Don't really need the EUVs for commodity DRAMs and China has plenty of DUVs capable of 10nm. CXMT's DDR5 is known to use 1z nodes (17nm) vs 1c (10nm) used by the big three -- ie, higher cost, less efficiency, less density.
The big three are also expanding their capacity. IMO, it seems to make more sense to sell equipments to those who could make better, efficient use of them. ASML has a backlog of €38.8 billion and is fully booked for 2027.
Lame: Fight the war on general computation by spending decades pushing elaborate technical standards for locking down bootloaders, try to convince society why we need device attestation and hardware-bound keys, gradually establish devices without root access as the norm, get into constant skirmishes with free software and privacy advocates, get drawn into unpleasant political quagmires, etc etc
Amazon has implemented a password system for RAM delivery. You're supposed to give a password to the deliverer before taking delivery of the RAM, and you're not supposed to send the password over the phone at all (although the Amazon delivery guy still called me and asked for it over the phone).
I've already been burned via amazon a few times recently.
Most recent one I bought a multi-tb hard disk, but got an old multi-gb disk shoehorned into legitimate box. Couldn't just get a replacement - had to buy one for more money since that drive's price had increased.
Depending on your location this will happen for any item with a certain value and presumably risk score. It's not a unique decision they made for RAM. Probably happened to your order because the value was high enough and your location, not because it was RAM specifically
This will have general inflationary consequences for consumer products (phones, consoles, laptops, etc.). On top of current uncertainties regarding oil and fertilizers, I think 2% inflation in the US and Europe would be a very optimistic target.
The average consumer isn't purchasing a lot of products with a lot of RAM every year.
Their 8GB of RAM phones will go up in price a little bit, but people aren't buying phones every year or even every other year.
So if the price of the 8GB of LPDDR went from $40 to $160 and it's all passed on to the consumer buying a new phone every 4 years, that's an extra $30/year in spending.
Most adults I know now use their phone for everything, so they're not buying new computers and laptops. They can wait 3 years for the market to settle before upgrading those, too.
Even I'm a heavy buyer of tech products and RAM, and I would bet you that my family's annual food bill fluctuates by more than what I've had to pay for RAM prices growing.
I think you are really underestimating how much memory prices are going to impact everything. I mean, look at Apple, they raised the prices of the HomePod mini and Apple TV- why? Because they use memory. It's going to have lots of follow on effects.
AI companies would do well to realize that civil disobedience is a thing.
Take what's currently happening to Flock cameras as an object lesson. People are so fed up with Flock that they're cutting their cameras down en masse, sometimes wiping them clean from entire jurisdictions. Tens of thousands of other people in those jurisdictions are cheering them on, even offering alibis for them before they've been caught. Law enforcement doesn't seem too keen to catch them either. You absolutely can be so hated that the law will not be enforced to protect your property.
If AI companies don't slow down and build some good will, AI data centres are probably at risk. They'd probably have been targeted before Flock were they not harder targets. A higher degree of cooperation and organization will be required to sabotage them, but it would be foolish to believe it won't eventually happen.
Monopolizing memory production for another year suggests that lessons have not been learned, the mad build-out will continue, and we're headed for some truly crazy stuff.
That's a really great point. So much about our world is about perception. I think the datacenter concern is overblown for the most part (except putting them next to houses), but the perception is stronger than the facts.
And if AI is putting people out of jobs and making everything expensive - or that's just the perception - that's gonna set AI back for years.
They don't need to slow down development, they just need to slow down on being greedy over all of the hardware. They should be investing in manufacturing.
I’m pretty sure this is why the “data centers in space” idea just won’t die. Yes, it has so many disadvantages, but it does have one distinct advantage of being outside the Molotov-throwing range of the public.
The boom cycle looks like it's going to last a while, but it never lasts forever. If the current memory manufacturers all conspire to not build more capacity, I'm sure someone else will (eg China).
China RAM entered the US market in quantity a week ago west coast. It’s slow buggy trash but it’ll cool the market until failure rates are known. Europe got its first shipment 3 weeks ago.
This is why I'm so hesitant to use AI. There are other reasons (for example: the journey is the fun part, not the destination; and I want to learn not have something done for me), but the pressure AI puts on memory and storage is too much for me. I do use it occasionally, mostly to keep tabs on it and for small problem solving (how do I do this one piece of a query in MySQL, since I'm not a MySQL DBA), but that's it for now, until this memory/storage issue is fixed.
> how do I do this one piece of a query in MySQL, since I'm not a MySQL DBA
Honestly for most things, the actual documentation is the best resource. I needed to learn to stop looking for solutions to my issue on various fora (like SO) and just read the primary documentation from the vendor. Have a look at dev.mysql.com or mariadb.com/docs/server
One of the problems with this is that documentation is increasingly also written with LLMs by the vendors, and now is often so vague and riddled with errors to be basically unusable, if not counterproductive by sending you the wrong way.
Microsoft has a great racket going on there. Vibecode shitty, unreliable services, offer wrong information in the slop documentation, then charge an arm and a leg for premium support which, in many cases, will just be an employee regurgitating more wrong AI slop information to you.
Why AI companies wont build their own RAM but prefer to pay multiple times more than what they sold pre AI boom? (And ram business was still profitable). They already make custom processors
Hmm. Forget about desktops. I'm programming a microcontroller which is actually reasonably priced and has gotten all its 32Mb of RAM in the same die as the processor, but I'm getting nervous and having a strong urge to stockpile...
One unit of HBM capacity consumes roughly the wafer capacity that could have produced three units of DDR5 capacity. HBM dies need to be larger than ordinary DRAM dies because of how the final packaging works.
> As discussed previously, the ramp of HBM production will constrain industry supply growth in non-HBM products. Industrywide, HBM3E consumes approximately three times the wafer supply as D5 to produce a given number of bits in the same technology node. With increased performance and packaging complexity, across the industry, we expect this trade ratio for HBM4 to be even higher than the trade ratio for HBM3E. We anticipate strong HBM demand due to AI, combined with increasing silicon intensity of the HBM roadmap, to contribute to tight supply conditions for DRAM across all end markets. As the memory industry is still recovering from the challenging environment in 2023, this tight supply environment will help drive the considerable improvements in profitability and ROI (return on investment) that are needed to enable the investments required to support future growth.
Yup... And in 2021(5 years ago now) I got 64gb ddr4 for 120 bucks, second hand with a 6 month warranty. I felt like I hit the jackpot then, now that price seems like literal peanuts. I can't wait for the AI bubble to burst.
It was already reported that new RAM production wouldn't be available until at least the end of 2027, and when it does come back online there'll be a backlog of orders, so prices and availability won't be stable until at least 2029. That's assuming there aren't more global economic and political issues delaying it.
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[ 0.21 ms ] story [ 17.7 ms ] threadWere devs supposed to optimize RAM for a shortage that might come? I’m guessing you had enough foresight to stockpile RAM?
Or lease a laptop from Apple if faceputer's aren't as much your style.
(PS: It is time to let ASML sell to CXMT.)
Other manufactures like Micron do have aggressive expansion plans, but fabs take a long time to build and bring online - multiple years.
The big three are also expanding their capacity. IMO, it seems to make more sense to sell equipments to those who could make better, efficient use of them. ASML has a backlog of €38.8 billion and is fully booked for 2027.
Game: Just buy up all the RAM...
Most recent one I bought a multi-tb hard disk, but got an old multi-gb disk shoehorned into legitimate box. Couldn't just get a replacement - had to buy one for more money since that drive's price had increased.
The average consumer isn't purchasing a lot of products with a lot of RAM every year.
Their 8GB of RAM phones will go up in price a little bit, but people aren't buying phones every year or even every other year.
So if the price of the 8GB of LPDDR went from $40 to $160 and it's all passed on to the consumer buying a new phone every 4 years, that's an extra $30/year in spending.
Most adults I know now use their phone for everything, so they're not buying new computers and laptops. They can wait 3 years for the market to settle before upgrading those, too.
Even I'm a heavy buyer of tech products and RAM, and I would bet you that my family's annual food bill fluctuates by more than what I've had to pay for RAM prices growing.
Isn’t it just… prices?
Take what's currently happening to Flock cameras as an object lesson. People are so fed up with Flock that they're cutting their cameras down en masse, sometimes wiping them clean from entire jurisdictions. Tens of thousands of other people in those jurisdictions are cheering them on, even offering alibis for them before they've been caught. Law enforcement doesn't seem too keen to catch them either. You absolutely can be so hated that the law will not be enforced to protect your property.
If AI companies don't slow down and build some good will, AI data centres are probably at risk. They'd probably have been targeted before Flock were they not harder targets. A higher degree of cooperation and organization will be required to sabotage them, but it would be foolish to believe it won't eventually happen.
Monopolizing memory production for another year suggests that lessons have not been learned, the mad build-out will continue, and we're headed for some truly crazy stuff.
And if AI is putting people out of jobs and making everything expensive - or that's just the perception - that's gonna set AI back for years.
Civil disobedience? In this economy?
Nobody wants this robber baron shit
Besides the AI craze, to me it sounds kinda reasonable. Most large buyers (apple, public clouds, OEMs) do forecasting and orders in advance, right?
> how do I do this one piece of a query in MySQL, since I'm not a MySQL DBA
Honestly for most things, the actual documentation is the best resource. I needed to learn to stop looking for solutions to my issue on various fora (like SO) and just read the primary documentation from the vendor. Have a look at dev.mysql.com or mariadb.com/docs/server
Microsoft has a great racket going on there. Vibecode shitty, unreliable services, offer wrong information in the slop documentation, then charge an arm and a leg for premium support which, in many cases, will just be an employee regurgitating more wrong AI slop information to you.
> As discussed previously, the ramp of HBM production will constrain industry supply growth in non-HBM products. Industrywide, HBM3E consumes approximately three times the wafer supply as D5 to produce a given number of bits in the same technology node. With increased performance and packaging complexity, across the industry, we expect this trade ratio for HBM4 to be even higher than the trade ratio for HBM3E. We anticipate strong HBM demand due to AI, combined with increasing silicon intensity of the HBM roadmap, to contribute to tight supply conditions for DRAM across all end markets. As the memory industry is still recovering from the challenging environment in 2023, this tight supply environment will help drive the considerable improvements in profitability and ROI (return on investment) that are needed to enable the investments required to support future growth.
https://investors.micron.com/static-files/4550f98c-1054-4847...