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Look at it this way: while the upfront cost to scale up production is huge, prices are now high enough to justify it even if demand is expected to drop abruptly
by gruntled-worker 3mo ago
Look at it this way: while the upfront cost to scale up production is huge, prices are now high enough to justify it even if demand is expected to drop abruptly later on. So if you can wait 5 years for your next PC, 1TB RAM might go for what 64GB would have cost without the AI demand spike.
Granted, if you need a new system before then, you're SOL.
One thing to look out for is supply capacity curiously going offline in 2030 or whatever. That would hint at market power or collusion.
- Retric 3mo agoMemory prices per GB were cheaper in 2012. It’s possible we’ll see a huge price drop on the near term but SSD + Cache + GPU’s seems to have changed the equation where RAM speed is considered more important than size. And from a pure architecture standpoint it makes sense.
- AbsurdCensor 3mo agoThey weren't though when you adjust for inflation. If you took inflation into account, ram is cheaper now by $0.89/GB for DRAM compared to 2012.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- Retric 3mo agoLowest 2012 price listed is 3.7 (2012-10-30) vs highest listed in 2026 is 5.375 (2026-2-1), which overlaps based on the margin for error involved. https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/ https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/
- fc417fc802 3mo agoEven being vaguely in the same ballpark is a wild regression when you consider the difference in density.
- AbsurdCensor 3mo agoSo you are trying to compare the lowest with the highest and not the current price. RUn that number with the current price.
- Retric 3mo agoThe most recent price listed is from a month ago and the prior prices are increasing. So really you can roughly compare years but not Today. There’s plenty of data to say prices in 2012 and 2016 overlap, which is wild.
- Schlagbohrer 3mo agoIt's crazy that a AAA video game cost $60 when I was a child in the 90s and costs $60 today, sticker price! Not adjusted for inflation!
- vel0city 3mo agoAnd to think that AAA video game was distributed on cartridge with expensive memory in cardboard packaging with a manual while these days that same $60 game is just a digital download from a CDN.
- account42 3mo agoHow is it crazy? The marginal cost to produce a copy of a video game is ~$0 and the market is much larger now then it was so fixed costs can be spread around more. The sticker price was always more or less arbitrary chosen - i.e. to maximize profits, which includes how the number is perceived.
- fc417fc802 3mo ago> while the upfront cost to scale up production is huge, prices are now high enough to justify it even if demand is expected to drop abruptly later on. Given the nature of the industry and how critical the product is I think it would make more sense for governments to bankroll fab construction in a way that the public takes on the risk of consumer prices falling below a certain level within some limited timeframe. Mildly subsidized chip production seems like a much better downside than the current sky high prices.