5 ms·

What has changed now in the memory landscape/ai workload in the recent months compared to summer or spring?

by zbendefy 10mo ago

jsheard 10mo ago
Apparently OpenAI locked down 40% of the global DRAM supply for their Stargate project, which then caused everyone else to start panic-buying, and now we're here: https://pcpartpicker.com/trends/price/memory/ https://pcpartpicker.com/trends/price/memory/
- giancarlostoro 10mo ago
  I dont even get this trend, wouldnt OpenAI be buying ECC RAM only anyway? Who in their right mind runs this much infrastructure on NON ECC RAM??? Makes no sense to me. Same with GPUs they aren't buying your 5090s. Peoples perception is wild to me.
  - drum55 10mo ago
    At the chip level there’s no difference as far as I’m aware, you just have 9 bits per byte rather than 8 bits per byte physically on the module. More chips but not different chips.
    - cesarb 10mo ago
      > you just have 9 bits per byte rather than 8 bits per byte physically on the module. More chips but not different chips. For those who aren't well versed in the construction of memory modules: take a look at your DDR4 memory module, you'll see 8 identical chips per side if it's a non-ECC module, and 9 identical chips per side if it's an ECC module. That's because, for every byte, each bit is stored in a separate chip; the address and command buses are connected in parallel to all of them, while each chip gets a separate data line on the memory bus. For non-ECC memory modules, the data line which would be used for the parity/ECC bit is simply not connected, while on ECC memory modules, it's connected to the 9th chip. (For DDR5, things are a bit different, since each memory module is split in two halves, with each half having 4 or 5 chips per side, but the principle is the same.)
  - jsheard 10mo ago
    OpenAI bought out Samsung and SK Hynixes DRAM wafers in advance, so they'll prioritize producing whatever OpenAI wants to deploy whether that's DDR/LPDDR/GDDR/HBM, with or without ECC. That means way less wafers for everything else so even if you want a different spec you're still shit out of luck.
    - nirui 10mo ago
      You forgot to mention that everyone else also raised their price because, you know, who don't like free money. Last year I brought two 8G DDR3L RAM stick made by Gloway for around $8 each, now the same stick is priced around $22, a 275% increase in price. SSD makers are also increasing their prices, but that started one or two years ago, and they did it again recently (of course). It looked like I'll not be buying any first-hand computers/parts before the price can go normal again.
      - wqaatwt 10mo ago
        > you know, who don't like free money. Yes but otherwise you’d get huge shortages and would be unlikely to be able to buy it at all. Also a significant proportion of the surplus currently going to manufacturers/etc. would go to various scalper and resellers
  - raddan 10mo ago
    I seriously doubt that single bit errors on the scale of OpenAI workloads really matters very much, particularly for a domain that is already noisy.
    - PunchyHamster 10mo ago
      Till they hit your program memory. We just had really interesting incident where one of the Ceph nodes didn't fail but started acting erratically, bringing whole cluster to a crawl, once a failing RAM module had some uncorrectable errors. And that was caught because we had ECC. If not for that we'd be replacing drives, because metrics made it look like it is one of OSDs slowing to a crawl, which usual reason is drive dying. Of course, chance for that is pretty damn small, bit also their scale is pretty damn big.
    - close04 10mo ago
      Random bit flips is their best path to AGI.
  - MangoToupe 10mo ago
    On the flipside, LLMs are so inconsistent you might argue ECC is a complete waste of money. But Open Ai wasting money is hardly anything new.
    - kvemkon 10mo ago
      Using digital chips instead of some novel analog approach is even greater waste. > China's AI Analog Chip Claimed to Be 3000X Faster Than Nvidia's A100 GPU (04.11.2023) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38144619 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38144619 > Q.ANT’s photonic chips – which compute using light instead of electricity – promise to deliver a 30-fold increase in energy efficiency and a 50-fold boost in computing speed, offering transformative potential for AI-driven data centers and HPC environments. (24.02.2025) https://qant.com/press-releases/q-ant-and-ims-chips-launch-production-of-high-performance-ai-chips-establish-blueprint-for-strengthening-chip-sovereignty/ https://qant.com/press-releases/q-ant-and-ims-chips-launch-p...
  - MisterTea 10mo ago
    ECC modules use the same chips as non ECC modules so it eats into the consumer market too.
    - officialchicken 10mo ago
      Good point! But they are slightly more energy hungry. At these scales I wonder if Stargate could go with one less nuclear reactor simply by switching to non-ECC RAM
      - Majromax 10mo ago
        Penny-wise and pound foolish. Non-ECC RAM might save on the small amount of RAM power, but if a bit-flip causes a failed computation then an entire forwards/backwards step – possibly involving several nodes – might need to be redone.
        coldtea 10mo ago
        >but if a bit-flip causes a failed computation then an entire forwards/backwards step – possibly involving several nodes – might need to be redone. Which for the most part it would be an irrelevant cost-of-doing business compared to the huge savings from non-ECC and how incosequential it is if some ChatGPT computation fails...
        hylaride 10mo ago
        Linus Torvalds was recently on Linux Tech Tips to build a new computer and he insisted on ECC RAM. Torvalds was convinced that memory errors are a much greater problem for stability than otherwise posted and he's spent an inordinate amount of time chasing phantom bugs because of it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfv0V1SxbNA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfv0V1SxbNA
  - coldtea 10mo ago
    ECC RAMs utility is overblown. Major companies often use off-the-shelves non enterprise parts for huge server installations, including regular RAM. The rare bit flipping is hardly a major concern at their scale, and for their specific purposes.
    - Glemkloksdjf 10mo ago
      Do you have a source for this? I would not want to rerun a whole run just because of bit flips and bit flips become a lot more relevant the more servers you need.
    - wtallis 10mo ago
      Most server CPUs require RDIMMs, and while non-ECC RDIMMs exist, they are not a high-volume product and are intended for workstations rather than servers. The used parts market would look very different if there were lots of large-scale server deployments using non-ECC memory modules.
  - crote 10mo ago
    ECC memory is a bit like RAID: A consumer-level RAM stick will (traditionally) have 8 8-bit-wide chips operating basically in RAID-0 to provide 64-bit-wide access, whereas enterprise-level RAM sticks will operate with 9 8-bit-wide chips in something closer to RAID-4 or -5. But they are all exactly the same chips. The ECC magic happens in the memory controller, not the RAM stick. Anyone buying ECC RAM for servers is buying on the same market as you building a new desktop computer.
    - embedding-shape 10mo ago
      > Anyone buying ECC RAM for servers is buying on the same market as you building a new desktop computer. Even when the sticks are completely incompatible with each other? I think servers tend to use RDIMM, desktops use UDIMM. Personally I'm not seeing as step increase in (b2b) RDIMMs compared to the same stores selling UDIMM (b2c), but I'm also looking at different stores tailored towards different types of users.
      - StrLght 10mo ago
        The expensive part is DRAM chips. They drive prices for sticks.
    - kvemkon 10mo ago
      > enterprise-level RAM sticks will operate with 9 8-bit-wide chips Since DDR5 has 2 independent subchannels, 2 additional chips are needed.
  - KeplerBoy 10mo ago
    The 5090 is the same chip as the workstation RTX 6000. Of course OpenAI is also not buying that but B200 DGX systems, but that is still the same process at TSMC.
- throw46106186 10mo ago
  It's kind of depressing to see that it takes just one asshole to screw the entire electronic market. If you read this, Sam, FU.
  - b00g13bored 10mo ago
    The proles will get dumb screens tethered to their sanctioned models; and we will be grateful!
  - MisterTea 10mo ago
    I got one of the Newegg circulars in my email advertising a sweet little uATX AMD server board and got to thinking that my home FreeBSD server could use a CPU bump and more memory. As soon as I saw how much 128GB of DDR5 ECC would cost my jaw dropped and noped the fuck out. The cheapest 32GB modules are around $300 and upwards of $500. Thought I was going to gift myself early this Christmas. Depressing indeed.
    - buildbot 10mo ago
      Indeed, it makes mini computers with soldered ram actually end up being quite cheap by comparison. HP will currently sell you 128GB AMD or Nvidia boxes for 1.7-2.8k depending on your flavor of choice. Not ECC though.
      - PunchyHamster 10mo ago
        ...till supplies last. Which won't be long when people do exactly that (hey, that mini PC is now cheaper than building similar setup)
        buildbot 10mo ago
        Indeed…
      - JonChesterfield 10mo ago
        The strix halo mini workstation is 128gb of ecc. Good machine. Source https://h20195.www2.hp.com/v2/GetPDF.aspx/c09086887 https://h20195.www2.hp.com/v2/GetPDF.aspx/c09086887
- AviationAtom 10mo ago
  That DDR5-4800 2x16GB price tend is crazy. It tripled from August/September until now.
  - Oxodao 10mo ago
    Even DDR4. Just checked, I bought a non-ECC 1x32go stick for my homelab on August 25th, priced 78€ on Amazon. Same offer is now at 229€. Yeah I guess I'll wait before updating to 64gig then
    - jsheard 10mo ago
      I don't think DDR4 is even being manufactured anymore, so the rush is clearing out that inventory for good.
      - duskwuff 10mo ago
        It is still being manufactured. Older memory standards continue to be manufactured long after they stop being used in computers, e.g. for use in embedded devices.
    - AviationAtom 10mo ago
      It reminds me very much of the crypto mining craze, when there was a run on GPUs and one couldn't be had for any less than 5x it's MSRP. I know that eventually passed and so too will this but it still sucks if you had been planning to purchase RAM or anything needing it.
- m4rtink 10mo ago
  What will happen once the bubble pops and OpenAI will not be able to pay for all the useless stuff they ordered ?
  - defrost 10mo ago
    Ideally the consumer market gets flooded with surplus at cost or below server grade hardware flowing out in going out of business fire sales.
    - PunchyHamster 10mo ago
      not much use for the 100GB+ AI boards or server RAM for consumers. Tho homelab guys will be thrilled. Enterprise wise, the used servers kinda always have been cheap (at least compared to MSRP or even after discount price), just because there is enough companies that want a feel good of having a warranty on equipment and yeet it after 5 years.
      - zozbot234 10mo ago
        Nowadays old-gen server hardware can be a viable alternative to a new HEDT or workstation, which would typically use top-of-the-line consumer parts. The price and performance are both broadly comparable.
        hollerith 10mo ago
        Isn't the typical server much noisier than, e.g., a high-end desktop (HEDT) with Noctua fans?
        zozbot234 10mo ago
        Depends how big the fans are. Tiny 1U rack-mountable hardware = lots of noise; huge fans = near silent with better heat removal capacity.
        renewiltord 10mo ago
- embedding-shape 10mo ago
  > Apparently OpenAI locked down 40% of the global DRAM supply for their Stargate project That sounds like a lot, and almost unbelievable, but the scales of all of this kind of sits in that space, so what do I know. Nonetheless, where are you getting this specific number and story from? I've seen it echoed before, but no one been able to trace it to any sort of reliable source that doesn't boil down to "secret insider writing on Substack".
  - jsheard 10mo ago
    Samsung directly announced that OpenAI expects to procure up to 900,000 DRAM wafers every month. That number being 40% of global supply comes from third party analysis, but the market is going to notice nearly a million wafers being diverted each month however you slice it. That's a shitload of silicon. https://news.samsung.com/samsung-and-openai-announce-strategic-partnership-to-accelerate-advancements-in-global-ai-infrastructure https://news.samsung.com/samsung-and-openai-announce-strateg... https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/dram/openais-stargate-project-to-consume-up-to-40-percent-of-global-dram-output-inks-deal-with-samsung-and-sk-hynix-to-the-tune-of-up-to-900-000-wafers-per-month https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/dram/openais-star...
    - ac29 10mo ago
      > Samsung directly announced that OpenAI expects to procure up to 900,000 DRAM wafers every month The article says: "OpenAI’s memory demand projected to reach up to 900,000 DRAM wafers per month", but not by when, or what current demand is. If this is based on OpenAI's >$1T of announced capex over the next 5 years, its not clear that money will ever actually materialize.
- IshKebab 10mo ago
  Oof the RAM in my computers is apparently worth more than I paid for the entire thing...
ThrowawayTestr 10mo ago
DRAM prices have skyrocketed recently

What has changed now in the memory landscape/ai workload in the recent months compared to summer or spring?

Apparently OpenAI locked down 40% of the global DRAM supply for their Stargate project, which then caused everyone else to start panic-buying, and now we're here: https://pcpartpicker.com/trends/price/memory/ https://pcpartpicker.com/trends/price/memory/

giancarlostoro 10mo ago
I dont even get this trend, wouldnt OpenAI be buying ECC RAM only anyway? Who in their right mind runs this much infrastructure on NON ECC RAM??? Makes no sense to me. Same with GPUs they aren't buying your 5090s. Peoples perception is wild to me.
- drum55 10mo ago
  At the chip level there’s no difference as far as I’m aware, you just have 9 bits per byte rather than 8 bits per byte physically on the module. More chips but not different chips.
  - cesarb 10mo ago
    > you just have 9 bits per byte rather than 8 bits per byte physically on the module. More chips but not different chips. For those who aren't well versed in the construction of memory modules: take a look at your DDR4 memory module, you'll see 8 identical chips per side if it's a non-ECC module, and 9 identical chips per side if it's an ECC module. That's because, for every byte, each bit is stored in a separate chip; the address and command buses are connected in parallel to all of them, while each chip gets a separate data line on the memory bus. For non-ECC memory modules, the data line which would be used for the parity/ECC bit is simply not connected, while on ECC memory modules, it's connected to the 9th chip. (For DDR5, things are a bit different, since each memory module is split in two halves, with each half having 4 or 5 chips per side, but the principle is the same.)
- jsheard 10mo ago
  OpenAI bought out Samsung and SK Hynixes DRAM wafers in advance, so they'll prioritize producing whatever OpenAI wants to deploy whether that's DDR/LPDDR/GDDR/HBM, with or without ECC. That means way less wafers for everything else so even if you want a different spec you're still shit out of luck.
  - nirui 10mo ago
    You forgot to mention that everyone else also raised their price because, you know, who don't like free money. Last year I brought two 8G DDR3L RAM stick made by Gloway for around $8 each, now the same stick is priced around $22, a 275% increase in price. SSD makers are also increasing their prices, but that started one or two years ago, and they did it again recently (of course). It looked like I'll not be buying any first-hand computers/parts before the price can go normal again.
    - wqaatwt 10mo ago
      > you know, who don't like free money. Yes but otherwise you’d get huge shortages and would be unlikely to be able to buy it at all. Also a significant proportion of the surplus currently going to manufacturers/etc. would go to various scalper and resellers
- raddan 10mo ago
  I seriously doubt that single bit errors on the scale of OpenAI workloads really matters very much, particularly for a domain that is already noisy.
  - PunchyHamster 10mo ago
    Till they hit your program memory. We just had really interesting incident where one of the Ceph nodes didn't fail but started acting erratically, bringing whole cluster to a crawl, once a failing RAM module had some uncorrectable errors. And that was caught because we had ECC. If not for that we'd be replacing drives, because metrics made it look like it is one of OSDs slowing to a crawl, which usual reason is drive dying. Of course, chance for that is pretty damn small, bit also their scale is pretty damn big.
  - close04 10mo ago
    Random bit flips is their best path to AGI.
- MangoToupe 10mo ago
  On the flipside, LLMs are so inconsistent you might argue ECC is a complete waste of money. But Open Ai wasting money is hardly anything new.
  - kvemkon 10mo ago
    Using digital chips instead of some novel analog approach is even greater waste. > China's AI Analog Chip Claimed to Be 3000X Faster Than Nvidia's A100 GPU (04.11.2023) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38144619 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38144619 > Q.ANT’s photonic chips – which compute using light instead of electricity – promise to deliver a 30-fold increase in energy efficiency and a 50-fold boost in computing speed, offering transformative potential for AI-driven data centers and HPC environments. (24.02.2025) https://qant.com/press-releases/q-ant-and-ims-chips-launch-production-of-high-performance-ai-chips-establish-blueprint-for-strengthening-chip-sovereignty/ https://qant.com/press-releases/q-ant-and-ims-chips-launch-p...
- MisterTea 10mo ago
  ECC modules use the same chips as non ECC modules so it eats into the consumer market too.
  - officialchicken 10mo ago
    Good point! But they are slightly more energy hungry. At these scales I wonder if Stargate could go with one less nuclear reactor simply by switching to non-ECC RAM
    - Majromax 10mo ago
      Penny-wise and pound foolish. Non-ECC RAM might save on the small amount of RAM power, but if a bit-flip causes a failed computation then an entire forwards/backwards step – possibly involving several nodes – might need to be redone.
      - coldtea 10mo ago
        >but if a bit-flip causes a failed computation then an entire forwards/backwards step – possibly involving several nodes – might need to be redone. Which for the most part it would be an irrelevant cost-of-doing business compared to the huge savings from non-ECC and how incosequential it is if some ChatGPT computation fails...
      - hylaride 10mo ago
        Linus Torvalds was recently on Linux Tech Tips to build a new computer and he insisted on ECC RAM. Torvalds was convinced that memory errors are a much greater problem for stability than otherwise posted and he's spent an inordinate amount of time chasing phantom bugs because of it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfv0V1SxbNA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfv0V1SxbNA
- coldtea 10mo ago
  ECC RAMs utility is overblown. Major companies often use off-the-shelves non enterprise parts for huge server installations, including regular RAM. The rare bit flipping is hardly a major concern at their scale, and for their specific purposes.
  - Glemkloksdjf 10mo ago
    Do you have a source for this? I would not want to rerun a whole run just because of bit flips and bit flips become a lot more relevant the more servers you need.
  - wtallis 10mo ago
    Most server CPUs require RDIMMs, and while non-ECC RDIMMs exist, they are not a high-volume product and are intended for workstations rather than servers. The used parts market would look very different if there were lots of large-scale server deployments using non-ECC memory modules.
- crote 10mo ago
  ECC memory is a bit like RAID: A consumer-level RAM stick will (traditionally) have 8 8-bit-wide chips operating basically in RAID-0 to provide 64-bit-wide access, whereas enterprise-level RAM sticks will operate with 9 8-bit-wide chips in something closer to RAID-4 or -5. But they are all exactly the same chips. The ECC magic happens in the memory controller, not the RAM stick. Anyone buying ECC RAM for servers is buying on the same market as you building a new desktop computer.
  - embedding-shape 10mo ago
    > Anyone buying ECC RAM for servers is buying on the same market as you building a new desktop computer. Even when the sticks are completely incompatible with each other? I think servers tend to use RDIMM, desktops use UDIMM. Personally I'm not seeing as step increase in (b2b) RDIMMs compared to the same stores selling UDIMM (b2c), but I'm also looking at different stores tailored towards different types of users.
    - StrLght 10mo ago
      The expensive part is DRAM chips. They drive prices for sticks.
  - kvemkon 10mo ago
    > enterprise-level RAM sticks will operate with 9 8-bit-wide chips Since DDR5 has 2 independent subchannels, 2 additional chips are needed.
- KeplerBoy 10mo ago
  The 5090 is the same chip as the workstation RTX 6000. Of course OpenAI is also not buying that but B200 DGX systems, but that is still the same process at TSMC.
throw46106186 10mo ago
It's kind of depressing to see that it takes just one asshole to screw the entire electronic market. If you read this, Sam, FU.
- b00g13bored 10mo ago
  The proles will get dumb screens tethered to their sanctioned models; and we will be grateful!
- MisterTea 10mo ago
  I got one of the Newegg circulars in my email advertising a sweet little uATX AMD server board and got to thinking that my home FreeBSD server could use a CPU bump and more memory. As soon as I saw how much 128GB of DDR5 ECC would cost my jaw dropped and noped the fuck out. The cheapest 32GB modules are around $300 and upwards of $500. Thought I was going to gift myself early this Christmas. Depressing indeed.
  - buildbot 10mo ago
    Indeed, it makes mini computers with soldered ram actually end up being quite cheap by comparison. HP will currently sell you 128GB AMD or Nvidia boxes for 1.7-2.8k depending on your flavor of choice. Not ECC though.
    - PunchyHamster 10mo ago
      ...till supplies last. Which won't be long when people do exactly that (hey, that mini PC is now cheaper than building similar setup)
      - buildbot 10mo ago
        Indeed…
    - JonChesterfield 10mo ago
      The strix halo mini workstation is 128gb of ecc. Good machine. Source https://h20195.www2.hp.com/v2/GetPDF.aspx/c09086887 https://h20195.www2.hp.com/v2/GetPDF.aspx/c09086887
AviationAtom 10mo ago
That DDR5-4800 2x16GB price tend is crazy. It tripled from August/September until now.
- Oxodao 10mo ago
  Even DDR4. Just checked, I bought a non-ECC 1x32go stick for my homelab on August 25th, priced 78€ on Amazon. Same offer is now at 229€. Yeah I guess I'll wait before updating to 64gig then
  - jsheard 10mo ago
    I don't think DDR4 is even being manufactured anymore, so the rush is clearing out that inventory for good.
    - duskwuff 10mo ago
      It is still being manufactured. Older memory standards continue to be manufactured long after they stop being used in computers, e.g. for use in embedded devices.
  - AviationAtom 10mo ago
    It reminds me very much of the crypto mining craze, when there was a run on GPUs and one couldn't be had for any less than 5x it's MSRP. I know that eventually passed and so too will this but it still sucks if you had been planning to purchase RAM or anything needing it.
m4rtink 10mo ago
What will happen once the bubble pops and OpenAI will not be able to pay for all the useless stuff they ordered ?
- defrost 10mo ago
  Ideally the consumer market gets flooded with surplus at cost or below server grade hardware flowing out in going out of business fire sales.
  - PunchyHamster 10mo ago
    not much use for the 100GB+ AI boards or server RAM for consumers. Tho homelab guys will be thrilled. Enterprise wise, the used servers kinda always have been cheap (at least compared to MSRP or even after discount price), just because there is enough companies that want a feel good of having a warranty on equipment and yeet it after 5 years.
    - zozbot234 10mo ago
      Nowadays old-gen server hardware can be a viable alternative to a new HEDT or workstation, which would typically use top-of-the-line consumer parts. The price and performance are both broadly comparable.
      - hollerith 10mo ago
        Isn't the typical server much noisier than, e.g., a high-end desktop (HEDT) with Noctua fans?
        zozbot234 10mo ago
        Depends how big the fans are. Tiny 1U rack-mountable hardware = lots of noise; huge fans = near silent with better heat removal capacity.
        renewiltord 10mo ago
embedding-shape 10mo ago
> Apparently OpenAI locked down 40% of the global DRAM supply for their Stargate project That sounds like a lot, and almost unbelievable, but the scales of all of this kind of sits in that space, so what do I know. Nonetheless, where are you getting this specific number and story from? I've seen it echoed before, but no one been able to trace it to any sort of reliable source that doesn't boil down to "secret insider writing on Substack".
- jsheard 10mo ago
  Samsung directly announced that OpenAI expects to procure up to 900,000 DRAM wafers every month. That number being 40% of global supply comes from third party analysis, but the market is going to notice nearly a million wafers being diverted each month however you slice it. That's a shitload of silicon. https://news.samsung.com/samsung-and-openai-announce-strategic-partnership-to-accelerate-advancements-in-global-ai-infrastructure https://news.samsung.com/samsung-and-openai-announce-strateg... https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/dram/openais-stargate-project-to-consume-up-to-40-percent-of-global-dram-output-inks-deal-with-samsung-and-sk-hynix-to-the-tune-of-up-to-900-000-wafers-per-month https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/dram/openais-star...
  - ac29 10mo ago
    > Samsung directly announced that OpenAI expects to procure up to 900,000 DRAM wafers every month The article says: "OpenAI’s memory demand projected to reach up to 900,000 DRAM wafers per month", but not by when, or what current demand is. If this is based on OpenAI's >$1T of announced capex over the next 5 years, its not clear that money will ever actually materialize.
IshKebab 10mo ago
Oof the RAM in my computers is apparently worth more than I paid for the entire thing...

ThrowawayTestr 10mo ago

DRAM prices have skyrocketed recently