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The DRAM market is cyclical. I don’t think anyone truly knows when, but it will happen. Fab capacity is being bought online; there’s just lead time. Noticeabl
by dannyw 2mo ago
The DRAM market is cyclical. I don’t think anyone truly knows when, but it will happen.
Fab capacity is being bought online; there’s just lead time.
Noticeably greater intelligence is being achieved at the same number of parameters (see: Qwen3.8).
I think the future will be bright, it might be a matter of time. And for tinkers, a used Epyc + DDR4 server can be great fun and epic value.
- SSLy 2mo agoLooks like I'll be sporting my 5800X3D + DDR4 + 9070 XT gaming box for a little while. Too bad the CPU's ST is slower than my MB Air m4.
- pdpi 2mo agoI built a new PC about two years ago, and I probably got it at the last possible opportunity for a while. CPU and motherboard have come down by maybe £100 in between the two of them, but a 7900 xtx (or any other 24GB GPU) for under £1,000 now seems like a bargain, and £180 for 64GB of DDR5 makes me feel like an old man talking about the halcyon days.
- devmor 2mo agoI built my current PC the day that the AM5 platform released, for about $6k not including the 3090 I moved over from the previous rig. If I sold just the two sticks of RAM in it right now, it’d pay for nearly half of the total cost.
- raegis 2mo agoI bought a motherboard from Newegg in late 2024. It came with 16GB of RAM as a free "gift". The same RAM goes for $534 on Newegg today. It was $437 in January. Prices are still creeping up for this "throwaway" memory. I still have it, but never installed it because I only use ECC memory in my desktops. I'm saving it for a future Desktop in case memory prices never fall again.
- Lwerewolf 2mo agoWelcome to the club. If you're _really_ competitive in cs2, I'd swap out to a 9800x3d setup, but it's still a maybe. Very little reason to upgrade right now other than to run LLMs.
- what_hn 2mo agoIt will never make sense to me to run Llms locally unless I had 50k. I don't even think that would compete with price perf of a remote llm and getting business done. And that's completely ignoring that sol/fable level is not local
- SSLy 2mo agoYeah, instead I have unsubbed from WoW this week. The atrocious state of the game's code and scripting is unbearable.
- brookst 2mo ago100%. We're probably on the cusp of over-capacity, a glut, cheap RAM, bankruptcies, and shortages.
- unsupp0rted 2mo agoThe memory companies report that they're sold out through 2027... so it might be a while
- kstenerud 2mo agoThat's only if the AI companies continue their build outs. How many people actually use fable over opus? How far are we up the diminishing returns curve, and will their customers even care?
- agentcoops 2mo agoI don’t think the effects on the hardware market of open weight models triumphing has been reflected upon enough. It’s not clear that it will be less impactful if every enterprise decides to build for predominantly on-premise inference. In fact, before the question is ultimately decided, we’re probably heading towards a few years where hobbyists, enterprises and ‘hyper scalers’ are all competing for certain parts in common. Ram booked through 2027 sounds about right.
- Foobar8568 2mo agoCompanies are avoid risks, and at this stage, sometimes, I feel that all cloud providers are just buying RAM that they would have bought anyway. Now it's ensure that no company will be willing to pay x digits just for cards. One of my clients is stuck in "we are doing things on premise but we are too cheap to spend a few 100k in cards but we don't want to go on clouds.
- rxyz 2mo agoFable would have a much bigger userbase if Anthropic didn’t remove a zero data retention option because muh safeguards
- ciupicri 2mo agoIf it will happen in 100 years it will practically never happen (for us). Even 25 years would be a lot, it's half of a career. Could you provide more details about the Epyc + DDR4 server?
- bluGill 2mo agoCycles tend to be 5-10 years long not 25. Without knowing anything else I would expect a fab you seriously start planning today will be at full capacity in about 5 years. Nobody serious likes delays - in particular the banks don't like loaning money that won't at least start paying off. They know it takes some time to design a building - but factories typically are standard buildings so once you know about the size you can get it done fast - I expect 1 year to have the building done is the worst case (and it can be done in 3 months possibly if your project management is good - after interest this is cheaper than the 1 year). It takes time to build and install the specialized machines that go inside - this is the largest problem, but you typically order them first and then plan the building around the needed space and when they will arrive. Then you need 6 months to setup the inside of the building. From there it is just ramp up time. The above is a standard project management problem. We do this for lots of industry all the time. There is every reason to think you can get a new factory running in 5 years. Note that I said 1 factory above. Some of the special machines we don't have the ability to make them fast enough to do 2 (I don't know the real number!) new factories in 5 years. Existing factories are using most of the special machine capacity to replace machines that wore out on the way - this can be corrected as well, but it adds another year and the expenses are much larger. Realistically though 1 new factory is likely enough.
- cogman10 2mo agoI'm expecting it to somewhat collapse. I don't know if it'll go back to pre bubble prices (here's to hoping), but I do expect a pretty sharp decline around 2030... probably not before then. Basically everyone that makes memory is building new fabs, meanwhile I'm not sure how much longer AI datacenter demand for ram will last. I think the decrease in AI ram demand and the new fabs will likely coincide leading to a collapse in pricing. That is, of course, assuming the memory manufacturers don't pull their favorite trick and collude.
- FeepingCreature 2mo agoIf there's a decrease in AI ram demand, it will not be because the models get better. Models getting better will increase RAM demand, because it grows the part of the economy that models are useful for. Classic Jevon's Paradox.
- cogman10 2mo agoI'm expecting the drop for a couple of reasons. For 1, AI datacenter builders have said that they have more equipment than they have places to put them. Leaving a ton of hardware shelved while you wait for datacenters to build out is bad business to say the least. For 2, I think we are nearing saturation for the usefulness of AI. I certainly could be wrong, but I don't really foresee there to be a bunch of new exciting usages of AI that will ultimately justify the continued buildout.
- znpy 2mo ago> For 2, I think we are nearing saturation for the usefulness of AI. I certainly could be wrong Unless some other breakthrough in AI happens, like applying AI to some other large market. Overall i think that AI is here to stay, if anything it will become more common. Maybe in ten years we’ll all have some 256gb ai machine at home, like we most (all?) of us have AC.
- josephg 2mo ago
- vonneumannstan 2mo agoIf you don't understand that the AI driven memory boom has totally broken the cycle you are going to lose a lot of money. There is infinite demand for Intelligence and that translates directly to chips.
- Mistletoe 2mo agoSounds like you are telling us it’s a new paradigm? https://transportgeography.org/contents/chapter3/transportation-and-economic-development/bubble-stages/ https://transportgeography.org/contents/chapter3/transportat...
- vonneumannstan 2mo ago"If you don't understand that the AI driven memory boom has totally broken the cycle you are going to lose a lot of money."
- dbspin 2mo agoFortunately there's a near infinite demand for boosterism too.
- mathisfun123 2mo ago> The DRAM market is cyclical. ... > I don’t think anyone truly knows when, but it will happen. Do you know what cyclical means ... ?
- ColdStream 2mo agoAbsolutely, I am in a hold pattern for the next few years. I suspect in another 3-4 years you will be able to build an absolutely stacked machine at a reasonable price. Probably won't go back to what was before but it will be decent.