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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

#91

Post by wredcoll »

yehat wrote: post #87
alephnerd wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or China could stop antagonizing blocs like the EU through actions like solidifying ties with Russia [0][1][2], imposing rare earth export restrictions on the EU [3], and undermining EU institutions [4]. [0] - https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/xi-putin-hail-tie... [1] - https://www.reuters.com/world/china/chinas-president-xi-meet... [2] - https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-calls-closer-defen... [3] -…

Ahh, it is always China antagonizing others, isn't it? There's nothing wrong EU coming to absurd lengths in all directions that are leading to destruction of its economy and society only to please the narrative of few degraded groups of individuals. Yet, it is others that are the cause. Nice, easy story telling. All governments in the world turned to be on the dark side. But some are reaching new heights.

It's weird how the implication of "every government is bad" is that we should stop trying to improve them or worry about the ones that are the worst.

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

#92

Post by NooneAtAll3 »

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?

most likely in a couple years this bubble will pop, just like 8 years and 16 years ago

it's just a cartel cycle of gaining profits while soon eliminating all investments into competitors when flood of cheap ram "suddenly" appears

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

#93

Post by thfuran »

NooneAtAll3 wrote: post #92
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?

most likely in a couple years this bubble will pop, just like 8 years and 16 years ago it's just a cartel cycle of gaining profits while soon eliminating all investments into competitors when flood of cheap ram "suddenly" appears

This is coming from an insane demand spike, not some nefarious plot by the RAM manufacturers.

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

#94

Post by noosphr »

Gigachad wrote: post #25
Aerroon wrote: post #9

I think Europe should invest into manufacturing RAM. RAM isn't going anywhere, all of modern compute uses it. This would be an opportunity to create domestic supply of it.

The worry is that these high prices aren't going to last long. And by the time you spend years building the capacity, the prices plummet making your facility uneconomical to run. Ram will always be in some demand, but that doesn't mean it's viable for everyone to start building production.

AI demand isn't going away. It will just move from the data center to the local machine. On device AI is much better for the customer than it being in the cloud. Expecting people to stick with a few dozen gb of hbm is going to be the 'no one needs more than 640kb' of the 2030s.

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

#95

Post by cyanydeez »

thfuran wrote: post #93
NooneAtAll3 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

most likely in a couple years this bubble will pop, just like 8 years and 16 years ago it's just a cartel cycle of gaining profits while soon eliminating all investments into competitors when flood of cheap ram "suddenly" appears

This is coming from an insane demand spike, not some nefarious plot by the RAM manufacturers.

Yes, it's a nefarious plot of AI producers to attempt a monopoly with a product that no one seems capable of demonstrating has the exponential value they're betting on.

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

#96

Post by binaryturtle »

Fr0styMatt88 wrote: post #51

I asked ChatGPT directly how it was fair that OpenAI bought 40% of the world’s RAM supply. It denied this saying that the figures quoted were estimates only, that such massive RAM contracts would be easily obtainable public knowledge and that primarily the recent price increases were mostly cyclical in nature. Any truth to this? Edit to add: I am actually curious; I was under the impression that this 40% story going…

How about you ask a model of a competitor? You could just hitting build-in OpenAI propaganda on their own bot. :)

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

#97

Post by arjie »

I might not have bought NVDA or timed BTC correctly, but at least I have 512 GB of DDR5 in my server and 128 GB in my Macbook Pro haha. The reality is that these are insanely huge amounts of RAM. I'm glad to have them because I don't need these tab suspender extensions a bunch of my friends use, but really I'd prefer if GPUs were a bit cheaper, and server hardware was generally easier to get. An SXM5 based motherboard is really hard to get these days despite the fact that you can get super powered Epyc 9755s for comparatively nothing.

It reminds me of the heady days of Thai floods when hard drives were inaccessible.

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

#98

Post by cwbriscoe »

danny_codes wrote: post #59
dijit wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a few things to note here: 1) Prices aren't returning to "normal". The only way they will is if the hyperscalers and AI companies start to implode -- which will kill a huge portion of the US economy and lead to global recession, so, cheap RAM but nobody can afford it 2) By building up capacity you influence the outcome. If someone else enters the DRAM space, the duopoly has to actually start thinking about co…

FWIW I agree with you. The US should provide stable, consistent policy & funding so companies understand the regulatory environment and do long-term planning. Which is a good idea for when we don't have a dementia patient in charge of our country. EU should get on that though.

You must not have heard, Biden is no longer president.

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

#99

Post by NooneAtAll3 »

dijit wrote: post #39
Gigachad wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The worry is that these high prices aren't going to last long. And by the time you spend years building the capacity, the prices plummet making your facility uneconomical to run. Ram will always be in some demand, but that doesn't mean it's viable for everyone to start building production.

There's a few things to note here: 1) Prices aren't returning to "normal". The only way they will is if the hyperscalers and AI companies start to implode -- which will kill a huge portion of the US economy and lead to global recession, so, cheap RAM but nobody can afford it 2) By building up capacity you influence the outcome. If someone else enters the DRAM space, the duopoly has to actually start thinking about co…

> The only way they will is if the hyperscalers and AI companies start to implode

you're missing the picture that it's not companIES - the crisis primarily was caused by only one company OpenAI buying out wafers

but even more than that - that wafer buyout is *an excuse* used by cartel - there are several mechanisms that could have eased out most of the problem (e.g. Samsung selling old equipment) that was not done to ride the money wave

(also said "hyperscalers and AI companies" existed in spring 2025 too, yet the price was low)

the winners will not be the ones who build new fabs - but ones who'll have enough money and government subsidies/import taxes to protect such investments after cartel decides to oversupply again, flushing the price down

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

#100

Post by cyanydeez »

bsimpson wrote: post #18
tehlike wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect game development will be similar - game companies will optimize their games given customer cards are not going to be released for a while or will be too expensive.

I hope so. Resource usage has been on a hedonic treadmill at least since I came online in the 90s. Good things have come from that, of course, but there's also plenty of abstraction/waste that's permitted because "new computers can handle it." With so many gaming devices based on the AMD Z1 Extreme platform (and its custom Valve corollaries) over the past few years, it'll be great to see that be the target/baseline f…

Still, isn't part of the hedonic treadmill merely marketers dream of number goes up? If your software needs more specs, then surely it's doing more work and the hardware boys will gladly give you a monitor with more hz.

So, the causal link is more: why would software makers need to optimize when it benefits them to pretend the user _needs_ more hardware. Especially in the games realm. Surely going from 60hz to 240hx refresh rate was a practical loss in benefits per hz halfway through. But it ate up hardware resources along the way.

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