I have a 32 GiB DDR5 set, happy to exchange for $500K in cash or a nice little house in Spain.
I have a nice little house in Spain, I'm willing to trade it for 128GB of RDIMM DDR5.
4800MHz single rank ok?
Sam Altman’s DRAM Deal
71–80 of 255 posts
Re: Sam Altman’s DRAM Deal
#72Secondary RAM Manufacturing Had Stalled. Budget brands normally buy older DRAM fabrication equipment from mega-producers like Samsung when Samsung upgrades their DRAM lines to the latest and greatest equipment. This allows the DRAM market to expand more than it would otherwise because it makes any upgrading of the fanciest production lines to still be additive change to the market. However, Korean memory firms have b…
One of the big problems here is that all of the hardware companies have been burned by hype before (e.g. crypto). No one actually believes that these AI companies will still be around in 5 years so spending billions to build factories for them doesn't make sense.
Re: Sam Altman’s DRAM Deal
#73The biggest question is, can they even pay for half of the deals they have been making?
Re: Sam Altman’s DRAM Deal
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
> OpenAI isn’t even bothering to buy finished memory modules! No, their deals are unprecedentedly only for raw wafers — uncut, unfinished, and not even allocated to a specific DRAM standard yet. It’s not even clear if they have decided yet on how or when they will finish them into RAM sticks or HBM! Right now it seems like these wafers will just be stockpiled in warehouses That is not "totally normal".
It's not really that different from Apple reserving wafer starts on TSMC's next node and so on. It's just that this kind of capacity requirement has rarely shown up in DRAM before. Vendors prefer this kind of capacity reservation over a more variable finished product requirement. It allows them to know that they can build at the bottleneck rather than having to start up more capacity and then having that lie idle whi…
I don't buy it. It's easier to make this argument for companies that are building their own hardware, since they know it can be immediately used. OpenAI's move is tantamount to hoarding for the sake of strangling competition. There was plenty of supply to allow for their plans without this move (especially since they will probably go bankrupt at this rate).
Re: Sam Altman’s DRAM Deal
#75[deleted]
Re: Sam Altman’s DRAM Deal
#76Re: Sam Altman’s DRAM Deal
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
Err… is there any question that the US is trying to slow down China’s high-tech computer development? I thought that was our open goal. Countries decided the extent to which they’d like to engage in free trade together. It is a knob that we’d hope our leaders would turn strategically. (Regardless of whether or not we think our leaders actually are doing a good job of it…).
> I thought that was our open goal. Is the goal also to hurt South Korean businesses and all businesses in the world, just to "pwn China" basically?
"America First" as an ideology means that question is never considered
Re: Sam Altman’s DRAM Deal
#78I'm reminded of the 1983 deal to corner the market on Frozen Concentrated Orange Juice.
That's a great comparison. The consequences are pretty universal too. History implies this won't end well for OpenAI.
Re: Sam Altman’s DRAM Deal
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seems like it is, but the question is whether the current Justice Department will do anything about it.
> Seems like it is Do you have a citation for what law is being violated? Or just vibes?
https://fortune.com/2025/11/23/ai-rivals-like-openai-nvidia-...
Obviously kind of a moot point because whether it violates antitrust law or not, what is guaranteed is the US Government is not going to do anything
Re: Sam Altman’s DRAM Deal
#80> To be clear - the shock wasn’t that OpenAI made a big deal, no, it was that they made two massive deals this big, at the same time, with Samsung and SK Hynix simultaneously That's not "dirty." That's hiding your intentions from suppliers so they don't crank prices before you walk through their front door. If you want to buy a cake, never let the baker know it's for a wedding.
What they mean is that they bought 40% of all RAM production, they managed to do that by simultaneously making two big deals at the same time. It's buying up 40% of all RAM production with the intention to have most of it idle in warehouses that is "dirty". And in order to be able to do that, they needed to be secretive and time two big deals at the same time.
> It's buying up 40% of all RAM production with the intention to have most of it idle in warehouses
They have no incentive to purchase a rapidly-depreciating asset and then immediately shelve it, none
They might have to warehouse inventory until they can spin-up module-manufacturing capacity, but that's just getting their ducks in a row