AI Chip Frenzy To Wallop DRAM Prices With 70% Hike (theregister.com) 92
Samsung Electronics and SK hynix are projected to raise server memory prices by up to 70% in early 2026, according to Korea Economic Daily. "Combined with 50 percent increases in 2025, this could nearly double prices by mid-2026," reports the Register. From the report: The two Korean giants, alongside US-based Micron, dominate global memory production. All three are reallocating advanced manufacturing capacity to high-margin server DRAM and HBM chips for AI infrastructure, squeezing supply for PCs and smartphones. Financial analysts have raised their earnings forecasts for the firms in response, as they look to benefit from the AI infrastructure boom that is driving up prices for everyone else. Taiwan-based market watcher TrendForce reports that conventional DRAM prices already jumped 55-60 percent in a single quarter.
Yet despite the focus on server chips, supply of these components continues to be strained too, with supplier inventories falling and shipment growth reliant on wafer output increases, according to TrendForce. As a result, it forecasts that server DRAM prices will jump by more than 60 percent in the first quarter of 2026. Prior to Christmas, analyst IDC noted the "unprecedented" memory chip shortage and warned this would have knock-on effects for both hardware makers and end users that may persist well into 2027.
Yet despite the focus on server chips, supply of these components continues to be strained too, with supplier inventories falling and shipment growth reliant on wafer output increases, according to TrendForce. As a result, it forecasts that server DRAM prices will jump by more than 60 percent in the first quarter of 2026. Prior to Christmas, analyst IDC noted the "unprecedented" memory chip shortage and warned this would have knock-on effects for both hardware makers and end users that may persist well into 2027.
To hell with it all (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm going to dig my CoCo3 out and have fun computing again. Take your "AI" needs and shove them.
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They have already gone up 100% in the past 3 monts.
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Re:To hell with it all (Score:4, Insightful)
That means that they're going to have to pay the extra money and that's going to mean they have to pass those costs on to you the consumer.
AI is going to cause inflation. It's going to ripple through the whole entire economy and everything you buy is going to be more expensive because of it. That's before we talk about the increased cost of water and electricity. Remember that's not just your electricity and water bills it's everybody else's including the businesses you shop at. Again they're going to pass those costs on to you the consumer.
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Was going to buy a new Ryzen 9 with 64GB RAM and a new 50xx class GPU but the way things are going I might spend the cash on some 400w portable solar panels and a battery instead !
Re: To hell with it all (Score:2)
I fine that my Ryzen 9 5950x with 64 GB DDR4 is plenty. Along with RTX 3060Ti GPU.
Apparently, both AMD and nVidia are considering resuming production of this sort of older parts, due to the increased prices for modern RAM and VRAM required by newest designs.
I have got 6 home built PCs in the house, and not one byte of DDR5. Everything is using DD4R4. I have been able to move sticks around when the required RAM footprints for each system changed. I have got 172GB in total, mostly in 8GB sticks, so there is
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Yeah, I was just playing with my Atari 800XL. I used Claude to write some code for it. So I guess it's still being a problem.
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Refresh your OS-9 skills...
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I was going to do just that, but now I've discovered my diskette drive isn't working. Looks like I need to get a CoCo SDC now. The CoCo forums are also advising I replace the capacitors in the CoCo as well. Found a cap replacement kit on eBay for $8.99. I found the CoCo SDC for $75. For less than $100 I'll be back in business. Take that OpenAI, nVidia, Microsoft, etc..
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Ah, I see what you did there, use the sheep instead of being one of them. Nice.
Only three manufacturers matter. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Agree. Get fabbing.
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I can't fap to that.
Oh, you said fabbing.
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Itâ(TM)s
Itâ(TM)s
Indeed
Re: Only three manufacturers matter. (Score:2)
Re:Only three manufacturers matter. (Score:5, Insightful)
That's the problem with highly advance tech. It requires highly advanced capabilities that aren't easily fungible on the market. The barrier to entry is insane. There are other parts of the chip sector where only one manufacturer matters. Right now ASML is the only one providing lithography machines for the lowest node size, in the market that makes GPUs and CPUs they are the only company that matter. Several other companies are trying to desperately to get in on it, but it's just not as easy as declaring "I'm going to get into business X"
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Veritasium did a video recently about the ASML technology [youtube.com]. It is truly amazing. The technology and the video. It's nearly an hour long but totally worth the watch.
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Thanks yeah definitely worth the watch. The guy's videos are sometimes full of bullshit, but this is not one of them.
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Just wait till you discover ASML.
That's bonkers.
Re:Only three manufacturers matter. (Score:5, Informative)
Samsung and Hynix Screw Consumers (Score:4, Informative)
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The actions of these manufacturers are artificially creating a shortage by shifting production to server DRAM production. They then use this shift as cover for a coordinated increase of consumer DRAM prices. All the while, their manufacturing costs have not risen. Profits most certainly have. Cartel? Collusion? Criminal conspiracy?
You should send a strongly worded letter to the UN
Have AI help you write it.
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Wait until I tell you about the great idea that is price controls- you'll love it.
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The actions of these manufacturers are artificially creating a shortage by shifting production to server DRAM production. They then use this shift as cover for a coordinated increase of consumer DRAM prices. All the while, their manufacturing costs have not risen. Profits most certainly have. Cartel? Collusion? Criminal conspiracy?
The C you’re looking for, is called Capitalism.
Where they have a fiduciary duty to do exactly what they’re doing.
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"Where they have a fiduciary duty to do exactly what they’re doing."
This is false narrative promoted by the same people who do this. Capitalism has no such "fiduciary duty".
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The C you’re looking for, is called Capitalism.
Where they have a fiduciary duty to do exactly what they’re doing.
This idea of a "fiduciary duty" to stockholders to "maximize stockholder equity" was an invention of Reagan neoliberals based on Milton Friedman's economic writings. It came to supremacy in the 1980's during the same time when business school MBAs were taking over corporate management..
What it really represents is the triumph of greed over social responsibility. On the surface it comes from the failure of government to enforce guardrails against the excesses of unfettered capitalism. But on a deeper level,
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That's not what an artificial shortage is by definition. An artificial shortage is purposefully reducing production to limit supply, not directing production to the highest margin product. Samsung and Hynix are currently producing everything at the fastest rate they possibly can. The shortage is market demand driven, not artificial.
While the industry has a history of cartel actions, this isn't one of them. This is the free market doing what it does in the normal way.
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"The shortage is market demand driven, not artificial."
If you take the word of pathological liars.
"This is the free market doing what it does in the normal way."
If you take the word of pathological liars.
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If you take the word of pathological liars.
What is there to lie about? One type of customer is willing to pay lots of money for a type of product that makes lots of profit for them. They are shifting production to make more money. This screws over other types of customer. Why is your instinct to accuse them of lying?
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Capitalism is broken (Score:2, Informative)
It's not just the risk of the bubble bursting early, it's that anyone who steps into compete runs the risk of the existing players dropping prices until they are out of business.
Ordinarily that would be an anti-competitive action that would bring in the doj but let's not mince words here the current administration has absolutely no intention of e
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So the demand here is guaranteed for at least 4 years maybe longer. Under normal circumstances somebody would step in to meet demand but nobody is doing it.
For a new fab to be built to substantially increase supply it will take 2-4 years. And it will cost at least $10B dollars. Given historical pricing of DRAM, few would wish to invest in a likely white elephant by the time it comes online. Maybe you are smarter than others, so go take your $10+B and build that fab.
It doesn't matter anyway because everything (Score:1)
Is collapsing. Collapsing before our eyes. It's like how we blame cell phones on everything wrong with kids and not the ludicrous amounts of pressure we're putting on them because we know the entire economy and job market is collapsing and there aren't going to be enough jobs available for the number of people capable of working them so we're all hoping our kid is going to get the edge and be allowed to have a home and a car and food and medicine.
As far as I can tell the entire economy is collapsing around
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..absolutely everything is going to hell mark my words.
* hands you a book full of Plato and Socrates quotes *
There you go. Words duly marked.
Just in case you were wondering exactly how old the problem of greybeards bitching about rides to hell in handbaskets, truly is.
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..absolutely everything is going to hell mark my words.
* hands you a book full of Plato and Socrates quotes *
"And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches toward Bethlehem to be born."
Add Yeats, a bit more recently.
Just because you're paranoid (or schizo) doesn't mean you're wrong . . .
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We were doing it, about 4 years ago actually but this is actual policy and management of capitalism from competent public service. So much so that instead of doubling down on success and creating more jobs, more productivity and stronger supply chains we are doing... tariffs?
CHIPS and Science Act [wikipedia.org]
And if we don't like subsidies like this well, that's the actual capitalist solution when markets fail, the other alternative is the heavy handed option so we need to choose which way western man. You can have com
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Under normal circumstances somebody would step in to meet demand but nobody is doing it.
I've been saying the same damn thing about eBay for years. You'd think someone would want to be the Duracell to their Energizer, but nope.
From what I gather, investors tend to prefer chasing the new hotness rather than backing an upstart business whose plan is to challenge some crusty incumbent with a monopoly over the existing market. Really, it seems like it requires someone with Musk's level of wealth and eccentricity, and there aren't many of those people.
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Under normal circumstances somebody would step in to meet demand but nobody is doing it.
Who? How? Do you think you can just flick a switch and crank out DRAM? Bringing a production line for chips online is a 5+ year adventure. This isn't anti-trust, this isn't a conspiracy, this is just people like you not realising that the free market can't react to a rapidly changing demand on the supply side, especially when the very people who you accuse of not stepping up realise this is also a bubble and would not make an investment that would result in losses just after the bubble bursts.
Think a bit be
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"Capitalism can't function like this."
This is exactly how capitalism functions. It's free markets that don't function like this. Free markets and capitalism are not the same thing. Free markets are what the government ensures so that capitalism DOESN'T function like this.
I'm off the treadmill! (Score:3)
For those of us that are kitted out pretty good, hopefully this means an extended lifespan, barring hardware failure. I'll forgo my usual 3 year cycle. My i9 box with 128GB ddr5 should be lots, given the fact that cutting edge pc sales are about to drop off a cliff. I might get a solid decade out of it. Software will target below my specs for a long time.
Collusion (Score:2)
Seems like a textbook case.
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Simple choice for them... (Score:3)
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And there won't be a PC market to return to. I think 2 to 5 years of this and no one's going to be buying a PC.
Which is what they want.
We're only going to lose in this. The days of cheap PCs doing what you want are done. We're going to return to dumb terminals where we get to pay for controlled access.
Re:Simple choice for them... (Score:4, Insightful)
Dude. That is nonsense. The end of the PC market is just a bullshit prediction that has been around for 30 years or longer. Never panned out, will not pan out this time. The replacement needs alone are enough to keep things going.
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Dude. That is nonsense. The end of the PC market is just a bullshit prediction that has been around for 30 years or longer. Never panned out, will not pan out this time. The replacement needs alone are enough to keep things going.
All it took was unrelenting greed in the new car market to push prices FAR above MSRP. Which crushed the new car market so badly that many are struggling to sell “new” 2024 inventory. When memory becomes the MSRP+ fuck-you factor for consumers, few will be buying.
The new car market is so fucked even they don’t know how to recover. Don't assume a return to dumb terminals is out of the question. Hell, all the memory is inside the data center anyway.
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New cars are still being made. Sure, some manufacturers may not survive, but the market is not going away. Your claim remains nonsense.
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PCs are driven by business demand, not private consumers. Businesses buy PCs, but on what refresh cycle matters. Not analogous to the car market at all.
Also, high car prices are caused by much more than "unrelenting greed". You'd do a lot better if you didn't choose a terrible analogy and then misrepresent it.
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"The end of the PC market is just a bullshit prediction that has been around for 30 years or longer."
No it has not. NO ONE in 1995 predicted the demise of the PC, it was the foundation of the economic boom then. You don't know what you're talking about.
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I have actually been around. And yes, I know what I am talking about. Some idiots _always_ predict the end of the PC.
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Which is what they want.
So you think they want zero PC customers after the bubble bursts? The goal is to make more money not zero customers.
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Lol. You'd think we'd never had a RAM shortage before. Or GPUs. Or hard drives.
Oh noes, RAM is going to cost as much as it did five years ago! It's 1984!
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Yep. They will not build new fabs for that. When the bubble busts, even NVIDIA could go bankrupt because they may well not be able to adjust fast enough.
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Yep. They will not build new fabs for that. When the bubble busts, even NVIDIA could go bankrupt because they may well not be able to adjust fast enough.
When the AI bubble pops, nVidia will pivot to crypto mining so hard they’ll invent their own shitcoin.
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No, they will not. That needs retooling, as general purpose hardware is not suitable for crapto-mining, and specialized LLM hardware is not either. They may try this, but a GPU or LLM accelerator chip spends about 3 months (!) in manufacturing. Unless they spend a lot of money in preparation, they will have significant additional time on top of that before they could make crapto-mining chips.
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Not for Elon Musk! Apparently everyone else builds fabs wrong!
Global conspiracy (Score:5, Interesting)
Part of me thinks this is part of a global conspiracy to deny normal people the ability to generate high quality AI slop on their own computers.
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Win11 already runs like a dog running though slop on even a couple year old PC.
This.
If it even runs. Can't buy an up to date machine? Then you can't run the "glorified GUI terminal" to even access all those goodies they are racking up in the data centers for you.
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Win11 already runs like a dog running though slop on even a couple year old PC.
What, are you running it on spinning rust?
I don't have anything that could even be remotely considered a high-end PC and Windows 11 seems fine.
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"It's all in the cloud these days like every other bit of compute."
It's always good when you make clear just how ignorant you are.
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"High quality AI slop"? WTF is that?
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So the "high quality" in "high quality slop" would not mean "good quality", but "the best quality you can get, even if it is pathetic". Hmm. That does make sense in a really bad way.
DDR3... (Score:2)
Sitting here staring at the pile of DDR3 DIMM's/SODIMM'd/UDIMM's in my ewaste recycle pile... Has to be like 512Gb at least...
No low ballers! I know what I have! :)
T
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My pretty old Phenom II firewall / fileserver has 32GB of RAM in it. Was cheap at that time and I needed it for a project. My old and my new gaming PC also have 32GB. And my 2 spare mainboards also have it. Too much effort to make a profit selling these, but foresight pays off.
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Sitting here staring at the pile of DDR3 DIMM's/SODIMM'd/UDIMM's in my ewaste recycle pile... Has to be like 512Gb at least...
No low ballers! I know what I have! :)
T
I see you got some New Old Stock there. And some vintage stuff. Gotta see if it’ll fit in my ‘05 chassis with the manual 6-jumper BIOS. At least the hard drive has electric start. Remember when we had to manually crank those damn things tweaking heads and tracks settings? Those were the days..
Can... (Score:1)
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price hike (Score:2)
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They are saynig 70% more on top of the existing increases, so that $100 of RAM would be $680
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That seems unlikely that it's only going to be another 70% more still.
Given RAM prices have jumped 400% already, another 70% more seems low. Unless they already looked at their order books and see that demand will fall off a cliff that would cap the rise at 70%.
DDR5 and HBM memory production isn't keeping up with demand, and while HBM factories are set to go online next year, unless the demand or something changes it
"mu" down 4% today. (Score:3)
Why is Micron's stock price down 4% today? Were investors expecting even greater price increases?