding manufacturing capacity takes many years. Memory has historically been a cyclical business with boom and bust periods. It’s reasonable for manufacturers to be cautious about deciding to expand.

If the demand holds I’m sure they’ll expand. Until then, I think they see it as a short term supply spike.

Re: Average DRAM price in USD over last 18 months

#300
post #297
post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"prevent overcapacity" is just a fancy way of saying "we prefer to gouge consumers at little risk to us." Hopefully the Chinese manufacturers ram(p) up rapidly and spike Hynix and Samsung with heavily undercut prices.

> prevent overcapacity" is just a fancy way of saying "we prefer to gouge consumers at little risk to us."

No it’s not. Memory business has been cyclical for years. Over expansion is a real risk because new manufacturing capacity is very expensive and takes a long time to come online.

If they could make new manufacturing come online quickly they would do it and capture the additional profit of more sales.

Post reply on HN