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About 2 years ago I bought some SDRAM or something like that, DDR4 or DDR5, don't recall offhand. A few months ago I looked at the price today, and it was over
by shevy-java 12d ago
About 2 years ago I bought some SDRAM or something like that, DDR4 or DDR5, don't recall offhand. A few months ago I looked at the price today, and it was over
3x as high. That's just insane. Governments need to do something against this abuse system that AI amplified here.
- pfdietz 12d agoWhat abuse? Responding to supply and demand fluctuations isn't abuse, it's the proper operation of the market.
- dumberquestions 12d agoWould if one industry gobbles up an important resource to the point that other consumers lose practical access to it, shouldn't there be limits?
- jefftk 12d agoNo. The other industries can bid for access to the resource, and under most circumstances, whether they are willing to bid higher tracks importance. Sometimes there are cases where something has significant positive externalities and so people are not willing to bid high enough, and then we can talk about some kind of government intervention (typically a subsidy that attempts to track the value of the externalities) but I don't see that applying here.
- deleted 12d ago[deleted]
- pfdietz 12d agoIf others are willing to pay more, that a signal that more value is created if the resource goes to them rather than to the more price sensitive customers.
- applfanboysbgon 12d agoThis logic falls apart completely when gamblers allocate one trillion to bidding up the price, denying access to the resource to people who are responsibly spending their own money. The ideal world of the imaginary perfect free market never takes into consideration the messiness of the real world, like the fact that people will spend extreme sums of money irrationally. It can take years for this effect to correct, damaging the market severely in the meantime. Alternatively, the money invested can be rational because it prices out competitors and establishes a monopoly, after which point the monopolist earns their absurd investment back with complete control of the market. This is also bad.
- pfdietz 12d agoYou can reach any conclusion you want if you assume others are behaving irrationally. But why should I assume they are wrong instead of you being wrong?
- pixl97 12d agoThis has zero to do with the company that is making the product and all to do with the company buying them. The problem you have here is hundreds of different companies are doing the "gambling" in a non collusionary manner so it's going to take decades in court to prove it. Are you saying governments should do an authoritarian take over of RAM allotment?
- pfdietz 12d agoAnd even if the companies are "gambling" (and what company doesn't do that) it doesn't mean the gambling is irrational.
- deleted 12d ago[deleted]
- joshheitzman 12d agoWhere is the additional supply resulting from the sustained increase in demand?
- ErneX 12d agoSome are building new fabs, example: https://news.skhynix.com/en/fab-facility-investment-2026/ https://news.skhynix.com/en/fab-facility-investment-2026/ It's not an overnight thing obviously.
- DonsDiscountGas 12d agoCheck the article we're commenting under
- Dylan16807 12d agoNo, this article is not about new fabs.
- digdigdag 12d ago> Governments need to do something against this abuse system that AI amplified here. Which governments, and what exactly would you want these governments to do? The demand is global. There are no levers a single government can pull to meaningfully influence the global demand without fully committing to an protectionist economic policy, in which case the U.S. doesn't have the facilities to magically pop up world class fabs overnight, and South Korea and Taiwan don't have the market demand that the U.S. generates to justify their investments in making these chips and China lacks the IP to be able to build anything comparable to Nvidia's silicon at the moment. No one has all the cards and no one controls all the levers.
- carlm42 12d agoGovernments have sued DRAM companies for price fixing and forming cartels before: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRAM_industry_price_fixing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRAM_industry_price_fixing. They can absolutely step in and if there are evidence of price fixing or anti-competitive behaviours, can impose fines. The choice of whether to do that though is political.
- daedrdev 12d agoSeveral of these companies almost went under before the AI boom. There isn’t a cartel.
- lovich 12d agoIs there any allegations of price fixing in this case? The demand just skyrocketed. Other than legislation like the defense act in the US I don’t know of any governments that have jurisdiction over these ram makers that mandate companies produce more of a product. Especially not for consumer goods.
- wmf 12d agoIf they're charging one customer $X and another customer $5X for the same chips... there's got to be some law about this.
- jeroenhd 12d agoIt's not just normal consumer memory. Everything with a chip in it is getting more expensive because of the AI circlejerk. When Bitcoin screwed over consumers, at least normal memory prices weren't affected (though that time a shitcoin based around storing large amounts of data made the rounds, hard drive prices did take a brief hit). Everything is affected by the endless thirst for RAM by AI companies and the accompanying hyperscalers. I'm honestly disappointed governments aren't doing more to keep the price of consumer goods in check. I guess the AI companies telling the world how good they are at accidental cybercrime and fraud is creating enough FUD to let the AI industry run wild.
- yread 12d ago3x? I bought 128GB DDR5 SODIMMs for 300 eur. Now it's 4000 eur.
- mrlonglong 12d agoDamn you were lucky. I bought 96GB DDR5 last year for £600 UKP. They're now retailing for three times that. Bastards.
- yread 12d agoYeah the 300 already felt like a splurge - it's the max. 96 was less than 200 I felt kinda stupid not just going with that. Imagine 96 of anything now for less than 200