6 ms·

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 --

by dijit 8mo ago

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 competing on price, maybe they become price competitive before the launch of your new fab in order to kill it, but, it will have an effect and probably before it even opens 3) A western supply chain has benefits by itself. There's a reason some industries are not allowed to die, most notably farming- because security and external pressure are concerning. --- Realistically there's no reason not to do this. It will be long, painful and expensive. The best time was a decade ago. The next best time is now.

Gigachad 8mo ago
Your first point highlights the huge unmitigated risk. There is no guarantee that this won't all implode, triggering a huge recession. And even if no one can afford the ram after, they especially won't be able to afford the more expensive European ram. Really the only way it could work is if the government declares it it a national security issue and will promise to subsidize it. Because in just a free market, it's most likely to flop.
- phoronixrly 8mo ago
  It's been a headscratcher for me... The EU and the US have an issue with CCP-subsidised tech giants, but their sole reaction is banning them in some form or other? In the EU it is from public tenders, in the US it's from dealing with US companies. This does not really help EU and US businesses to be competitive though, neither does it stop consumers going for the cheapest option...
  - joe_mamba 8mo ago
    >The EU and the US have an issue with CCP-subsidised tech giants Except EU and US tech giants also get massive government subsidies making such accusations hypocritical. Silicon Valley has its roots in cold war defense funding. What the US and EU don't like it that China has beaten them at their own game using their own rules, so now they need to move the goalposts on why we shouldn't buy Chinese RAM and protect western DRAM monopolies making amazing margins.
  - tacticus 8mo ago
    Those US companies that the US government bought part of and funded their expansions with no controls over the cartel...
- egorfine 8mo ago
  > government [..] will promise to subsidize it Subsidize what? Copilot prompt in the Run dialog or Notepad? Is this what you think might be considered for subsidizing?
danny_codes 8mo ago
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.
- cwbriscoe 8mo ago
  You must not have heard, Biden is no longer president.
  - deleted 8mo ago
    [deleted]
josephg 8mo ago
> 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 I disagree. Modern RAM is made in fabs, which are ridiculously expensive to manufacture. Modern EUV lithography machines cost around 500M each. They're manufactured by hand. Only one company in the world knows how to manufacture them right now. So we can't exactly increase global manufacturing capacity overnight. The way I see, there's 2 ways this goes: 1. AI is a fad. RAM and storage demand falls. Prices drop back to normal. 2. AI is not a fad. Over time, more and more fabs come online to meet the supply needs of the AI industry. The price comes down as manufacturing supply increases. Or some combination of the two. The high prices right now are because there's a demand shock. There's way more demand for RAM than anyone expected, so the RAM that is produced sells at a premium. High prices aren't because RAM costs more to manufacture than it did a couple years ago. There's just not enough to go around. In 5-10 years, manufacturing capacity will match demand and prices will drop. Just give it time.
- chii 8mo ago
  > In 5-10 years and waiting for 5-10 yrs for a lower price is a long wait for consumers. If food prices were high, would you say to the starving person to wait for 5-10yrs for food?
  - josephg 8mo ago
    Thats a ridiculous metaphor. Ram isn't food. Nobody starved to death from insufficient RAM in their computer.
    - briansm 8mo ago
      Economies die from lack of produce though.
      - josephg 8mo ago
        When the internet boom happened, computers had a tiny fraction of the RAM they have today. Everything worked fine. Programmers had to make efficient programs. But we were fine with that. We just programmed in C and C++ and shipped small binaries, because what choice did we have? Nobody tried to build desktop software in javascript on top of electron. And nobody built web servers in python. If all consumer devices only shipped with 1gb of RAM maximum, we'd get over it remarkably quickly. Just about the only times large amounts of RAM is an actual requirement is AI, some data science / simulation, and editing video in 8k. And maybe 3d modelling. Lots of programs we run today are memory hogs for no good reason - like the rust compiler, cyberpunk 2077 and google chrome. But we could make those programs much more memory efficient if we really had to. Cyberpunk wouldn't look as pretty. But nobody would really care. The economy won't die due to expensive RAM. Programmers will just adapt, like we've always done.
jorvi 8mo ago
Prices are returning to normal, probably 2-3 years from now. SK Hynix is making absolutely monstrous investments in memory fabs and CMXT will be entering the market in force more and more. The biggest problem is that the industry wants HBM, whereas consumers want DRAM. Until the need for HBM has been sufficiently satisfied, fabs will prefer being tooled for HBM because businesses can be squeezed much harder than consumers. Then again, as consumer you don't really need DDR5 or even DDR4 so long as you aren't using an iGPU. Its all about being around CL15 timings.
NooneAtAll3 8mo ago
> 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
cyanydeez 8mo ago
You think AI can't implode..wat
mullingitover 8mo ago
> 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 You can't reshore domestic manufacturing without creating legions of desperate workers with no other choice but to accept minimum wage factory jobs.
amluto 8mo ago
> 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 RAM isn’t some commodity that gets mined at a fixed rate and therefore costs more when people want large amounts of it. It’s a manufactured good, made from raw materials that are available in huge quantity, that was produced and sold at a profit at 2024 prices, even accounting for the capex needed to produce it. Two things have changed. First, demand increased quickly. Second, big buyers sort of demonstrated that they’re willing to pay current prices, at least temporarily, so maybe the demand price elasticity has changed, or at least people’s perception of it has changed. None of prevents the price from going back down. The high prices have made it economical for new manufacturers to invest more to compete — look at CXMT. And CXMT doesn’t have EUV machines, which doesn’t appear to be a showstopper for them.
- zozbot234 8mo ago
  > at a profit at 2024 prices, even accounting for the capex needed to produce it 2024 prices were at a historical low, so we can't be sure that this is correct. Regardless, when production capacity is short-term constant, new RAM does get "mined" at a constant rate, a bit like bitcoin with its mining ASICs.
m4rtink 8mo ago
I don't think anything other then a major implosion of the AI companies is possible. It is just not physically possible to go any other way due to he ridiculous amount of funny money they have invested to this dead-end & the non-existent revenue these companies are getting back for it.
nl 8mo ago
> 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 This isn't right. RAM prices (and most components) are very finely balanced between supply and demand. A small shortfall in supply leads to a large increase in price, and a large shortfall in supply leads to very large price increases. It takes 2 years for an existing RAM supplier to build a new clean room factory to make RAM. All the RAM manufactures saw this shortage coming 6 months ago. If you follow the news, the existing manufactures are investing heavily. Here's Hynix annoucements: Nov 25: Hynix plans 8-fold boost to cutting-edge DRAM production in 2026, https://overclock3d.net/news/memory/sk-hynix-plans-8-fold-boost-to-cutting-edge-dram-production-in-2026/ https://overclock3d.net/news/memory/sk-hynix-plans-8-fold-bo... Dec 25: Hynix investing $500B (I guess this is a mistranslation somewhere!!???) in new RAM factories, https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/memory/hot-on-the-heels-of-micron-bailing-out-of-the-consumer-ram-market-sk-hynix-is-apparently-committing-over-usd500-billion-to-build-four-new-memory-fabs-with-the-first-to-be-finished-by-2027/ https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/memory/hot-on-the-heels-of-... Jan 26: Hynix to spend $13 billion on the world's largest HBM memory assembly plant, https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/dram/sk-hynix-to-spend-usd13-billion-on-the-worlds-largest-hbm-memory-assembly-plant https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/dram/sk-hynix-to-... The supply is being built to match the demand. Prices will stabilize, and the manufactures know there is lots of latent demand. In 2 years time RAM prices for consumers will be normal again (not sure about GPU RAM though!)
nektro 8mo ago
> The only way they will is if the [..] AI companies start to implode this is the theory of those who are expecting the ram shortage to be short, yes

by dijit 8mo ago

Gigachad 8mo ago

Your first point highlights the huge unmitigated risk. There is no guarantee that this won't all implode, triggering a huge recession. And even if no one can afford the ram after, they especially won't be able to afford the more expensive European ram. Really the only way it could work is if the government declares it it a national security issue and will promise to subsidize it. Because in just a free market, it's most likely to flop.

phoronixrly 8mo ago
It's been a headscratcher for me... The EU and the US have an issue with CCP-subsidised tech giants, but their sole reaction is banning them in some form or other? In the EU it is from public tenders, in the US it's from dealing with US companies. This does not really help EU and US businesses to be competitive though, neither does it stop consumers going for the cheapest option...
- joe_mamba 8mo ago
  >The EU and the US have an issue with CCP-subsidised tech giants Except EU and US tech giants also get massive government subsidies making such accusations hypocritical. Silicon Valley has its roots in cold war defense funding. What the US and EU don't like it that China has beaten them at their own game using their own rules, so now they need to move the goalposts on why we shouldn't buy Chinese RAM and protect western DRAM monopolies making amazing margins.
- tacticus 8mo ago
  Those US companies that the US government bought part of and funded their expansions with no controls over the cartel...
egorfine 8mo ago
> government [..] will promise to subsidize it Subsidize what? Copilot prompt in the Run dialog or Notepad? Is this what you think might be considered for subsidizing?

danny_codes 8mo ago

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.

cwbriscoe 8mo ago
You must not have heard, Biden is no longer president.
- deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]

josephg 8mo ago

> 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 I disagree. Modern RAM is made in fabs, which are ridiculously expensive to manufacture. Modern EUV lithography machines cost around 500M each. They're manufactured by hand. Only one company in the world knows how to manufacture them right now. So we can't exactly increase global manufacturing capacity overnight. The way I see, there's 2 ways this goes: 1. AI is a fad. RAM and storage demand falls. Prices drop back to normal. 2. AI is not a fad. Over time, more and more fabs come online to meet the supply needs of the AI industry. The price comes down as manufacturing supply increases. Or some combination of the two. The high prices right now are because there's a demand shock. There's way more demand for RAM than anyone expected, so the RAM that is produced sells at a premium. High prices aren't because RAM costs more to manufacture than it did a couple years ago. There's just not enough to go around. In 5-10 years, manufacturing capacity will match demand and prices will drop. Just give it time.

chii 8mo ago
> In 5-10 years and waiting for 5-10 yrs for a lower price is a long wait for consumers. If food prices were high, would you say to the starving person to wait for 5-10yrs for food?
- josephg 8mo ago
  Thats a ridiculous metaphor. Ram isn't food. Nobody starved to death from insufficient RAM in their computer.
  - briansm 8mo ago
    Economies die from lack of produce though.
    - josephg 8mo ago
      When the internet boom happened, computers had a tiny fraction of the RAM they have today. Everything worked fine. Programmers had to make efficient programs. But we were fine with that. We just programmed in C and C++ and shipped small binaries, because what choice did we have? Nobody tried to build desktop software in javascript on top of electron. And nobody built web servers in python. If all consumer devices only shipped with 1gb of RAM maximum, we'd get over it remarkably quickly. Just about the only times large amounts of RAM is an actual requirement is AI, some data science / simulation, and editing video in 8k. And maybe 3d modelling. Lots of programs we run today are memory hogs for no good reason - like the rust compiler, cyberpunk 2077 and google chrome. But we could make those programs much more memory efficient if we really had to. Cyberpunk wouldn't look as pretty. But nobody would really care. The economy won't die due to expensive RAM. Programmers will just adapt, like we've always done.

jorvi 8mo ago

Prices are returning to normal, probably 2-3 years from now. SK Hynix is making absolutely monstrous investments in memory fabs and CMXT will be entering the market in force more and more. The biggest problem is that the industry wants HBM, whereas consumers want DRAM. Until the need for HBM has been sufficiently satisfied, fabs will prefer being tooled for HBM because businesses can be squeezed much harder than consumers. Then again, as consumer you don't really need DDR5 or even DDR4 so long as you aren't using an iGPU. Its all about being around CL15 timings.

NooneAtAll3 8mo ago

> 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

cyanydeez 8mo ago

You think AI can't implode..wat

mullingitover 8mo ago

> 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 You can't reshore domestic manufacturing without creating legions of desperate workers with no other choice but to accept minimum wage factory jobs.

amluto 8mo ago

> 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 RAM isn’t some commodity that gets mined at a fixed rate and therefore costs more when people want large amounts of it. It’s a manufactured good, made from raw materials that are available in huge quantity, that was produced and sold at a profit at 2024 prices, even accounting for the capex needed to produce it. Two things have changed. First, demand increased quickly. Second, big buyers sort of demonstrated that they’re willing to pay current prices, at least temporarily, so maybe the demand price elasticity has changed, or at least people’s perception of it has changed. None of prevents the price from going back down. The high prices have made it economical for new manufacturers to invest more to compete — look at CXMT. And CXMT doesn’t have EUV machines, which doesn’t appear to be a showstopper for them.

zozbot234 8mo ago
> at a profit at 2024 prices, even accounting for the capex needed to produce it 2024 prices were at a historical low, so we can't be sure that this is correct. Regardless, when production capacity is short-term constant, new RAM does get "mined" at a constant rate, a bit like bitcoin with its mining ASICs.

m4rtink 8mo ago

I don't think anything other then a major implosion of the AI companies is possible. It is just not physically possible to go any other way due to he ridiculous amount of funny money they have invested to this dead-end & the non-existent revenue these companies are getting back for it.

nl 8mo ago

> 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 This isn't right. RAM prices (and most components) are very finely balanced between supply and demand. A small shortfall in supply leads to a large increase in price, and a large shortfall in supply leads to very large price increases. It takes 2 years for an existing RAM supplier to build a new clean room factory to make RAM. All the RAM manufactures saw this shortage coming 6 months ago. If you follow the news, the existing manufactures are investing heavily. Here's Hynix annoucements: Nov 25: Hynix plans 8-fold boost to cutting-edge DRAM production in 2026, https://overclock3d.net/news/memory/sk-hynix-plans-8-fold-boost-to-cutting-edge-dram-production-in-2026/ https://overclock3d.net/news/memory/sk-hynix-plans-8-fold-bo... Dec 25: Hynix investing $500B (I guess this is a mistranslation somewhere!!???) in new RAM factories, https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/memory/hot-on-the-heels-of-micron-bailing-out-of-the-consumer-ram-market-sk-hynix-is-apparently-committing-over-usd500-billion-to-build-four-new-memory-fabs-with-the-first-to-be-finished-by-2027/ https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/memory/hot-on-the-heels-of-... Jan 26: Hynix to spend $13 billion on the world's largest HBM memory assembly plant, https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/dram/sk-hynix-to-spend-usd13-billion-on-the-worlds-largest-hbm-memory-assembly-plant https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/dram/sk-hynix-to-... The supply is being built to match the demand. Prices will stabilize, and the manufactures know there is lots of latent demand. In 2 years time RAM prices for consumers will be normal again (not sure about GPU RAM though!)

nektro 8mo ago

> The only way they will is if the [..] AI companies start to implode this is the theory of those who are expecting the ram shortage to be short, yes