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Comment by DocTomoe | Hacker News Reader

I feel we have a RAM price surge every four years. The excuses change, but it's always when we see a generation switch to the next gen of DDR. Which makes me believe it's not AI, or graphics cards, or crypto, or gaming, or one of the billion other conceivable reasons, but price-gouging when new standards emerge and production capacity is still limited. Which would be much harder to justify than 'the AI/Crypto/Gaming folks (who no-one likes) are sweeping the market...'

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But we're not currently switching to a next gen of DDR. DDR5 has been around for several years, DDR6 won't be here before 2027. We're right in the middle of DDR5's life cycle.

That is not to say there is no price-fixing going on, just that I really can't see a correlation with DDR generations.

Regardless of whether it is Crypto/AI/etc., this would seem to be wake-up call #2. We're finding the strangle-points in our "economy"—will we do anything about it? A single fab in Phoenix would seem inadequate?

What will we do with that fab in two years when nobody needs that excess RAM?

There has never been 'an excess of RAM', the market has always absorbed what was available.

Yeah right, tell that to Qimonda.

Sell it at lower prices. Demand is a function of price, not a scalar.

Tax write-off donations to schools and non-profits, too.

I suspect there will be a shortage of something else then…

And regardless, you could flip it around and ask, what will we do in x years when the next shortage comes along and we have no fabs? (And that shortage of course could well be an imposed one from an unfriendly nation.)

If 'the West' would be half as smart as they claim to be there would be many more fabs in friendly territory. Stick a couple in Australia and NZ too for good measure, it is just too critical of a resource now.

The west is only smart at financial engineering (printing money to inflate stocks and housing). Anything related to non-military manufacturing should be outsourced to the cheapest bidder to increase shareholder value.

Micron is bringing up one in Boise Idaho as well.

It's a political problem: do we, the people, have a choice in what gets prioritized? I think it's clear that the majority of people don't give a damn about minor improvements in AI and would rather have a better computer, smartphone, or something else for their daily lives than fuel the follies of OpenAI and its competitors. At worst, they can build more fabs simultaneously to have the necessary production for AI within a few years, but reallocating it right now is detrimental and nobody wants that, except for a few members of the crazy elite like Sam Altman or Elon Musk.

Why is this downvoted, this is not the first time I've heard that opinion expressed and every time it happens there is more evidence that maybe there is something to it. I've been following the DRAM market since the 4164 was the hot new thing and it cost - not kidding - $300 for 8 of these which would give you all of 64K RAM. Over the years I've seen the price surge multiple times and usually there was some kind of hard to verify reason attached to it. From flooded factories to problems with new nodes and a whole slew of other issues.

RAM being a staple of the computing industry you have to wonder if there aren't people cleaning up on this, it would be super easy to create an artificial shortage given the low number of players in this market. In contrast, say the price of gasoline, has been remarkably steady with one notable outlier with a very easy to verify and direct cause.

This industry has a history of forming cartels.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRAM_price_fixing_scandal

There is also the side effect of limiting people to run powerful models themselves. Could very well be part of a strategy.

It's absolutely part of the strategy and the strategy has multiple prongs. Another prong is this obnoxious push for regulatory capture in the name of "safety".

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