The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics • Hacker News Board

Re: The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics

#361

Post by actionfromafar » Fri, May 22, 2026, 1:48 PM UTC

SiempreViernes wrote: post #355

Tuna-Fish wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I still remember the huge DRAM shortage in late 80s forcing my startup at the time to delay launching our new product for a year. That one was caused by manipulation by politicians, not market forces. Micron started a price war with Japanese memory manufacturers, the Japanese cut prices to compete, Micron sued them for "dumping". The saga ended with the 1986 U.S.–Japan Semiconductor Agreement, which, among other th…

> That one was caused by manipulation by politicians, not market forces. Funny how you then go on to explain it was market _actors_ that drove the politicians to act, but that this is nevertheless totally not an example of market _forces_.

Market forces are usually meant in the spherical cow sense, not that the cow has politicians on their pockets.

Here it's useful to point out that free markets can't exist without an external force keeping them in check.

Re: The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics

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Post by throw3452 » Fri, May 22, 2026, 1:49 PM UTC

hackyhacky wrote: post #77

KnuthIsGod wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China going capitalist ( while remaining authoritarian ) has helped lift 800 million out of desperate poverty. I hope that India too can emulate this in my lifetime. I was born in Kerala and would love to see Indians live in a country that is as wealthy per capita ( PPP adjusted ) as Singapore or failing that even as wealthy as the USA. Capitalism has it's problems. But you struggling with rent is entirely your self-…

> But you struggling with rent is entirely your problem... Who said anything about struggling with rent? Sounds like you a grasping for a straw man. > I hope that India too can emulate this in my lifetime I, too, hope the best things for the people of China and of India. But India, by any metric, is already a capitalist economy, where its wealth is concentrated in the hands of a very few. To the extent that China has…

China wound not have a ton of billionaires that are living and fleeing China if they had their wealth distributed well

Re: The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics

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Post by nickpp » Fri, May 22, 2026, 1:50 PM UTC

yuriks wrote: post #215

nickpp wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

State run (or heavily regulated) services around here in Eastern Europe: health care, education and housing. All incredibly bad and expensive, I pay huge chunks of my monthly salary for them and I try to avoid them at all costs. They get worse and more expensive with time too. All the other services and products I use in my life, from the car I drive to the clothes on my back, the food I eat and the device I write th…

Health care, education and housing have been getting worse and more expensive in the US over the decade also. Must be all that nationalization.

> Must be all that nationalization.

No, it’s the regulations. In less regulated, freer markets like vision correction eye surgery the costs went down and quality up. Even in health care.

Re: The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics

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Post by hylaride » Fri, May 22, 2026, 1:50 PM UTC

m4x wrote: post #269

sokoloff wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what world would 256GB of RAM be “entry level”?

A world where Apple has invested in their own fabs, so they can sell devices with drastically more RAM than their competition at entry-level prices.

I'm no business expert and Apple is of course in a unique position, but owning your own fabs has rarely worked out long term. They require eye watering amounts of CAPEX that needs to be amortized over a timeframe that's longer than apple's products. Today's bleeding edge fabs become tomorrow's "cheap" fabs that pump out chips that don't need to be bleeding edge for the components that go into everyday products like microwaves, cars, etc.

One of the reasons Intel fell behind is that they couldn't give access to their competitors for business reasons, and therefore could never scale as high as TSMC could.

There are many other reasons, but accounting is a huge one. Unless there is a huge ROI or something else we don't otherwise know, I don't see Apple adding such expensive deprecating assets onto their books as chip fabs.

Re: The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics

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Post by onlyrealcuzzo » Fri, May 22, 2026, 1:52 PM UTC

zozbot234 wrote: post #346

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI data centers are eating like 80% of memory. Making user space applications more memory efficient is not even going to be a rounding error on memory demand. I am with you that it needs to happen, but it's not going to solve a memory shortage.

That's newly fabbed memory vs. an existing stock. The stock is quite massive, so optimizing existing use and enabling it to be repurposed can be meaningful.

Not really...

If the new memory is needed for AI data centers, it doesn't matter if your existing MacBook doesn't need as much memory anymore.

Re: The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics

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Post by [deleted] » Fri, May 22, 2026, 1:53 PM UTC

nuancebydefault wrote: post #180

So the availability of cheap phones is going down because of the cost of RAM. What about the RAM consumption trend of the last 10 years? I think it is very feasible to produce phones with the same amount of RAM as was the norm 10 years ago. The only compromise would be using older algorithms and features that consume less of it, and to take a bit of effort on keeping an eye on memory consumption in the development ph…

[deleted]

Re: The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics

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Post by tootie » Fri, May 22, 2026, 1:53 PM UTC

threecheese wrote: post #102

tootie wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US tariffs are mostly dead. Ruled illegal and being refunded. Second attempt at tariffs has also been stopped. And inflation over the past 5 years is still milder than the late 70s and definitely milder than what has been seen in Turkey or Argentina or Zimbabwe.

Ah, the ole’ “were doing better than Germany ca 1937” argument. /s

I didn't say "doing better". I was responding to someone very wrongly stating that we're at a historic level of inflation.

Re: The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics

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Post by dijit » Fri, May 22, 2026, 1:54 PM UTC

ponector wrote: post #287

nuancebydefault wrote: post #180

So the availability of cheap phones is going down because of the cost of RAM. What about the RAM consumption trend of the last 10 years? I think it is very feasible to produce phones with the same amount of RAM as was the norm 10 years ago. The only compromise would be using older algorithms and features that consume less of it, and to take a bit of effort on keeping an eye on memory consumption in the development ph…

Unless you can use apps created 10 years ago the is no sense to produce phones with old specs. Think of desktop, browser and electron applications. No way one can comfortable run modern software on 2015 machine. Maybe Linux could help, but anyway

I think the reasoning is incomplete.

RAM isn't the only reason to upgrade. CPU's are more efficient, screens are significantly better and support variable-refresh-rates (and high refresh rates), battery technology has not stood still: even if they didn't degrade over 10 years.

There's plenty of reasons to upgrade to a new system even if it has the same memory capacity on paper. The memory will probably be faster and lower voltage too.

Re: The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics

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Post by inglor_cz » Fri, May 22, 2026, 1:58 PM UTC

fireflash38 wrote: post #350

inglor_cz wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"unboundedness of the greed of a few" Lots of people claim "greed", but the stereotypical Tech billionaire doesn't simply roll around in gold like Scrooge McDuck, doing nothing and demanding more. They invest and reinvest it into new enterprises. Of all the ways of dealing with massive wealth, this is probably the second least disruptive one. (The first one would be just giving it to honorable causes.)

They claim greed because they always choose the path that makes them more money even if it has clear, evidence-based proof of societal harm. Ya know, just like the Sacklers and pushing oxycontin.

You don't know in advance what is going to make you money. Investments are risky.

In 2026, we know that SpaceX is a huge success. In 2002, it was just one of very many space startups, the vast majority of which ended up bankrupt, and before the last Falcon 1 flight, it was already on the brink of bankruptcy. They were incredibly lucky that the last rocket they had money for actually reached orbit.

During the same time, John Carmack invested into Armadillo Aerospace, and lost money.

Was he less "greedy" than Musk only because in retrospect we know that one didn't pan out and the other did? Or were they both simply risk takers in an uncertain field, motivated by a mix of incentives?

Re: The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics

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Post by sophrosyne42 » Fri, May 22, 2026, 2:01 PM UTC

hackyhacky wrote: post #324

sophrosyne42 wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Capitalism" is an ever shifting ambiguity that exists to be a scapegoat to attack but is completely meaningless in its concrete usage by the attackers. But "capitalism" in its historical and practical meaning means nothing other than commerce, i.e. the society based exchange, the system of production based on exchange. It was only through capitalist accounting methods that businesses were able to conduct commerce in…

> But "capitalism" in its historical and practical meaning means nothing other than commerce, i.e. the society based exchange, the system of production based on exchange Completely wrong. Many of my comments here distinguish commerce from capitalism. Commerce, ie the exchange of goods and services, has existed longer than civilization. Even some animals do it. Capitalism is specifically the substitution of labor with…

Every socialist tries to make this distinction and falls to their own guillotine. You do realize that "substitute with" is merely a synonym for "exchange"?

The exchange of labor, to be sure, has existed nearly as long as civilization itself, perhaps longer, as all people cooperate by exchange through the division of labor right down to the family, and it is exchange whether the articles to be exchanged are money or physical things or even intangible, ephemeral things like love, pride, loyalty, or otherwise. Since human society is human cooperation by the division of labor, by your definition capitalism is nearly synonymous with human society itself. Fine by me.