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RAM now represents 35 percent of bill of materials for HP PCs

arstechnica.com

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Re: RAM now represents 35 percent of bill of materials for HP PCs

#311

Post by lamontcg »

toast0 wrote: post #300
KellyCriterion wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Im always shocked how much good IT equipment is shoved into the trashbin: At a lot of companies I could make a great deal - either for using it on my own or selling it on Ebay later on. Big Corporations offen trash IT equipment thats only 3 - 4 years old. And there is no recycling etc. Very sad.

Big corporations tend to send old hardware through the surplus marketplace. There's lots of 3-4 year old corporate computers for sale. Often, the company leases the computers and then the lessor will sell them when they're returned.

I got a pretty nice 120Hz ultrawide dell for cheap at one of those surplus shops awhile back.

Re: RAM now represents 35 percent of bill of materials for HP PCs

#312

Post by seanmcdirmid »

debugnik wrote: post #169
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eventually new capacity will come online, and the money the DRAM companies are making are going to accelerate even ,ore new capacity. If you can get your new capacity going before your competitors, maybe you can avoid a bubble burst. If you don’t build new capacity, your competitors will, etc, etc…

They're not building any new manufacturing capacity though. They assume this is a demand bubble and they don't want supply to exceed demand after it pops.

multiple major DRAM factories are currently being built or planned, driven by AI demand and government incentives. Micron is constructing a massive $100 billion "megafab" complex in New York, with groundbreaking occurring in January 2026, and is building new facilities in Idaho. Other projects include expansion in Singapore and Japan.

Key DRAM Factory Construction Projects:

Micron Technology (USA): Building a $100 billion, 4-fab complex in Clay, New York (first production expected around 2030) and a new $15 billion, 2-fab project in Boise, Idaho.

Micron (Global): Investing in expanding capacity in Singapore and Taiwan.

Nanya Technology (Taiwan): Previously initiated a $10.69 billion DRAM facility in New Taipei, Taiwan.

Re: RAM now represents 35 percent of bill of materials for HP PCs

#313

Post by alecco »

OoooooooO wrote: post #229
alecco wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europe needs to focus on energy and fixing their supply chain first. And the deregulation push keeps getting delayed. Just the other day the main person behind it in Germany got sacked because of internal power struggles, in part because of the Greens (part of the coalition). For context, the German manufacturing sector is losing something like 15k jobs PER MONTH.

The Greens are not part of the current government. What are you talking about?

Brain fart. I mean CDU. I guess they behave like Greens so much I got them confused. Also, not "sacked" but not renewed, but it's kind of the same thing in practice.

https://x.com/olk_julian/status/2025937252086382918

Re: RAM now represents 35 percent of bill of materials for HP PCs

#314

Post by bradlys »

toast0 wrote: post #300
KellyCriterion wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Im always shocked how much good IT equipment is shoved into the trashbin: At a lot of companies I could make a great deal - either for using it on my own or selling it on Ebay later on. Big Corporations offen trash IT equipment thats only 3 - 4 years old. And there is no recycling etc. Very sad.

Big corporations tend to send old hardware through the surplus marketplace. There's lots of 3-4 year old corporate computers for sale. Often, the company leases the computers and then the lessor will sell them when they're returned.

Meanwhile I’m at faang and they’re reusing 7 year old monitors still. Still getting equipment from pre-covid era.

Where are these luxurious big corporations that give their employees nice new equipment? :(

Re: RAM now represents 35 percent of bill of materials for HP PCs

#315

Post by TremendousJudge »

BunsanSpace wrote: post #284
Lalabadie wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And in the meantime, major buyers (government, big orgs) adjust by extending the planned lifespan of their computers, and upping the IT wage budget a bit to support that. That adjustment probably won't go away after supply returns.

That's honestly a good thing. Computers aren't really getting faster for end users doing mundane tasks the past couple of years. Will help reduce E-Waste, and to the end user there won't be a different. A machine from 5 years ago feels just as fast as a brand new machine.

> A machine from 5 years ago feels just as fast as a brand new machine.

Except you can't install Windows 11 on it, and the org has to trash it anyway to keep up with security requirement (I know people on that line of work, they're all angry about it)

Re: RAM now represents 35 percent of bill of materials for HP PCs

#316

Post by eumenides1 »

mushufasa wrote: post #270
travisgriggs wrote: post #50

I had my formative years in programming when memory usage was something you still worried about as a programmer. And then memory expanded so much that all kinds of “optimal” patterns for programming just become nearly irrelevant. Will we start to actually consider this in software solutions again as a result?

I doubt it. I predict in a few years, maybe sooner, one/some of the AI companies buying up the supply will either have achieved their goal or collapsed, and then the market will be flooded with a glut of memory driving prices low again. Or, conversely, the demand stays high for a sustained period of time and the suppliers just increase supply. There's no hard bill of materials/technical reasons for the memory prices…

AI companies aren't buying RAM, they are buying the Wafers themselves. Then they are making special AI stuff. So the RAM never exists, and there will be no glut memory coming. Maybe some DDR5 will dribble out, but HBM isn't something we can use (at the moment).

Re: RAM now represents 35 percent of bill of materials for HP PCs

#317

Post by toast0 »

bradlys wrote: post #314
toast0 wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Big corporations tend to send old hardware through the surplus marketplace. There's lots of 3-4 year old corporate computers for sale. Often, the company leases the computers and then the lessor will sell them when they're returned.

Meanwhile I’m at faang and they’re reusing 7 year old monitors still. Still getting equipment from pre-covid era. Where are these luxurious big corporations that give their employees nice new equipment? :(

As long as it's working (and not gross), why do you need a new monitor? My current monitor is a 2010 model, I think I got it around 2013. I don't know what a new monitor would do for me, other than have a worse aspect ratio, cause Dell stopped making 30" 16:10 monitors.

Re: RAM now represents 35 percent of bill of materials for HP PCs

#318

Post by estimator7292 »

KellyCriterion wrote: post #283

This is like in 1993, when I bought a 486-DX2 with mighty(!!! ;-) 4 MB of Ram. MEGAbytes, not GIGAbytes :-D (Graphiccard memory was back then 256KB or 512KB or 1024KB, amount what we have today as L1 cache on throwaway CPUs) Raise your hand if you have been there too! :-))

I still have somewhere my first "real" GPU. I think it was an ATI card with an absolutely unbelievable 128MB of VRAM.

I think it ran at 433MHz, and I could overclock it to almost 700.

Those were the days!

Re: RAM now represents 35 percent of bill of materials for HP PCs

#319

Post by estimator7292 »

Infiniti20 wrote: post #36
haxtormoogle wrote: post #33

Isn't there a full wafer ai chip mainframe for data centers now that blows anything needing ram out of the water? I don't understand the ram shortage exists companies have surpassed nvidia.

How come there’s ASICs for mining but not AI? Seems like there would be almost unlimited demand

They've been putting TPUs in processors for a while now.

Re: RAM now represents 35 percent of bill of materials for HP PCs

#320

Post by bpye »

deafpolygon wrote: post #130
locusofself wrote: post #2

Jeez. I'm glad I "splurged" for the 24gb RAM in my macbook air. Should last me a few more years..

Apple also uses a different kind of RAM (iirc a custom LPDDR5X to use with their Unified Memory SOC - not the same kind as the commodity RAM that everyone is putting in their PCs. So they aren’t competing with everyone on it. Plus they probably locked in their rates back in 2024 with their suppliers.

The packaging might be different, but they're still competing for the same fab capacity.
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