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Global Memory Shortage Crisis: Market Analysis

idc.com

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Re: Global Memory Shortage Crisis: Market Analysis

#31

Post by aunty_helen »

IAmGraydon wrote: post #27

Article completely misses the true cause of the price increase - Sam Altman/OAI made a deal with Samsung and SK Hynix get 40% of their RAM wafer production for the 2026 period. This was economic warfare against OpenAI's competitors, and the competitors along with the data centers responded by buying up every bit of DDR5 in sight. This price increase was engineered. The deal was inked on October 1, 2025, and rumors of…

After the dns entry, the stockpile of ram may be the most valuable asset that company has.

Re: Global Memory Shortage Crisis: Market Analysis

#32

Post by ssl-3 »

bongodongobob wrote: post #21
crazydoggers wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think your sample of Millenials is probably more well informed.

Nah, it's fueled by huge misinformation campaigns. It's going to kill art, put us all out of the job, uses 1.5 million gallons per query, pollutes water, will kill the electric grid, etc. These seem to be the most popular uninformed lines of thinking.

We have always been at war with Eastasia.

Re: Global Memory Shortage Crisis: Market Analysis

#33

Post by pixl97 »

bongodongobob wrote: post #21
crazydoggers wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think your sample of Millenials is probably more well informed.

Nah, it's fueled by huge misinformation campaigns. It's going to kill art, put us all out of the job, uses 1.5 million gallons per query, pollutes water, will kill the electric grid, etc. These seem to be the most popular uninformed lines of thinking.

Ya we seem to live in the the place where the firehose of falsehood is filling the lake of bullshit asymmetry. The problem with this is uninformed lines of thinking eventually lead to policy.

Re: Global Memory Shortage Crisis: Market Analysis

#34

Post by hinkley »

One of the things I’ve been hoping for every time a new EC2 instance comes out is for them to unpin the memory:core ratio a bit. I don’t expect they have enough r# and c# users to completely balance things out so what they’re really doing is selling people more CPUs to get the memory they need.

It would be nice if it were creeping up generation to generation. But if this keeps up I fear the opposite.

Re: Global Memory Shortage Crisis: Market Analysis

#35

Post by neutronicus »

layer8 wrote: post #12
RyanShook wrote: post #7

I see this as a competitive opportunity for Apple. If Apple smartphone specs improve while Androids stagnate it could create more iOS users. The promised AI metaverse is still a long way off and in the meantime people still want the best smartphone.

Most regular people don’t care about RAM specs. And lately it’s Apple that has been rather stagnating in terms of features.

I would love stagnation, the keyboard has always been a dumpster fire but these days it is an actively regressing dumpster fire

Re: Global Memory Shortage Crisis: Market Analysis

#36

Post by root_axis »

RyanShook wrote: post #7

I see this as a competitive opportunity for Apple. If Apple smartphone specs improve while Androids stagnate it could create more iOS users. The promised AI metaverse is still a long way off and in the meantime people still want the best smartphone.

> if Apple smartphone specs improve while Androids stagnate it could create more iOS user

Nah. The marginal utility of more smartphone ram is near zero at this point. The vast majority of people wouldn't even notice if the memory in their phone tripled overnight.

Re: Global Memory Shortage Crisis: Market Analysis

#37

Post by Forgeties79 »

bongodongobob wrote: post #21
crazydoggers wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think your sample of Millenials is probably more well informed.

Nah, it's fueled by huge misinformation campaigns. It's going to kill art, put us all out of the job, uses 1.5 million gallons per query, pollutes water, will kill the electric grid, etc. These seem to be the most popular uninformed lines of thinking.

I agree several of the commonly repeated critiques are really poor in quality and can be emotionally driven/simply parroted TikTok nonsense, but at the other end of the spectrum we have AI evangelists who get surprisingly aggressive if you say anything remotely negative about GenAI or suggest maybe we should be having a discussion about the ethical ramifications of these tools. Particularly how they are trained and deployed and who should be guiding that process.

I find it very odd when people proudly proclaim they used, say, Grok to answer a question. Their identity is so tied up in it that if you start talking about the quality of the information they get incredibly defensive. In contrast: I have never felt protective of my Google search results, which is basically the same thing given how most people use these tools currently.

It’s kind of wild how hostile some people get if you attempt to open the discussion up at all.

Re: Global Memory Shortage Crisis: Market Analysis

#38

Post by rockskon »

layer8 wrote: post #12
RyanShook wrote: post #7

I see this as a competitive opportunity for Apple. If Apple smartphone specs improve while Androids stagnate it could create more iOS users. The promised AI metaverse is still a long way off and in the meantime people still want the best smartphone.

Most regular people don’t care about RAM specs. And lately it’s Apple that has been rather stagnating in terms of features.

What, because they aren't shoving an LLM in every orifice of their product?

Re: Global Memory Shortage Crisis: Market Analysis

#39

Post by oezi »

memoriuaysj wrote: post #15
RyanShook wrote: post #7

I see this as a competitive opportunity for Apple. If Apple smartphone specs improve while Androids stagnate it could create more iOS users. The promised AI metaverse is still a long way off and in the meantime people still want the best smartphone.

I have no idea how much RAM my phone has. And if you think that somebody buys an iPhone because they compare the specs with Android :)))))

The competitive advantage comes from Apple having the supply chain contracts in place to not be affected by the 2026 price hike as much. The Android phones will be more expensive and thus will capture less market share.

Re: Global Memory Shortage Crisis: Market Analysis

#40

Post by kllrnohj »

RyanShook wrote: post #7

I see this as a competitive opportunity for Apple. If Apple smartphone specs improve while Androids stagnate it could create more iOS users. The promised AI metaverse is still a long way off and in the meantime people still want the best smartphone.

How is it an opportunity for Apple? They are a customer of Samsung and Micron RAM modules just like everyone else is. They aren't in any unique position other than their user base is already used to paying extreme markup for RAM. Now whether Apple just eats the cost in their profit margin or charges even more for RAM remains to be seen.
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