15 ms·

2027 memory capacity is reportedly sold out

519 points by inigyou 3mo ago

tripleee 3mo ago
next gen gaming consoles are going to be at or over $1k. Honestly I think they're dead in the water in these conditions
PeterStuer 3mo ago
Isn't scalping illegal in some countries?
- actionfromafar 3mo ago
  Isn't scalping a term used for tickets? Also, these companies supposedly intend to actually use the RAM they ordered, not reselling at some inflated price. It's all fair game IMHO, except the elephant in the room which is that the AI company bubble might pop.
  - AussieWog93 3mo ago
    I don't see the AI bubble popping any time soon (as in, not in terms of physical datacenter buildout - stock prices could fall). Even if progress hits a brick wall, we still have multiple years of just expanding out the models we have to more people in more industries.
    - user43928 3mo ago
      And if anything, I believe progress has been accelerating. A year ago the SOTA was GPT-5/Opus 4.1/Gemini 2.5 Pro, two years ago Sonnet 3.5. Looking at Opus 5 for SOTA performance and GPT 5.6 Luna for a viable cheap alternative, AI is much more capable now. Honorable mention: GPT 5.6 Sol on Cerebras, capacity limited to a few customers, is supposedly serving 750 tok/s. Compared to 90 tok/s for non fast mode 5.6 Sol, 56 tok/s for Opus 5, and 190 tok/s for 5.6 Luna. I am very curious about the next generation of models, GPT-6/Astra is rumored to launch still in August. Not sure what is the state of Anthropic's next Fable checkpoint. If these models also deliver significant improvements, I really do not see how one could seriously still argue among the lines of AI being a scam, and the demand not being there to support the size of the investments.
      - kergonath 3mo ago
        > I really do not see how one could seriously still argue among the lines of AI being a scam, and the demand not being there to support the size of the investments. I don’t think most people are saying it is purely a scam (well, some do but I don’t think they are to be taken seriously). What all these talks about circular financing and VC money are saying is that demand cannot sustain the sector long-term, not that there is no demand. People are certainly happy to pay say $20/month for whatever AI chatbot, but would they still pay if it were $200/month, which is closer to the actual costs. There are several other details that point towards a unsustainable projections: - measurable benefits from AI-ifying companies are nowhere near what is commonly believed. AI providers are hoping that they can keep the show going until the models are good enough, essentially faking it until they’ve made it, but that is not a given. It is also unstable because it is susceptible to change in public opinion. - permits for new datacenters are not going to become easier to get as public opinion keeps turning against them. They will have to concentrate in friendly regions, which will add cost (more demand for the same location, plus interconnection for network and electricity, both of which can easily become bottlenecks). - the electric grids are not ready for all those planned datacenters, so something will have to give. Building more and more on-site diesel generator in times where oil supply is so constrained and random is not very sustainable either. - eventually the loans will come due and if earnings do not match there will be a, possibly severe, correction. If we look at the historical example of the dot-com bubble, the crash was not caused by no demand. It was just caused by over-estimated demand and too much money going to a single sector of the economy. We still use the Internet, and it is still hugely important, but the correction was still severe and real people lost real money.
        user43928 3mo ago
        Those are good points, but some arguments are weak: - Chatbot usage in $20 plans is likely nowhere close to a $200 cost. Inference cost has come down rapidly, with reports from July claiming OpenAI can now serve all of the logged out ChatGPT traffic on just a few hundred GPUs. - Measurable benefit: I doubt anything of value is being measured. MS Copilot with GPT 5.5 Instant processing SharePoint files? Developers using AI as a fancy autocomplete under a "I review every line" regime? I rely on my personal value judgement, based on 30h/week I spend using AI outside of my regular job. I am developing a mobile app, competing with companies with millions in revenue and entire dev teams. I know it is viable. Others lag in effective adoption, their opinion is likely to change soon with even more capable models. - data center projects in the US: They look to me to mostly be constructed in the most remote backwater. If even there projects with such moderate environmental impact cannot be realized, that would be an embarrassing policy failure - the grid: I think that one is true. AFAIK the constraint would be gas turbines, not diesel, and oil supply is not structurally constrained - the loans: Anthropic is rumored to have become profitable earlier this year because of large growth in enterprise revenue. It does not look so bad to me
  - GoblinSlayer 3mo ago
    Then we'll have a lot of cheap RAM.
    - tencentshill 3mo ago
      Not sure if HBM can be used as regular DDR.
  - dspillett 3mo ago
    > Isn't scalping a term used for tickets? It is also a term use in general trading anywhere traders open and close their positions quickly to make profit off an upswing which might be in part caused by traders doing this. If done with inside knowledge it is illegal, in this case more commonly referred to as “front running” (which is what many suspect happened with numerous ahemfortuitous/serendipitous position changes around announcements of changes in the state of the US vs Iran situation). > Also, these companies supposedly intend to actually use the RAM they ordered, not reselling at some inflated price. As well as the companies ordering for the purpose of DC roll-outs and upgrades, there will definitely be some buying purely to sell at a higher price a short time later. > It's all fair game IMHO, except the elephant in the room which is that the AI company bubble might pop. [and with reference to the sibling reply to this: “Then we'll have a lot of cheap RAM.”] I don't think it will pop with a sudden bang, and even if it is it won't affect these memory sales or probably those for 2028. The first real effect will be those using the AI tools suddenly finding themselves needing to pay a lot more for them as companies offering those services deal with reduced access to “new” credit from the circling investment pool shore up their fanciful accounting that way instead. The DC builds/upgrades that are currently planned will happen but more funded by end users and less by the investment cycle. New plans might not be actioned at the same scale, but it will take a while for that to affect component prices as there is a lot of lead time involved.
- inigyou 3mo ago
  Buying and selling at market price is rarely illegal. I think in the USSR it might be?
  - chupasaurus 3mo ago
    It was legal in USSR for USSR to scalp though, depends on point of view.
    - keybored 3mo ago
      Ha ha, the USSR was a silly thing. Anyway, what was the topic about?
      - inigyou 3mo ago
        I think it was about the failures of centrally planned 5-year plans of RAM sales.
  - HWR_14 3mo ago
    In the US, selling at the (new higher) market price during a declared state-of-emergency is illegal in most states and territories.
    - NewsaHackO 3mo ago
      Are talking about selling marked up water during a state of emergency? Don’t think that would apply here.
      - HWR_14 3mo ago
        Water is one example, but it usually goes beyond that. I'm not sure if RAM is ever covered by those laws, but I'm also not willing to look through every state's laws and check.
deleted 3mo ago
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deleted 3mo ago
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guessmyname 3mo ago
Keep an eye on this page → https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/trends/price/memory/ https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/trends/price/memory/
- zarzavat 3mo ago
  Note to the momentarily shocked: this is in Canadian dollars.
  - vdfs 3mo ago
    It's not just currency, Amazon Canada have some jumps recently not in US version: https://pcpartpicker.com/trends/price/memory/ https://pcpartpicker.com/trends/price/memory/
    - apple4ever 3mo ago
      Holy moly that's just unbelievable when shown in graph form.
- m463 3mo ago
  also: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=MU&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?q=MU&ia=web
  - Alifatisk 3mo ago
    Doesn’t show anything except searches for MU?
    - m463 3mo ago
      hmm.. on my system it shows the graph of micron stock which has exploded
tosti 3mo ago
All those devs who were saying "ram is cheap" BTFO.
- rock_artist 3mo ago
  That's tech... Moore Law was steadily going until raw CPU got stuck for a few years, switching from single core to multicore then heterogeneous cpus, all those requiring to rewrite software in a scalable manner and then consider newer schedulers switching between performance/efficiency cores and changing CPU freqs. Also, you have Meta and Google investing in simplified performant versions of their stack for developing countries which is similar. What's funny though, I see people that sometimes says it's cheaper to build the app they need in a single prompt than to search for it.
  - eru 3mo ago
    You know that Moore's law is about transistor count? What worked really well for CPU in eg the 1990s was Dennard scaling. That drove the Hz higher. And Dennard scaling is what stopped working. Moore's law is alive and well.
    - dgellow 3mo ago
      It also was just an observation, not a strict rule set in stone
  - otabdeveloper4 3mo ago
    Moore's "Law" is not a law, it's just an observation of market forces at a particular time.
- amelius 3mo ago
  Bad times for the two-space copying garbage collectors.
  - pjc50 3mo ago
    Are there any of those left? The popular VMs for Java, Javascript and dotnet are all very mature heavily tuned designs.
WithinReason 3mo ago
This hopefully helps mitigate the risk of putting more production capacity in place, which the Big 3 were not willing to do so far.
- pjc50 3mo ago
  At this size, I think we have to start worrying about a 2008-type default risk. AI companies will have ordered all the RAM and paid some kind of deposit for that, but actually taking delivery and paying for it is still in the future and the sums of capital involved are extremely large.
  - nixon_why69 3mo ago
    Also there is a ton of debt flying around, its not just equities hurting VC funds, real banks are facing risks now.
  - inigyou 3mo ago
    That's the reason RAM companies aren't expanding. Worst case, they can sell their normal production to gamers.
    - londons_explore 3mo ago
      Fail to deliver, and they get bankrupted... Do deliver and they don't get paid because the buyer purchased with money that doesn't exist. Lose-lose situation!
      - inigyou 3mo ago
        But they don't get bankrupted, because it's an ordinary year for them, only with different customers.
        londons_explore 3mo ago
        Fail to deliver, and they get bankrupted because a court would not simply unwind the deal - a court would demand compensation of the market price of the goods not delivered on delivery day - which will probably be very high.
amelius 3mo ago
How am I going to buy a computer that connects to AI datacenters now?
- cobertos 3mo ago
  I'm sure some enterprising company will find a way sell you a computer subsidized by your data usage or maybe by forfeiting your first born
  - tech2 3mo ago
    All that's old is new again. In the late 90s there were a number of companies (eMachines, for example) which heavily discounted their machines by having integral advertising, and in some cases through internet service provision. This sounds like the same idea all over again, just with a different backing fund source.
- ZoomZoomZoom 3mo ago
  Don't worry. Sooner or later this stuff will be mandatory and you'll be obligated to get your state-issued terminal. Social credits will do, if you have no money. For the skeptical ones: Somewhere people are already being cut off from state and financial institutions without proprietary software with bundled security certificates, applications are bound to collect data on the environment they are used in (other apps) and organizations deliberately limit access to their services or cripple them without their applications (can't do things from a generic web-browser).
  - techteach00 3mo ago
    Yes and if it's true it's usually downvoted or flagged on HN
  - zahlman 3mo ago
    > For the skeptical ones The words after this point make you less convincing, not more, as they only serve to confirm the egregious slippery slope of your reasoning.
chvid 3mo ago
I saw on Twitter that TSMC has made 1B worth of chips for Apple that they cannot package because of missing memory. (PS: It is time to let ASML sell to CXMT.)
- vdfs 3mo ago
  > (PS: It is time to let ASML sell to CXMT.) Why? High demand and low supply is very good for shareholders and make indexes go up, their goal is not to meet demand, they want exponential qurartly revunes
  - stingraycharles 3mo ago
    It’s temporary revenue, it’s not as if those businesses are suddenly fundamentally better. To me it seems like they’re just riding the AI hype out, expecting a crash after, and not willing to risk a lot of capital on someone else’s bubble.
    - Foobar8568 3mo ago
      Temporary revenues for decades to come.
      - stingraycharles 3mo ago
        That’s very much up for debate.
  - chvid 3mo ago
    True - but what is happening now is very destructive to a lot of important companies.
    - ethbr1 3mo ago
      Indeed. There's a reason the US government has historically stopped air traffic / railroad / longshore strikes: cascading effects. If memory is now upstream of so many companies, then maybe a higher regulatory involvement would be appropriate (like power companies). Specifically, and it could fix all of this, capping the max % of their supply they're allowed to sell into the AI space.
AmbroseBierce 3mo ago
Turns out AI-maxxing implicates citizens-minning.
xg15 3mo ago
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 Game: Just buy up all the RAM...
Schlagbohrer 3mo ago
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).
- prodigycorp 3mo ago
  can u provide some context? what is this trying to solve and how does it solve it? very curious.
  - codeulike 3mo ago
    Its a way to make sure the delivery takes place. A code is sent to recipient and recipient only gives it to the delivery person once item is handed over. Delivery person cant mark item as 'done' without the code. I've seen Uber Eats do the same thing sometimes.
    - stingraycharles 3mo ago
      What’s wrong with a signature?
      - jacobwg 3mo ago
        It's to prevent theft by the delivery person or by the wrong recipient
      - pjc50 3mo ago
        Signatures are terrible, and especially it's hard to automatically confirm they're correct even if you have a sample on file.
      - supersparrow 3mo ago
        Signatures are completely pointless. Literally draw squiggles as anyone else can. Nobody ever checks or compares them to the original, how can they?
gaigalas 3mo ago
The fact that consumer-level DDR4 is getting more expensive makes absolutely no market sense to me.
- AdamN 3mo ago
  The lines that would have made consumer-level stuff are being reduced in favor of the higher profit margin/demand products. That means more supply of those other products (but still not enough) and lower supply of the consumer-level stuff (driving up prices).
  - gaigalas 3mo ago
    Isn't DDR4 like, old and obsolete? From my knowledge, you can't just take a fab that produces DDR4 and make it produce DDR5 or higher. It's kind of a leap that requires replacing a lot of stuff. I would expect that old DDR4 machinery to end up somewhere else, still chugging along. Maybe someone buys the old production and keeps chugging low quality DDR4 or something. To me, it sounds like that didn't happened. Fabs that were producing legacy DDR4 are still producing it, just selling it higher and surfing on the consumer price increase of DDR5. As DDR5 became more expensive, people looked to build old AM4 PCs with the older memory, and the market just raised the price so that option would also cost more. IMHO DDR4 price increase has nothing to do with production.
    - wao0uuno 3mo ago
      >Isn't DDR4 like, old and obsolete? I built a new gaming PC with DDR4 two months ago and it's pretty great. For servers RAM speed usually matters even less.
    - phire 3mo ago
      There is some overlap. The last DDR4 fabs were typically on a 16nm process, the first DDR5 fabs were also on a 16nm process. There shouldn't be much issue converting those 16nm DDR4 fabs to DDR5, it's really just an issue of swapping out the masks. That's assuming they haven't all already been converted years ago. Even when there isn't an overlap, moving to the next process node usually isn't so much about replacing machines, but adding more machines. To oversimplify, you might not be able to convert one older DDR4 fab to DDR5, but sometimes you might be able to convert two older DDR4 fabs to one DDR5 fab. Such conversions might not be the most cost-effective option in the long run (that unmodified fab could have kept selling DDR4 for years), but conversions might be significantly faster than building new fabs.
pu_pe 3mo ago
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.
- dgellow 3mo ago
  Yep. And not in the future, it is here right now. And poor countries will as always be impacted way more than the US or Europe. The AI industry is the very direct cause and should be shamed for handling their rollout in such a destructing way. They deliberately created and grew the feeling of urgency for their own benefit
- tonyedgecombe 3mo ago
  2% was already optimistic once we decided we were buying too much from China.
  - inigyou 3mo ago
    Literally put a 50% tax on everything and then said it'll only raise prices 2%
    - Dylan16807 3mo ago
      Imports from China to the US are around 1% of US GDP. Total imports are maybe 14%? But not as highly tariffed.
      - tonyedgecombe 3mo ago
        Yes, they are very cheap aren’t they.
  - UncleOxidant 3mo ago
    And once we also decided that we needed to attack Iran.
- 3mo ago
beloch 3mo ago
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.
- amelius 3mo ago
  Except nobody knows where the AI data centers are actually located.
  - preisschild 3mo ago
    You can hear them from quite far away since companies like X use on-site Methane Gas Turbine Generators because they don't want to wait for the grid capacity to catch up.
  - apple4ever 3mo ago
    It doesn't matter. The perception is all datacenters do AI (not necessarily wrong nowadays either) and that's all that matters to the public when they see so many lost jobs and high computer / phone prices.
    - amelius 3mo ago
      And how does the public know there is a datacenter inside a random building?
kmfrk 3mo ago
[dead]
ghtbircshotbe 3mo ago
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).
- inigyou 3mo ago
  CXMT is now producing as much as one of the big three. Only for China, of course.
  - deleted 3mo ago
    [deleted]
  - odo1242 3mo ago
    They are producing about a third of what Micron (smallest of big three) produces, and plan on being on par with them in ~4 years.
  - dabinat 3mo ago
    That’s less that China needs to buy from the rest of the world, so it’s still a win.
  - nl 3mo ago
    > Only for China, of course HP, Acer and Asus are now using them https://asia.nikkei.com/business/china-tech/hp-asus-and-acer-begin-using-cxmt-chips-amid-memory-shortage https://asia.nikkei.com/business/china-tech/hp-asus-and-acer...
brador 3mo ago
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.
- livinglist 3mo ago
  Where did you get this info? What are these RAM used for? Data centers or consumer electronics?
znpy 3mo ago
Honest question: is this the first time this thing happens? Besides the AI craze, to me it sounds kinda reasonable. Most large buyers (apple, public clouds, OEMs) do forecasting and orders in advance, right?
- inigyou 3mo ago
  According to semiconductor industry stock market analysts, memory gets really expensive about once a decade on average so far.
- trynumber9 3mo ago
  Memory prices are cyclical. But this is bigger and longer than most cycles.
apple4ever 3mo 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.
- rickydroll 3mo ago
  Unfortunately, I can't not use AI because it provides the best speech recognition I've ever used and, going along with hand problems, it now allows me to write code after a three-year absence from that skill. I do miss it. I'd never do it again professionally in the large, but I have missed writing code a lot. My solution is to see what four or five-year-old equipment I can buy that will let me run local LLMs. I may only get six or seven tokens per second out of an i7, but it's a start. And best of all, I can turn the machine off when I'm not using it. IMO, Migrating to small-scale local LLMs would be a significant improvement over using data centers.
  - BeetleB 3mo ago
    > Unfortunately, I can't not use AI because it provides the best speech recognition I've ever used and, going along with hand problems, it now allows me to write code after a three-year absence from that skill. I'll second this. The combination of Whisper + LLM makes speech recognition fantastic. I occasionally have arm pain from typing, and this is a Godsend. I don't use it to write code - but in my experience stuff like emails + docs was the greater source of pain (one generally types slower while coding).
  - sfRattan 3mo ago
    > Migrating to small-scale local LLMs would be a significant improvement over using data centers. This shift is probably inevitable, but it will vary significantly by region depending on prices for electricity. Look at, for example, the difference in fundamental homelab build recommendations between Germans and just about anyone else. Electricity prices in Germany are so high that even a now expensive Raspberry Pi or other ARM board is often preferred over Intel/AMD builds due to low power draw (especially low idle power draw), an effect that adds up for a machine running all the time over years. With local LLMs and the GPUs to run it, especially if you want a model available to you all the time and can remote into your local network to use it whenever you want, there's no escaping much higher power draws, even at idle. Wherever electricity is expensive, the electric bill can be a prohibitive barrier.
csr86 3mo ago
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
- tokioyoyo 3mo ago
  Too slow, bum and bust cycles, dependencies one layer down are also booked up.
- johntb86 3mo ago
  AI companies aren't fabbing processors. They're buying capacity at fabs to make their own designs. To make more RAM, they'd need to invest in making more DRAM fabs, which is a slow process.
dsign 3mo ago
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...
- jacksons5f 3mo ago
  Well, that one is likely out of danger - so far PSRAM (I assume that's what you have) is not impacted that much. However, we had to cancel some projects because we couldn't secure enough chips which have DDR on die at a reasonable price. They are 4x now compared to December last year.
vonneumannstan 3mo ago
But Micron is overpriced and new capacity is about to come online right? Right???
bob1029 3mo ago
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. https://investors.micron.com/static-files/4550f98c-1054-4847-a929-c17d520a0564 https://investors.micron.com/static-files/4550f98c-1054-4847...
- vannevar 3mo ago
  >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. The problem is that they need actual chips tomorrow. I fear we are reaching the point in the semiconductor industry where, in order to sustain the revenue growth propping up their valuations, they're going to have to start selling future chips that cannot possibly be physically produced.
  - freeone3000 3mo ago
    The alternative is they could charge more. They could. And people would pay it.
    - vannevar 3mo ago
      The problem isn't the price. No matter how much you pay, you can't take delivery of a chip that doesn't exist. Now, you could raise prices to the point where you destroy demand. But that's a tricky window to maneuver through.
axegon_ 3mo ago
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.
0xbadcafebee 3mo ago
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.
1970-01-01 3mo ago
Seems like we need a USB equivalent standard to RAM sticks. I have lots and lots of old (1-2GB), intercompatible sticks sitting. Sometimes you just need the space and not the speed.
- undersuit 3mo ago
  Grab the cheapest Intel Optane M10 drive from eBay with a 1x PCI-E adapter from them too. 16GB of Swap for less than $20. The M10 are over produced and only PCI-E 3.0 2x lane devices but 16GB of DDR5 is going to cost over $200. You can do the same with USB-C M.2 adapters but the adapters cost more and eww USB for Swap, hope the device never drops.
  - hdb2 3mo ago
    Hey, I apologize for using you as tech support, but I found tons of those M10 sticks you are talking about, but what should I be looking for in terms of an adapter? All I can find are adapters listed as M.2: https://www.amazon.com/GLOTRENDS-Adapter-Aluminum-Heatsink-PA09_HS/dp/B07FN3YZ8P https://www.amazon.com/GLOTRENDS-Adapter-Aluminum-Heatsink-P...
    - Computer0 3mo ago
      I believe the intention is for you to put it in the M.2
    - undersuit 3mo ago
      That's a 4 lane adapter, it'll work if you have a 4x, 8x, or 16x PCI-E slot open. This is a 1 lane adapter: https://www.ebay.com/itm/128010189845?var=429206655218 https://www.ebay.com/itm/128010189845?var=429206655218
  - Melatonic 3mo ago
    Is that really competitive with just doing a pciexpress card with faster M2 SSD ?
    - 3mo ago
narrator 3mo ago
All of you that are excited for the m5 mac studios are going to be so bummed.
TZubiri 3mo ago
So.. memory futures? Sounds like a signal of an efficient and mature market to me, manufacturers sell their stock way beforehand, keep production steady, and wholesalers can hold stock and absorb risk in exchange of profit. Nothing prevents wholesalers from selling their memory or memory futures at a loss, as that is a risk that is justified by equal possibiltiy of the memory appreciating in excess of inflation.
- ChiperSoft 3mo ago
  I would not make that investment. All three memory makers are currently facing a US federal lawsuit for cartel price-fixing. https://www.polygon.com/ram-manufacturers-sued-supply-price-fixing/ https://www.polygon.com/ram-manufacturers-sued-supply-price-... SK Hynix's suppliers are also under investigation for anti-trust behavior in South Korea. https://en.sedaily.com/society/2026/05/29/prosecutors-raid-sk-hynix-suppliers-over-alleged-materials https://en.sedaily.com/society/2026/05/29/prosecutors-raid-s...
GMoromisato 3mo ago
I just bought 16 GB DDR4 for my (somewhat old) Dell tower for $120 + shipping from Techyparts.com. Looking around that seemed like a really decent price (but maybe I'm wrong). I had previously ordered from Aeonfly, but they cancelled my order--likely because they wanted to raise the price.
deleted 3mo ago
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throwatdem12311 3mo ago
My own PC died and now I’m locked out of my entire Steam library for the foreseeable future. A $2000 PC is literally a downgrade from what I bought 10 freaking years ago. What the freaking hell.
- stephenitis 3mo ago
  What part of your PC died?
  - throwatdem12311 3mo ago
    Motherboard. New motherboard…so new cpu socket (mine was Broadwell)…and new ram needed. GPU is mostly fine and can probably reuse that but it’s Vega so not the greatest I was due for an upgrade but the prices of everything is ridiculous. The thought of pc-of-Theseus’ing my busted ass PC is just sad. Thank god I bought a PS5 Pro before Sony started jacking up the prices. I remember when buying a $300 GPU was extravagant and gave you state of the art graphics.
    - ed_mercer 3mo ago
      can't you just buy a used same class motherboard from a marketplace?
    - pdimitar 3mo ago
      Why don't you just get a MB only for now? What mandates an entire new batch of hardware?
      - throwatdem12311 3mo ago
        I’ve been pricing out my various options but the notion of replacing a 10 year old motherboard with another 10 year old motherboard is kinda lousy. The PC I replaced when I bought this one was such a huge improvement. My options basically boils down to fixing trash that’s falling apart or a sidegrade at best for the same price as what I bought a beast of a PC for 10 freaking years ago. Depressing.
thomasjeff1 3mo ago
We are hammering our foot by investing in AI at this point. AI grows and grows and becomes god and kills us all. How did it all start? Oh we invested all our money in AI.
jgalt212 3mo ago
Queue the blog posts: We rewrote all our Python code in Go because the RAMs too damn high!
dartharva 3mo ago
Let this be a wake-up call for self-touted "sovereign" economies around the world. Domestic fabs are a must.
tonyhart7 3mo ago
does 2027 would be the end ???? I remember hyperscaler cashflow at all time low surely they cant doing the same for 2028 right ??
chocolol 3mo ago
They've been caught as a cartel before, a leopard never changes its spots, so its going to happen again.
nullbio 3mo ago
We need more manufacturing capacity, or this will never end.
- cafebabbe 3mo ago
  I can think of a few scenarios where this will end brutally
wbsun 3mo ago
I guess very soon we will see on HN that lots of young folks will be excited )share their findings of some “brilliant” and “innovative” ways to save memory.
- rgmerk 3mo ago
  I’ve no doubt they’re setting up memory-footprint auditing agents as we speak.
globular-toast 3mo ago
I just have to hope none of my equipment fails in the next few years, I guess. I don't need or want to upgrade, but some of it is getting a bit old. I have spinning rust at the 6 year mark with no failures yet... Part of me also thinks we need to stop this. How can we have a democratic society when only billionaires have access to computing equipment?
noduerme 3mo ago
So LLM profiteers have bought up all the consumer RAM for the next several years in order to deliver more of a service we're already oversaturated with that doesn't turn a profit..? I guess by then there'll be no consumers left with jobs to afford a PlayStation 6, so no problem. Except how will the AI trainers find revenue? If maximum potential is reached by laying off 90% of workers at companies that sell stuff... help me with the logic here... who's gonna buy the stuff those companies sell?
- suncore 3mo ago
  Not sure there is much actual profit in LLMs. It will be interesting to see promise meet reality, indeed.
  - noduerme 3mo ago
    I mean, it's obviously that they think they're going way beyond LLMs to get to something that is profitable, like some ultimate goldmine of intelligence. But if they miss that target by a hair or two, can we buy some of that RAM? I'd like my next MacBook not to cost $10,000.
    - SecretDreams 3mo ago
      I'm going to be very pumped when this comes crashing down. It's going to look a bit like oligarchs subsidizing consumer tech as they try to offload more ram than God could own.
      - bilegeek 3mo ago
        Everybody from OpenAI to Micron to the US Government is actively colluding to keep things going. I would love for you to be right, but I'm cynical from the decades that have been spent insulating these companies from consequences.
        SecretDreams 3mo ago
tiotempestade 3mo ago
Hoping all these DCs and AI whatnots turn out to be a flop, so that we’ll get plenty ddr5 at sale price :D
- esskay 3mo ago
  IIRC this wont be possible as a lot of them aren't being packaged on traditional DDR memory boards. They're being put on things like the MI350X. I'm sure there will be a ton of standard DDR5 sticks, but not so much from AI-only datacenters.
  - cryo32 3mo ago
    Expecting a pivot back to transitional parts if it goes bang.
  - inigyou 3mo ago
    China has a cottage industry around taking apart circuit boards and reusing the chips in unexpected ways. That's how you get desktop MBs with soldered laptop CPUs. HBM and DDR aren't compatible as far as I'm aware, but they might be able to do something. Maybe they'll invent a converter chip.
  - embedding-shape 3mo ago
    > this wont be possible as a lot of them aren't being packaged on traditional DDR memory boards. They're being put on things like the MI350X Even better, looking forward to having hardware like that at home for "cheap" in the future, compared to what it costs right now :)
    - undersuit 3mo ago
      The MI350X has a 1000W TDP. Maybe I'd use it in the winter.
      - embedding-shape 3mo ago
        My workstation is 1600W TDP and my office does get a bit cold in the winter, so it would do just fine next to us :)
tacocataco 3mo ago
Why stop at 2027? Why not just declare that you get everything produced by humanity for infinity years? How is a new business going to compete with incumbents that buy 100% of the necessary components needed to enter the market? Is no one else allowed to compete in this market anymore going forward?
- pizzaiolo 3mo ago
  It's not permanent. It's only this way until the bubble pops.
  - inigyou 3mo ago
    With infinite money printing will that ever happen?
    - embedding-shape 3mo ago
      Infinite money printing always been possible, all previous bubbles eventually burst, that's why we now identify them as bubbles in the first place.
krm01 3mo ago
This happened once before (less dramatic but still) until at some point the prices came down crashing. I can’t see this holding for much longer.
ppierre 3mo ago
Wait of few months: "AI companies can't pay"
MotoriX 3mo ago
I’m so glad I managed to upgrade my PC at the end of 2025, literally just a week before DDR5 prices started going through the roof...
rufasterisco 3mo ago
i feel like 90% of complaints about ram shortages i've read here could be solved by realizing that we mostly update devices for status reasons we would collectively all be better off by being forced to stick to older devices, value software optimized for proper resource management, and learn that instead of reflexively accepting "problems" we can see them as choices enjoy the rat race
- j1elo 3mo ago
  I'm ironically using AI to program an extra-lightweight 10-foot UI for an HTPC that's as underpower as one can be, and KDE Plasma BigScreen trashed it hard. Reason being, a more powerful one would cost more than what I'm willing to pay (and, mostly, for fun and learning, which is priceless)
- cmrdporcupine 3mo ago
  Me, I bloody well love optimizing and performance tuning software. And love "retro" hardware. I'm fully on board with this world of squeezing every last drop of juice out of older systems. It's fun. I have a minion in a terminal grinding away optimizing CPU-only LLM inference on Dual Xeon E5s. Why? Because it's neat.
- vatsachak 3mo ago
  Something like Windows can't even keep it's cool on my lunar lake 32 GB laptop while NixOS with Niri works great on an 8GB guy
pjmlp 3mo ago
Great, maybe we get back proper native applications.
Szero0x00 3mo ago
.
andyjohnson0 3mo ago
HBM is High Bandwidth Memory. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Bandwidth_Memory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Bandwidth_Memory
lewisjoe 3mo ago
I'm in the middle of my home construction. Any list of RAM/NAND involved electronics that I should be buying sooner than later? Obviously I need an SSD setup for security cams feed recordings. Just wondering are there any such things to buy sooner?
jck86 3mo ago
Checking the prices of the components of my build from 2020 is rather frightening. CPU and motherboard should be fine, but the rest of the main components not so much. Quick comparisons: my DDR4 ram is x2-ish (64GB - 342 -> 648 euros). my HDDs are x2-ish (22TB - 548 -> 988). A new _budget_ GPU I bought end of last year is now +100 euros (just half a year later). Didn't bother to check the SSD since I mostly need it for the OS and they don't die that often, but that comparison should also not be fun. My current build should last till 2030 so hopefully should be okay if nothing breaks, though I am doubtful these prices are coming all the way down again. Either wait it out, pay about 50% more or lower the capacity by 50%. The list of shortages and price _gauging_ for the last years is pretty extensive: PS5, Xbox, GPU (first bitcoin, now AI), RAM, HDD/SSD, etc. These shortages are becoming an incessant pain in the ass, on personal computing level but also professionally since replacing hardware is becoming difficult and the cloud bill will only go up too. Well at least we have not been replaced by the clankers, yet.
thenoblesunfish 3mo ago
I got a new MacBook Pro recently. Sure seemed expensive to get more RAM. But actually I don't know enough about the chip - it's an M5 system on a chip - is Apple ultimately buying the RAM parts of that from the suppliers AI is overwhelming, or do they "make the RAM with the rest of the chip" in some way?
amazingman 3mo ago
As sure a sign as any that the bubble is about to pop.
BiteCode_dev 3mo ago
I though buying a framework was neat, but now in this economy, it's a necessity.

519 points by inigyou 3mo ago

tripleee 3mo ago

next gen gaming consoles are going to be at or over $1k. Honestly I think they're dead in the water in these conditions

PeterStuer 3mo ago

Isn't scalping illegal in some countries?

actionfromafar 3mo ago
Isn't scalping a term used for tickets? Also, these companies supposedly intend to actually use the RAM they ordered, not reselling at some inflated price. It's all fair game IMHO, except the elephant in the room which is that the AI company bubble might pop.
- AussieWog93 3mo ago
  I don't see the AI bubble popping any time soon (as in, not in terms of physical datacenter buildout - stock prices could fall). Even if progress hits a brick wall, we still have multiple years of just expanding out the models we have to more people in more industries.
  - user43928 3mo ago
    And if anything, I believe progress has been accelerating. A year ago the SOTA was GPT-5/Opus 4.1/Gemini 2.5 Pro, two years ago Sonnet 3.5. Looking at Opus 5 for SOTA performance and GPT 5.6 Luna for a viable cheap alternative, AI is much more capable now. Honorable mention: GPT 5.6 Sol on Cerebras, capacity limited to a few customers, is supposedly serving 750 tok/s. Compared to 90 tok/s for non fast mode 5.6 Sol, 56 tok/s for Opus 5, and 190 tok/s for 5.6 Luna. I am very curious about the next generation of models, GPT-6/Astra is rumored to launch still in August. Not sure what is the state of Anthropic's next Fable checkpoint. If these models also deliver significant improvements, I really do not see how one could seriously still argue among the lines of AI being a scam, and the demand not being there to support the size of the investments.
    - kergonath 3mo ago
      > I really do not see how one could seriously still argue among the lines of AI being a scam, and the demand not being there to support the size of the investments. I don’t think most people are saying it is purely a scam (well, some do but I don’t think they are to be taken seriously). What all these talks about circular financing and VC money are saying is that demand cannot sustain the sector long-term, not that there is no demand. People are certainly happy to pay say $20/month for whatever AI chatbot, but would they still pay if it were $200/month, which is closer to the actual costs. There are several other details that point towards a unsustainable projections: - measurable benefits from AI-ifying companies are nowhere near what is commonly believed. AI providers are hoping that they can keep the show going until the models are good enough, essentially faking it until they’ve made it, but that is not a given. It is also unstable because it is susceptible to change in public opinion. - permits for new datacenters are not going to become easier to get as public opinion keeps turning against them. They will have to concentrate in friendly regions, which will add cost (more demand for the same location, plus interconnection for network and electricity, both of which can easily become bottlenecks). - the electric grids are not ready for all those planned datacenters, so something will have to give. Building more and more on-site diesel generator in times where oil supply is so constrained and random is not very sustainable either. - eventually the loans will come due and if earnings do not match there will be a, possibly severe, correction. If we look at the historical example of the dot-com bubble, the crash was not caused by no demand. It was just caused by over-estimated demand and too much money going to a single sector of the economy. We still use the Internet, and it is still hugely important, but the correction was still severe and real people lost real money.
      - user43928 3mo ago
        Those are good points, but some arguments are weak: - Chatbot usage in $20 plans is likely nowhere close to a $200 cost. Inference cost has come down rapidly, with reports from July claiming OpenAI can now serve all of the logged out ChatGPT traffic on just a few hundred GPUs. - Measurable benefit: I doubt anything of value is being measured. MS Copilot with GPT 5.5 Instant processing SharePoint files? Developers using AI as a fancy autocomplete under a "I review every line" regime? I rely on my personal value judgement, based on 30h/week I spend using AI outside of my regular job. I am developing a mobile app, competing with companies with millions in revenue and entire dev teams. I know it is viable. Others lag in effective adoption, their opinion is likely to change soon with even more capable models. - data center projects in the US: They look to me to mostly be constructed in the most remote backwater. If even there projects with such moderate environmental impact cannot be realized, that would be an embarrassing policy failure - the grid: I think that one is true. AFAIK the constraint would be gas turbines, not diesel, and oil supply is not structurally constrained - the loans: Anthropic is rumored to have become profitable earlier this year because of large growth in enterprise revenue. It does not look so bad to me
- GoblinSlayer 3mo ago
  Then we'll have a lot of cheap RAM.
  - tencentshill 3mo ago
    Not sure if HBM can be used as regular DDR.
- dspillett 3mo ago
  > Isn't scalping a term used for tickets? It is also a term use in general trading anywhere traders open and close their positions quickly to make profit off an upswing which might be in part caused by traders doing this. If done with inside knowledge it is illegal, in this case more commonly referred to as “front running” (which is what many suspect happened with numerous ahemfortuitous/serendipitous position changes around announcements of changes in the state of the US vs Iran situation). > Also, these companies supposedly intend to actually use the RAM they ordered, not reselling at some inflated price. As well as the companies ordering for the purpose of DC roll-outs and upgrades, there will definitely be some buying purely to sell at a higher price a short time later. > It's all fair game IMHO, except the elephant in the room which is that the AI company bubble might pop. [and with reference to the sibling reply to this: “Then we'll have a lot of cheap RAM.”] I don't think it will pop with a sudden bang, and even if it is it won't affect these memory sales or probably those for 2028. The first real effect will be those using the AI tools suddenly finding themselves needing to pay a lot more for them as companies offering those services deal with reduced access to “new” credit from the circling investment pool shore up their fanciful accounting that way instead. The DC builds/upgrades that are currently planned will happen but more funded by end users and less by the investment cycle. New plans might not be actioned at the same scale, but it will take a while for that to affect component prices as there is a lot of lead time involved.
inigyou 3mo ago
Buying and selling at market price is rarely illegal. I think in the USSR it might be?
- chupasaurus 3mo ago
  It was legal in USSR for USSR to scalp though, depends on point of view.
  - keybored 3mo ago
    Ha ha, the USSR was a silly thing. Anyway, what was the topic about?
    - inigyou 3mo ago
      I think it was about the failures of centrally planned 5-year plans of RAM sales.
- HWR_14 3mo ago
  In the US, selling at the (new higher) market price during a declared state-of-emergency is illegal in most states and territories.
  - NewsaHackO 3mo ago
    Are talking about selling marked up water during a state of emergency? Don’t think that would apply here.
    - HWR_14 3mo ago
      Water is one example, but it usually goes beyond that. I'm not sure if RAM is ever covered by those laws, but I'm also not willing to look through every state's laws and check.

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guessmyname 3mo ago

Keep an eye on this page → https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/trends/price/memory/ https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/trends/price/memory/

zarzavat 3mo ago
Note to the momentarily shocked: this is in Canadian dollars.
- vdfs 3mo ago
  It's not just currency, Amazon Canada have some jumps recently not in US version: https://pcpartpicker.com/trends/price/memory/ https://pcpartpicker.com/trends/price/memory/
  - apple4ever 3mo ago
    Holy moly that's just unbelievable when shown in graph form.
m463 3mo ago
also: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=MU&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?q=MU&ia=web
- Alifatisk 3mo ago
  Doesn’t show anything except searches for MU?
  - m463 3mo ago
    hmm.. on my system it shows the graph of micron stock which has exploded

tosti 3mo ago

All those devs who were saying "ram is cheap" BTFO.

rock_artist 3mo ago
That's tech... Moore Law was steadily going until raw CPU got stuck for a few years, switching from single core to multicore then heterogeneous cpus, all those requiring to rewrite software in a scalable manner and then consider newer schedulers switching between performance/efficiency cores and changing CPU freqs. Also, you have Meta and Google investing in simplified performant versions of their stack for developing countries which is similar. What's funny though, I see people that sometimes says it's cheaper to build the app they need in a single prompt than to search for it.
- eru 3mo ago
  You know that Moore's law is about transistor count? What worked really well for CPU in eg the 1990s was Dennard scaling. That drove the Hz higher. And Dennard scaling is what stopped working. Moore's law is alive and well.
  - dgellow 3mo ago
    It also was just an observation, not a strict rule set in stone
- otabdeveloper4 3mo ago
  Moore's "Law" is not a law, it's just an observation of market forces at a particular time.
amelius 3mo ago
Bad times for the two-space copying garbage collectors.
- pjc50 3mo ago
  Are there any of those left? The popular VMs for Java, Javascript and dotnet are all very mature heavily tuned designs.

WithinReason 3mo ago

This hopefully helps mitigate the risk of putting more production capacity in place, which the Big 3 were not willing to do so far.

pjc50 3mo ago
At this size, I think we have to start worrying about a 2008-type default risk. AI companies will have ordered all the RAM and paid some kind of deposit for that, but actually taking delivery and paying for it is still in the future and the sums of capital involved are extremely large.
- nixon_why69 3mo ago
  Also there is a ton of debt flying around, its not just equities hurting VC funds, real banks are facing risks now.
- inigyou 3mo ago
  That's the reason RAM companies aren't expanding. Worst case, they can sell their normal production to gamers.
  - londons_explore 3mo ago
    Fail to deliver, and they get bankrupted... Do deliver and they don't get paid because the buyer purchased with money that doesn't exist. Lose-lose situation!
    - inigyou 3mo ago
      But they don't get bankrupted, because it's an ordinary year for them, only with different customers.
      - londons_explore 3mo ago
        Fail to deliver, and they get bankrupted because a court would not simply unwind the deal - a court would demand compensation of the market price of the goods not delivered on delivery day - which will probably be very high.

amelius 3mo ago

How am I going to buy a computer that connects to AI datacenters now?

cobertos 3mo ago
I'm sure some enterprising company will find a way sell you a computer subsidized by your data usage or maybe by forfeiting your first born
- tech2 3mo ago
  All that's old is new again. In the late 90s there were a number of companies (eMachines, for example) which heavily discounted their machines by having integral advertising, and in some cases through internet service provision. This sounds like the same idea all over again, just with a different backing fund source.
ZoomZoomZoom 3mo ago
Don't worry. Sooner or later this stuff will be mandatory and you'll be obligated to get your state-issued terminal. Social credits will do, if you have no money. For the skeptical ones: Somewhere people are already being cut off from state and financial institutions without proprietary software with bundled security certificates, applications are bound to collect data on the environment they are used in (other apps) and organizations deliberately limit access to their services or cripple them without their applications (can't do things from a generic web-browser).
- techteach00 3mo ago
  Yes and if it's true it's usually downvoted or flagged on HN
- zahlman 3mo ago
  > For the skeptical ones The words after this point make you less convincing, not more, as they only serve to confirm the egregious slippery slope of your reasoning.

chvid 3mo ago

I saw on Twitter that TSMC has made 1B worth of chips for Apple that they cannot package because of missing memory. (PS: It is time to let ASML sell to CXMT.)

vdfs 3mo ago
> (PS: It is time to let ASML sell to CXMT.) Why? High demand and low supply is very good for shareholders and make indexes go up, their goal is not to meet demand, they want exponential qurartly revunes
- stingraycharles 3mo ago
  It’s temporary revenue, it’s not as if those businesses are suddenly fundamentally better. To me it seems like they’re just riding the AI hype out, expecting a crash after, and not willing to risk a lot of capital on someone else’s bubble.
  - Foobar8568 3mo ago
    Temporary revenues for decades to come.
    - stingraycharles 3mo ago
      That’s very much up for debate.
- chvid 3mo ago
  True - but what is happening now is very destructive to a lot of important companies.
  - ethbr1 3mo ago
    Indeed. There's a reason the US government has historically stopped air traffic / railroad / longshore strikes: cascading effects. If memory is now upstream of so many companies, then maybe a higher regulatory involvement would be appropriate (like power companies). Specifically, and it could fix all of this, capping the max % of their supply they're allowed to sell into the AI space.

AmbroseBierce 3mo ago

Turns out AI-maxxing implicates citizens-minning.

xg15 3mo ago

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 Game: Just buy up all the RAM...

Schlagbohrer 3mo ago

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).

prodigycorp 3mo ago
can u provide some context? what is this trying to solve and how does it solve it? very curious.
- codeulike 3mo ago
  Its a way to make sure the delivery takes place. A code is sent to recipient and recipient only gives it to the delivery person once item is handed over. Delivery person cant mark item as 'done' without the code. I've seen Uber Eats do the same thing sometimes.
  - stingraycharles 3mo ago
    What’s wrong with a signature?
    - jacobwg 3mo ago
      It's to prevent theft by the delivery person or by the wrong recipient
    - pjc50 3mo ago
      Signatures are terrible, and especially it's hard to automatically confirm they're correct even if you have a sample on file.
    - supersparrow 3mo ago
      Signatures are completely pointless. Literally draw squiggles as anyone else can. Nobody ever checks or compares them to the original, how can they?

gaigalas 3mo ago

The fact that consumer-level DDR4 is getting more expensive makes absolutely no market sense to me.

AdamN 3mo ago
The lines that would have made consumer-level stuff are being reduced in favor of the higher profit margin/demand products. That means more supply of those other products (but still not enough) and lower supply of the consumer-level stuff (driving up prices).
- gaigalas 3mo ago
  Isn't DDR4 like, old and obsolete? From my knowledge, you can't just take a fab that produces DDR4 and make it produce DDR5 or higher. It's kind of a leap that requires replacing a lot of stuff. I would expect that old DDR4 machinery to end up somewhere else, still chugging along. Maybe someone buys the old production and keeps chugging low quality DDR4 or something. To me, it sounds like that didn't happened. Fabs that were producing legacy DDR4 are still producing it, just selling it higher and surfing on the consumer price increase of DDR5. As DDR5 became more expensive, people looked to build old AM4 PCs with the older memory, and the market just raised the price so that option would also cost more. IMHO DDR4 price increase has nothing to do with production.
  - wao0uuno 3mo ago
    >Isn't DDR4 like, old and obsolete? I built a new gaming PC with DDR4 two months ago and it's pretty great. For servers RAM speed usually matters even less.
  - phire 3mo ago
    There is some overlap. The last DDR4 fabs were typically on a 16nm process, the first DDR5 fabs were also on a 16nm process. There shouldn't be much issue converting those 16nm DDR4 fabs to DDR5, it's really just an issue of swapping out the masks. That's assuming they haven't all already been converted years ago. Even when there isn't an overlap, moving to the next process node usually isn't so much about replacing machines, but adding more machines. To oversimplify, you might not be able to convert one older DDR4 fab to DDR5, but sometimes you might be able to convert two older DDR4 fabs to one DDR5 fab. Such conversions might not be the most cost-effective option in the long run (that unmodified fab could have kept selling DDR4 for years), but conversions might be significantly faster than building new fabs.

pu_pe 3mo ago

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.

dgellow 3mo ago
Yep. And not in the future, it is here right now. And poor countries will as always be impacted way more than the US or Europe. The AI industry is the very direct cause and should be shamed for handling their rollout in such a destructing way. They deliberately created and grew the feeling of urgency for their own benefit
tonyedgecombe 3mo ago
2% was already optimistic once we decided we were buying too much from China.
- inigyou 3mo ago
  Literally put a 50% tax on everything and then said it'll only raise prices 2%
  - Dylan16807 3mo ago
    Imports from China to the US are around 1% of US GDP. Total imports are maybe 14%? But not as highly tariffed.
    - tonyedgecombe 3mo ago
      Yes, they are very cheap aren’t they.
- UncleOxidant 3mo ago
  And once we also decided that we needed to attack Iran.
3mo ago

beloch 3mo ago

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.

amelius 3mo ago
Except nobody knows where the AI data centers are actually located.
- preisschild 3mo ago
  You can hear them from quite far away since companies like X use on-site Methane Gas Turbine Generators because they don't want to wait for the grid capacity to catch up.
- apple4ever 3mo ago
  It doesn't matter. The perception is all datacenters do AI (not necessarily wrong nowadays either) and that's all that matters to the public when they see so many lost jobs and high computer / phone prices.
  - amelius 3mo ago
    And how does the public know there is a datacenter inside a random building?

kmfrk 3mo ago

[dead]

ghtbircshotbe 3mo ago

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).

inigyou 3mo ago
CXMT is now producing as much as one of the big three. Only for China, of course.
- deleted 3mo ago
  [deleted]
- odo1242 3mo ago
  They are producing about a third of what Micron (smallest of big three) produces, and plan on being on par with them in ~4 years.
- dabinat 3mo ago
  That’s less that China needs to buy from the rest of the world, so it’s still a win.
- nl 3mo ago
  > Only for China, of course HP, Acer and Asus are now using them https://asia.nikkei.com/business/china-tech/hp-asus-and-acer-begin-using-cxmt-chips-amid-memory-shortage https://asia.nikkei.com/business/china-tech/hp-asus-and-acer...

brador 3mo ago

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.

livinglist 3mo ago
Where did you get this info? What are these RAM used for? Data centers or consumer electronics?

znpy 3mo ago

Honest question: is this the first time this thing happens? Besides the AI craze, to me it sounds kinda reasonable. Most large buyers (apple, public clouds, OEMs) do forecasting and orders in advance, right?

inigyou 3mo ago
According to semiconductor industry stock market analysts, memory gets really expensive about once a decade on average so far.
trynumber9 3mo ago
Memory prices are cyclical. But this is bigger and longer than most cycles.

apple4ever 3mo 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.

rickydroll 3mo ago
Unfortunately, I can't not use AI because it provides the best speech recognition I've ever used and, going along with hand problems, it now allows me to write code after a three-year absence from that skill. I do miss it. I'd never do it again professionally in the large, but I have missed writing code a lot. My solution is to see what four or five-year-old equipment I can buy that will let me run local LLMs. I may only get six or seven tokens per second out of an i7, but it's a start. And best of all, I can turn the machine off when I'm not using it. IMO, Migrating to small-scale local LLMs would be a significant improvement over using data centers.
- BeetleB 3mo ago
  > Unfortunately, I can't not use AI because it provides the best speech recognition I've ever used and, going along with hand problems, it now allows me to write code after a three-year absence from that skill. I'll second this. The combination of Whisper + LLM makes speech recognition fantastic. I occasionally have arm pain from typing, and this is a Godsend. I don't use it to write code - but in my experience stuff like emails + docs was the greater source of pain (one generally types slower while coding).
- sfRattan 3mo ago
  > Migrating to small-scale local LLMs would be a significant improvement over using data centers. This shift is probably inevitable, but it will vary significantly by region depending on prices for electricity. Look at, for example, the difference in fundamental homelab build recommendations between Germans and just about anyone else. Electricity prices in Germany are so high that even a now expensive Raspberry Pi or other ARM board is often preferred over Intel/AMD builds due to low power draw (especially low idle power draw), an effect that adds up for a machine running all the time over years. With local LLMs and the GPUs to run it, especially if you want a model available to you all the time and can remote into your local network to use it whenever you want, there's no escaping much higher power draws, even at idle. Wherever electricity is expensive, the electric bill can be a prohibitive barrier.

csr86 3mo ago

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

tokioyoyo 3mo ago
Too slow, bum and bust cycles, dependencies one layer down are also booked up.
johntb86 3mo ago
AI companies aren't fabbing processors. They're buying capacity at fabs to make their own designs. To make more RAM, they'd need to invest in making more DRAM fabs, which is a slow process.

dsign 3mo ago

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...

jacksons5f 3mo ago
Well, that one is likely out of danger - so far PSRAM (I assume that's what you have) is not impacted that much. However, we had to cancel some projects because we couldn't secure enough chips which have DDR on die at a reasonable price. They are 4x now compared to December last year.

vonneumannstan 3mo ago

But Micron is overpriced and new capacity is about to come online right? Right???

bob1029 3mo ago

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. https://investors.micron.com/static-files/4550f98c-1054-4847-a929-c17d520a0564 https://investors.micron.com/static-files/4550f98c-1054-4847...

vannevar 3mo ago
>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. The problem is that they need actual chips tomorrow. I fear we are reaching the point in the semiconductor industry where, in order to sustain the revenue growth propping up their valuations, they're going to have to start selling future chips that cannot possibly be physically produced.
- freeone3000 3mo ago
  The alternative is they could charge more. They could. And people would pay it.
  - vannevar 3mo ago
    The problem isn't the price. No matter how much you pay, you can't take delivery of a chip that doesn't exist. Now, you could raise prices to the point where you destroy demand. But that's a tricky window to maneuver through.

axegon_ 3mo ago

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.

0xbadcafebee 3mo ago

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.

1970-01-01 3mo ago

Seems like we need a USB equivalent standard to RAM sticks. I have lots and lots of old (1-2GB), intercompatible sticks sitting. Sometimes you just need the space and not the speed.

undersuit 3mo ago
Grab the cheapest Intel Optane M10 drive from eBay with a 1x PCI-E adapter from them too. 16GB of Swap for less than $20. The M10 are over produced and only PCI-E 3.0 2x lane devices but 16GB of DDR5 is going to cost over $200. You can do the same with USB-C M.2 adapters but the adapters cost more and eww USB for Swap, hope the device never drops.
- hdb2 3mo ago
  Hey, I apologize for using you as tech support, but I found tons of those M10 sticks you are talking about, but what should I be looking for in terms of an adapter? All I can find are adapters listed as M.2: https://www.amazon.com/GLOTRENDS-Adapter-Aluminum-Heatsink-PA09_HS/dp/B07FN3YZ8P https://www.amazon.com/GLOTRENDS-Adapter-Aluminum-Heatsink-P...
  - Computer0 3mo ago
    I believe the intention is for you to put it in the M.2
  - undersuit 3mo ago
    That's a 4 lane adapter, it'll work if you have a 4x, 8x, or 16x PCI-E slot open. This is a 1 lane adapter: https://www.ebay.com/itm/128010189845?var=429206655218 https://www.ebay.com/itm/128010189845?var=429206655218
- Melatonic 3mo ago
  Is that really competitive with just doing a pciexpress card with faster M2 SSD ?
  - 3mo ago

narrator 3mo ago

All of you that are excited for the m5 mac studios are going to be so bummed.

TZubiri 3mo ago

So.. memory futures? Sounds like a signal of an efficient and mature market to me, manufacturers sell their stock way beforehand, keep production steady, and wholesalers can hold stock and absorb risk in exchange of profit. Nothing prevents wholesalers from selling their memory or memory futures at a loss, as that is a risk that is justified by equal possibiltiy of the memory appreciating in excess of inflation.

ChiperSoft 3mo ago
I would not make that investment. All three memory makers are currently facing a US federal lawsuit for cartel price-fixing. https://www.polygon.com/ram-manufacturers-sued-supply-price-fixing/ https://www.polygon.com/ram-manufacturers-sued-supply-price-... SK Hynix's suppliers are also under investigation for anti-trust behavior in South Korea. https://en.sedaily.com/society/2026/05/29/prosecutors-raid-sk-hynix-suppliers-over-alleged-materials https://en.sedaily.com/society/2026/05/29/prosecutors-raid-s...

GMoromisato 3mo ago

I just bought 16 GB DDR4 for my (somewhat old) Dell tower for $120 + shipping from Techyparts.com. Looking around that seemed like a really decent price (but maybe I'm wrong). I had previously ordered from Aeonfly, but they cancelled my order--likely because they wanted to raise the price.

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throwatdem12311 3mo ago

My own PC died and now I’m locked out of my entire Steam library for the foreseeable future. A $2000 PC is literally a downgrade from what I bought 10 freaking years ago. What the freaking hell.

stephenitis 3mo ago
What part of your PC died?
- throwatdem12311 3mo ago
  Motherboard. New motherboard…so new cpu socket (mine was Broadwell)…and new ram needed. GPU is mostly fine and can probably reuse that but it’s Vega so not the greatest I was due for an upgrade but the prices of everything is ridiculous. The thought of pc-of-Theseus’ing my busted ass PC is just sad. Thank god I bought a PS5 Pro before Sony started jacking up the prices. I remember when buying a $300 GPU was extravagant and gave you state of the art graphics.
  - ed_mercer 3mo ago
    can't you just buy a used same class motherboard from a marketplace?
  - pdimitar 3mo ago
    Why don't you just get a MB only for now? What mandates an entire new batch of hardware?
    - throwatdem12311 3mo ago
      I’ve been pricing out my various options but the notion of replacing a 10 year old motherboard with another 10 year old motherboard is kinda lousy. The PC I replaced when I bought this one was such a huge improvement. My options basically boils down to fixing trash that’s falling apart or a sidegrade at best for the same price as what I bought a beast of a PC for 10 freaking years ago. Depressing.

thomasjeff1 3mo ago

We are hammering our foot by investing in AI at this point. AI grows and grows and becomes god and kills us all. How did it all start? Oh we invested all our money in AI.

jgalt212 3mo ago

Queue the blog posts: We rewrote all our Python code in Go because the RAMs too damn high!

dartharva 3mo ago

Let this be a wake-up call for self-touted "sovereign" economies around the world. Domestic fabs are a must.

tonyhart7 3mo ago

does 2027 would be the end ???? I remember hyperscaler cashflow at all time low surely they cant doing the same for 2028 right ??

chocolol 3mo ago

They've been caught as a cartel before, a leopard never changes its spots, so its going to happen again.

nullbio 3mo ago

We need more manufacturing capacity, or this will never end.

cafebabbe 3mo ago
I can think of a few scenarios where this will end brutally

wbsun 3mo ago

I guess very soon we will see on HN that lots of young folks will be excited )share their findings of some “brilliant” and “innovative” ways to save memory.

rgmerk 3mo ago
I’ve no doubt they’re setting up memory-footprint auditing agents as we speak.

globular-toast 3mo ago

I just have to hope none of my equipment fails in the next few years, I guess. I don't need or want to upgrade, but some of it is getting a bit old. I have spinning rust at the 6 year mark with no failures yet... Part of me also thinks we need to stop this. How can we have a democratic society when only billionaires have access to computing equipment?

noduerme 3mo ago

So LLM profiteers have bought up all the consumer RAM for the next several years in order to deliver more of a service we're already oversaturated with that doesn't turn a profit..? I guess by then there'll be no consumers left with jobs to afford a PlayStation 6, so no problem. Except how will the AI trainers find revenue? If maximum potential is reached by laying off 90% of workers at companies that sell stuff... help me with the logic here... who's gonna buy the stuff those companies sell?

suncore 3mo ago
Not sure there is much actual profit in LLMs. It will be interesting to see promise meet reality, indeed.
- noduerme 3mo ago
  I mean, it's obviously that they think they're going way beyond LLMs to get to something that is profitable, like some ultimate goldmine of intelligence. But if they miss that target by a hair or two, can we buy some of that RAM? I'd like my next MacBook not to cost $10,000.
  - SecretDreams 3mo ago
    I'm going to be very pumped when this comes crashing down. It's going to look a bit like oligarchs subsidizing consumer tech as they try to offload more ram than God could own.
    - bilegeek 3mo ago
      Everybody from OpenAI to Micron to the US Government is actively colluding to keep things going. I would love for you to be right, but I'm cynical from the decades that have been spent insulating these companies from consequences.
      - SecretDreams 3mo ago

tiotempestade 3mo ago

Hoping all these DCs and AI whatnots turn out to be a flop, so that we’ll get plenty ddr5 at sale price :D

esskay 3mo ago
IIRC this wont be possible as a lot of them aren't being packaged on traditional DDR memory boards. They're being put on things like the MI350X. I'm sure there will be a ton of standard DDR5 sticks, but not so much from AI-only datacenters.
- cryo32 3mo ago
  Expecting a pivot back to transitional parts if it goes bang.
- inigyou 3mo ago
  China has a cottage industry around taking apart circuit boards and reusing the chips in unexpected ways. That's how you get desktop MBs with soldered laptop CPUs. HBM and DDR aren't compatible as far as I'm aware, but they might be able to do something. Maybe they'll invent a converter chip.
- embedding-shape 3mo ago
  > this wont be possible as a lot of them aren't being packaged on traditional DDR memory boards. They're being put on things like the MI350X Even better, looking forward to having hardware like that at home for "cheap" in the future, compared to what it costs right now :)
  - undersuit 3mo ago
    The MI350X has a 1000W TDP. Maybe I'd use it in the winter.
    - embedding-shape 3mo ago
      My workstation is 1600W TDP and my office does get a bit cold in the winter, so it would do just fine next to us :)

tacocataco 3mo ago

Why stop at 2027? Why not just declare that you get everything produced by humanity for infinity years? How is a new business going to compete with incumbents that buy 100% of the necessary components needed to enter the market? Is no one else allowed to compete in this market anymore going forward?

pizzaiolo 3mo ago
It's not permanent. It's only this way until the bubble pops.
- inigyou 3mo ago
  With infinite money printing will that ever happen?
  - embedding-shape 3mo ago
    Infinite money printing always been possible, all previous bubbles eventually burst, that's why we now identify them as bubbles in the first place.

krm01 3mo ago

This happened once before (less dramatic but still) until at some point the prices came down crashing. I can’t see this holding for much longer.

ppierre 3mo ago

Wait of few months: "AI companies can't pay"

MotoriX 3mo ago

I’m so glad I managed to upgrade my PC at the end of 2025, literally just a week before DDR5 prices started going through the roof...

rufasterisco 3mo ago

i feel like 90% of complaints about ram shortages i've read here could be solved by realizing that we mostly update devices for status reasons we would collectively all be better off by being forced to stick to older devices, value software optimized for proper resource management, and learn that instead of reflexively accepting "problems" we can see them as choices enjoy the rat race

j1elo 3mo ago
I'm ironically using AI to program an extra-lightweight 10-foot UI for an HTPC that's as underpower as one can be, and KDE Plasma BigScreen trashed it hard. Reason being, a more powerful one would cost more than what I'm willing to pay (and, mostly, for fun and learning, which is priceless)
cmrdporcupine 3mo ago
Me, I bloody well love optimizing and performance tuning software. And love "retro" hardware. I'm fully on board with this world of squeezing every last drop of juice out of older systems. It's fun. I have a minion in a terminal grinding away optimizing CPU-only LLM inference on Dual Xeon E5s. Why? Because it's neat.
vatsachak 3mo ago
Something like Windows can't even keep it's cool on my lunar lake 32 GB laptop while NixOS with Niri works great on an 8GB guy

pjmlp 3mo ago

Great, maybe we get back proper native applications.

Szero0x00 3mo ago

andyjohnson0 3mo ago

HBM is High Bandwidth Memory. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Bandwidth_Memory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Bandwidth_Memory

lewisjoe 3mo ago

I'm in the middle of my home construction. Any list of RAM/NAND involved electronics that I should be buying sooner than later? Obviously I need an SSD setup for security cams feed recordings. Just wondering are there any such things to buy sooner?

jck86 3mo ago

Checking the prices of the components of my build from 2020 is rather frightening. CPU and motherboard should be fine, but the rest of the main components not so much. Quick comparisons: my DDR4 ram is x2-ish (64GB - 342 -> 648 euros). my HDDs are x2-ish (22TB - 548 -> 988). A new _budget_ GPU I bought end of last year is now +100 euros (just half a year later). Didn't bother to check the SSD since I mostly need it for the OS and they don't die that often, but that comparison should also not be fun. My current build should last till 2030 so hopefully should be okay if nothing breaks, though I am doubtful these prices are coming all the way down again. Either wait it out, pay about 50% more or lower the capacity by 50%. The list of shortages and price _gauging_ for the last years is pretty extensive: PS5, Xbox, GPU (first bitcoin, now AI), RAM, HDD/SSD, etc. These shortages are becoming an incessant pain in the ass, on personal computing level but also professionally since replacing hardware is becoming difficult and the cloud bill will only go up too. Well at least we have not been replaced by the clankers, yet.

thenoblesunfish 3mo ago

I got a new MacBook Pro recently. Sure seemed expensive to get more RAM. But actually I don't know enough about the chip - it's an M5 system on a chip - is Apple ultimately buying the RAM parts of that from the suppliers AI is overwhelming, or do they "make the RAM with the rest of the chip" in some way?

amazingman 3mo ago

As sure a sign as any that the bubble is about to pop.

BiteCode_dev 3mo ago

I though buying a framework was neat, but now in this economy, it's a necessity.