Help us, China. You’re our only hope.
I really, really hope that the Chinese take most of the market away from these assholes.
Goddammit this is so infuriating as a homelabber
Might really be the time to revisit smartphone-based server ideas.
Unavoidably high prices are unavoidable says company who’s actions are causing prices to be high
Yeah. Sure.
Sure, as long as you don’t account for the AI bubble ever bursting. After that, memory will be cheap. We’ll be living in an economic hellscape, but the memory will be cheap.
why would it be cheap, if people would buy it at 4x the normal price?
The price is only high because of the artificial demand from all the data centers. Manufacturers are increasing production capacity to provide more supply. Once the bubble bursts, that demand will drop, but the production capacity will still be there. Supply and demand. Price will go down.
That’s a pretty naive assumption to make.
I made four different assumptions which one did you think was naive?
Could it be again due to price fixing agreements. It’s a real cartel!
No, it’s because they switched their manufacturing to chips used in AI datacenters, which aren’t the same as what is in consumer hardware.
The price fixing agreements will happen after the bubble pops, assuming the demand actually drops.
My prediction is that the intent is to kill the consumer hardware market so we have to subscribe to a virtual desktop.
and we’re screwed… who’s to say china won’t end up rationing their own new-found capacity? enough for the domestic market, perhaps that of a few small important allies… and then put the rest into their own data centers. the global market is only gonna get what they don’t need or want themselves.
Well both. Yes they also switched manufacturing to HBM memory. And it’s still a cartel.
Bullshit. Chinese RAM is ramping up to world scale levels. LLMs are reaching massive diminishing returns points, and open weights local AI setups that are near frontier level, and which can be run on consumer level hardware are already here, and getting very hardware efficient. The AI bubble burst is very close. Memory makers are pushing FOMO buying.
The local models require massive amounts of ram that isn’t available for most consumer hardware
I do hope the bubble bursts soon but low ram and local ai aren’t compatible
Yeah, but that news won’t make a boardroom happy.
Yea, I wouldn’t be surprised if Samsung and SK Hynix would come to regret their deals with OpenAI once the Chinese have ramped up production and price them out of the market.
This. As with any technology, it will always improve. The American government helped the Chinese by barring the chips from them, meaning they had to program more efficient models.
Pay attention to history. Supply crunches like this are followed by supply glut.
There’s a reason why a company like SanDisk is signing multi year fixed price contracts now with the big data guys. That’s not a bet on hardware prices continuing to rise.
Yeah this is like when the cops investigated themselves and find no wrongdoing. Why would anyone listen to the chip mafia when they have only their own interests in mind. They want you to think that there is no point in waiting for prices to drop, when that is obviously what everyone should be doing right now. Basically everyone should boycott the entire semiconductor industry as much as possible.
RAM salesman says RAM prices should bstay obscenely high. Shocking!
Through 2030? I was hoping the AI bubble would have burst by then…. I really should have gone for that 64gb
Keep in mind this is a statement by a manufacturer who’s trying to get his customers to sign long term contracts at current prices, so it’s in their interest to have people believe that the shortage continues.
Doesn’t mean it’s not possible, bit it should be read in that context
Yup, long term contracts only benefit them. It locks the customer in, and if the customer can’t follow through, they can go after them for breach, and still have the ability to sell to others and recover their costs. It’s basically a win-win for suppliers.
There’s also no actual shortage to begin with, it’s a sham through and through.
What do you mean? The fact that the tech corps building the data centres are useless fluff doesn’t mean the memory isn’t being bought, or that there isn’t an actual shortage.
Sure the chip companies are probably doing some OPEC style shenanigans, but for all intents and purposes, there is a shortage driving up the price.
A real shortage would imply that they have no capacity to produce RAM in quantities required to satisfy the market demand. They do and they simply choose not to do that. They also continuously keep throwing in these “news” about RAM prices staying high for a decade to come, driving panic purchases up to further solidify “shortage” claims in the consumer market.
What they are choosing is to not produce anything for the consumer market any longer.
They see these big companies trying to corner the market on cloud services and AI and they’re betting the future is letting these guys control everything.
If all consumers’ money has to be funneled through like 3 or 4 providers, best to bet on those providers and their subcontractors.
This is why capitalism sucks ass.
I bought 32gb DDR5 four months ago at crazy prices, and those two sticks have done better than any stocks I’ve bought in the last year.
Hoping to bring people, who are holding back, to buy now, before the bubble bursts and memory is dirt cheap, huh?
