You can bluff all you want the hallucinating multi trillion dollar scam that by design cant always guarantee 100% accuracy is a scam from the start. Scam Altman
They’re basically saying the AI companies are going to keep demand elevated to the point that supply will never catch up. It’s possible but with variables like public backlash, unrealistic power requirements, eventual financial and AI regulation, I would bet on a painful collapse.
Nah they’re saying the like 3 places that manufacture RAM won’t drop their prices after
We’ll let the runaway inflation after the AI crash eat away at the currency’s value until RAM is back at the old value, even with the much higher prices, then wait for wages to catch up a bit. By then they’ll have a nice unsold supply.
People that think there’s going to be an AI crash are in for a rough future. The genie is out of its bottle and it’s never going back in.
You may as well be saying that there’s going to be an EV crash.
Nailed it
People aren’t saying AI is going to disappear, although that wouldn’t be a bad thing imo. When people talk about an AI crash they’re talking about the trillions in investments by the major companies that have been operating at a loss and have no monetization plan that could feasibly recoup even a fraction of that amount. Open source models are nearly as good as the big guys now, and nobody is going to pay hundreds or thousands a month just to keep using chatgpt or Gemini.
It’s not just the models that make the big players great, it’s the proprietary tools to use those models. Claude code, codex, seedance, etc are what everyone wants and what are so groundbreaking, not the LLM that they use.
The Chinese fabs should be producing lots of RAM by 2030.
I doubt that, ASML won’t suddenly flood china with lithography machines.
Old/current ram or new ram? Probably be moving on to DDR6 then
DDR5 will probably stick around for a long time if DDR6 is not affordable.
I’m still on DDR4 and it does what I need it to.
We could always just not, and use whatever RAM we can get. I’d rather have a thriving market with slightly worse RAM than motherboards that require a RAM no one can afford.
DDR2 Prices are up 60% as AI datacenters are slapping together whatever hardware they can get.
There is NO affordable RAM, and this is by design.
Nope it is for legacy systems which are not upgraded to new standard.
“Of course, today’s PCs don’t use DDR2, so we’re likely to see the impact of these price increases landing in areas like embedded systems, networking equipment, industrial controllers, automotive electronics, and other long-lived devices that were designed around it and are too costly to requalify on newer memory generations like DDR4 and five.”
I think these are false options. If there’s a thriving market for us there’s a thriving market for them
I’ll buy DDR4 if it means I can feed my family too
China will be running out of people soon. Their birth rate has been in collapse.
Yeah, but if they started right now I bet they could pump out some new adults inside of 20 years.
They literally can’t.
China will not collapse. It produces too many goods and its economy is too strong. Birth rates aren’t a problem to the point that they undermine manufacturing.
If someone tries to tell you the story that China will collapse and they seem credible, just reach out to me. I have a bridge for sale that will help you short the Chinese collapse.
The problem is they modify goods, not produce them.
China makes cars that no one else can
Intellectual property shouldn’t exist. If China wants to “steal” ram designs and sell them for cheaper, then LeT tHe fReE mArKeT wOrK
That’s a wholly different topic.
That’s simply not how the current economy works.
Their birth rate is “In collapse” because they already have a gigantic population that is too big.
1.4 billion people will disappear in just 3 years?
But they’ll still have plenty of people by 2030.
And if they’re not as xenophobic as some other countries I could mention, they could easily solve the population issue through immigration.
And if they’re not as xenophobic as some other countries I could mention, they could easily solve the population issue through immigration.
Every Chinese book I’ve read screams at me nationalism and xenophobia, be it modern fantasy, 50 years old detective series or comedy.
And immigration to China is - currently - heavily restricted. Like damn heavily. And you will not become a permanent resident, and there is literally 0 chance of becoming a citizen, unless you’re of Han Chinese descent, preferably first generation, preferably looking Chinese, and you can’t have dual nationality (from last census in 2020 about 17.000 people ever got a citizenship, which is what. 0.0012% of population? And the permanent residency in 2017 was about 10k total).
My country, Poland (about 38m people), grants more than that every year.
Yeah, this will probably have interesting consequences down the line, but not in 2030, and maybe not 2100 even
maybe not 2100 even
Chinese government does not seem to agree with you, considering its:
- Pro natal policies
- Heavy research into automation being sold as “to fill in labour gaps” (even though the gig work is skyrocketing)
- Retirement age reforms increasing the retirement age
Chinese universities also do not agree with your flippant attitude and are literally alarmist about it:
Tsinghua projections (that accurately predicted peak of population) show halving the population (and that > 50% will be people over retirement age) by the year 2100: https://www.dess.tsinghua.edu.cn/en/info/1226/2472.htm
On the other hand the dude who was saying something about collapsing in 3 years also didn’t knew what he was talking about.
Even if that’s true, I’m predicting either AI companies just buy all of that too. Or the US government doesn’t allow the import of it because it’s from China
Sucks to be american then
Isn’t it all from china already?
There is literally zero incentive for companies to make ram and sell it cheap. The market is used to current prices, and by 2030 current prices will be looked at as cheap.
You mean the companies that formed a cartel 20 years ago might do the same again? Couldn’t be.
Wrong line of thinking.
They want you to stop holding out and just buy their crazy high (along with everyone else) priced stuff so they move inventory and make some capital.
If their ram claim ends up true (I call bullshit) they make some sales and they go happily along.
If their claim ends up being false, they still made those sales and no one remembers or cares how “wrong” they were about it.
Saying this is basically a no lose guess for them.
I would bet on painful collapse, because the whole model is “winner takes all”, which means there is an awful lot of duplication. Even if it ends up more like a commodity with multiple players (because why pay for super powered AI for a task if there is a cheaper low powered alternatives?), the constant scale up makes no sense at all economically. We’re already well into diminishing returns with each scale up, and the models continue to be fundamentally flawed.
Lenovo are right that prices won’t go back to “normal” - I think there will be a huge crash in prices due to oversupply when the AI boom ends, and some of the big AI companies collapse.
We don’t even know if it’s currently being produced at greater numbers (as far as I’m aware). The only public info I’ve seen is that the data centers that haven’t been built will need all of the produced RAM based on handshake deals (not contracts). The RAM makers themselves are doubling down on the bubble by investing into the AI generators as well as increasing costs to insane levels in the process which surely reduces the amount of items sold.
Sounds like Lenovo is one of many companies pumping stocks.
There’s always a collapse on the horizon, I believe many of these stories are worst-case scenarios or a way to help billionaires believe their own hype and swallow the turds to keep capitalism on life support.
That assumes Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron won’t have competition in the next few years, but that’s already not true with the Chinese CXMT and YMTC. And the more they drive the prices up, the highest the reward for a new competitor to get established. They have a few good years (for them) charging these prices, but it won’t last.
Help us Xi Van Jingping - you are our only hope.
Sure the prices will go down a bit, but never to pre-bubble levels. This is the new “market rate” now.
Invisible hand creates best prices when there is infinite supply, many suppliers, elastic demand. None of that exists and neoclassic economics is bullshit.
Because it doesn’t want it to go back to normal
I wouldn’t say “never,” but it’s very likely that RAM prices will not return to pre-AI (read: bullshit) levels. Many markets do this; hike up to crazy levels during a boom, come back down 80%, rinse and repeat.
The only thing that might put a stop to it is competition or the unicorn business that focuses upon everyday consumers and not purely profit (lol). I’m hopeful China is able to be a spoiler to this current tech hegemony, given general US hegemony is basically over, but the home computing market is probably fucked in the meantime.
I’m hopeful China is able to be a spoiler to this current tech hegemony
As awful as that sounds, I bet that’s what will happen.
That’s what I’m guessing. The consumer market is a multi-billion dollar industry. If Micron, Samsung, and SK Hynex are too big for it now, that’s them leaving money on the table for others. Smaller companies will kick up, like those in China, and they’ll gladly take the money left for them. It’ll just take a while for them to get there.
The thing is, are they really leaving money on the table? Higher prices means less customers, yes, but also higher profits per unit. We don’t actually know right now how many people would be willing to pay these new prices: if it costs twice as much but half the customers are still fine buying it, then profit stayed the same. And with no choice, I suspect much more than half are going to pay double.
Of course, the people who wouldn’t do that are a potential market, but they are also a much lower profit margin. Comparably, that’s probably not that much for these people.
There’s a whole segment who are going unserved because of those high prices. Gamers across the board and enthusiasts, the entire consumer market, because RAM is too expensive. Someone else figures out how to make RAM at scale and undercut the fake inflation of the cartel could make billions easily. That’s money sitting on the table.
Why wouldn’t China just charge the increased prices, same as the DRAM cartel? Primarily they want to make money.
Unless they offer below-cost RAM for a few years to drive the competition out of business before jacking up their prices of course.
Because that’s not how you make money from the household consumer market. We’re already there, and people aren’t able to buy RAM.
You don’t make money from product that doesn’t sell.
maybe i’m naive, but if it’s so profitable to make RAM in the long-term, why wouldn’t competition emerge? I get not investing in the startup costs just for a bubble, but that’s not what we’re talking about here.
Capital/time intensive start up costs make it a barrier to entry. This is why the prices are so high. Supply is inelastic because the producers know this is a bubble. If they do the capital intensive thing and the bubble pops before realizing the additional capacity, they are left holding the bag.
Yes, that’s literally what I said about bubbles. The assertion in OP is that RAM pricing won’t go back to pre-bubble prices. If that is true, RAM manufacturing will be incredibly profitable post-AI-bubble and competition should emerge eventually.
Making RAM isn’t like making a shirt or a suitcase v it’s an extremely specialised and extremely expensive business, and this should be apparent given there are literally only 3 manufacturers in the world.
It takes double digit billions to start a manufacturing plant and that’s when you already have people who know what to do.
Most countries can’t really afford this in their budgets and I’m saying countries because it’d be a stupid endeavour for most private enterprises to even attempt. CXMT (DRAM) and YMTC (NAND) absolutely are sponsored by China, which is the only real way to get one of those companies going these days.
Google, Apple, etc could start their own memory companies if they wanted to. But it’s a hell of an expense to justify to your investors.
Making ram is incredibly hard and expensive, that’s why there are only 3 companies in the entire world that do it. For a new company to attempt to do it now, they’d have to outlay tens/hundreds of billions of dollars and a decade before they see a cent of revenue.
And ASML making the lithography machines for basically everyone… You can’t just “make more” ram without scaling ASML too.
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Was Lenovo one of the companies who signed 4 year profit gravy train contracts with one of the big 3, return of the RAM cartel? This kind of statement might suggest they did.
Don’t doom too much about this headline. HBM contracts represent artificial AI demand. When the bubble pops (and it will pop), the HBM demand evaporates and it’s back to competing for consumers. That said, there will be a very slow ratchet to get back to consumer-competitive prices, because as component costs go down, additional companies will be “priced in” to speculative AI business models, even if hyperscalers and other AI-drunk multinationals are backing off.
Regardless of whether there is a bubble, though, AI spending is ludicriously, unsustainably inflated even from existing memory customers. They are purchasing one-time AI infrastructure that needs to last a decade to even have a remote chance of paying off the hardware investments. There are only a few companies that can afford current AI pricing, those companies have already played their hands and paid for allocations, and they will not keep purchasing at this pace even in their own best case scenarios.
Regulation could keep consumer prices down, but of course we’re in the bad Trump timeline and that won’t happen until at least 2028. Assuming the bubble pops before then, the key to resetting this “new normal” is to NOT purchase anything you do not need to until we’re back to $80-130 / 64GB or cheaper, like it was in 2025. Hold out, make them desperate to lower prices.
Assuming the bubble pops before then, the key to resetting this “new normal” is to NOT purchase anything you do not need to until we’re back to $80-130 / 64GB or cheaper, like it was in 2025. Hold out, make them desperate to lower prices.
that’s the solution, but you know the consumers are not principled to execute it.
Yes, that’s of course fair. Even if it’s not perfect compliance, though, the more people hold out, the faster and lower prices drop, so there’s still value in it.
But short of regulation, is there anything else within our power to do?
There’s also those of us whose builds date back to 2020. Holding out another 5-10 years is a bit of an ask.
count me in that group. I love my ddr4 system. upgraded the gpu and cpu in the past year, I hope I can plan with it for the long term.
I upgraded my CPU this year and I actually still haven’t reached the top of the line yet (currently 8 cores, but I could go 5950x for 16). But I wanted to buy more RAM last year and didn’t, so that’s fun.
I’ll stick to chess and keep my humble elderly gaming laptop for another 40 years with Linux
I have a work issued Lenovo Thinkpad P14S Gen6 AMD with a Ryzen 9 AI, 2TB nvme, and 64GB of GDDR5 RAM. It cost $2600 last October.
Went to buy more of them for other devs last week as their Dells are just hot garbage and are being refunded, who wants to guess what the price of the exact same machine though Lenovo directly again is now?
$6800.
Absolutely insane.
It’s just crazy.
Oh when the bubble pops ram is gonna be insanely cheap
Don’t you worry if it pops they will just slow down the factories, or close them and fire people to get it stay as where they are.
Serious question: Is it compatible? I was under the impression they were making a different type of RAM. I’m sure if will get cheaper after if they’ve increased production, but if it’s not compatible it might still be relatively expensive (still cheaper than now) for some time as supply catches up to suppressed consumer demand.
not if companies go broke
not if companies go broke
That’s what a bubble popping is. NVidia is over-inflated. AI datacenters are over-inflated. The bubble will pop, many will go out of business, and all of their hardware will be liquidated.
Realistically, a whole lot of the high bandwidth memory products that they are producing will never find their way into consumer products.
When the dotcom bubble popped there were a lot of Assets in by products which could be adopted by other companies or distributed to a wide array of potential users, but the E-Waste and byproducts of this era are going to be niche and esoteric.
I think a lost decade is much more likely than a Renaissance of repurposing.
I’m just hoping the big three memory manufacturers that have essentially contracted all of their volumes across the next several Cycles will be able to survive whatever collapse hits their account receivable when they’ve done exactly what they said they would but the people with the purchase orders leave them holding the bag.
LOL. The biggest area of tech investing right now is alternative video cards and RAM for the home consumer market. The Wang dropped the ball on what made the company chasing a Ponzi scheme. This is so ripe for perturbation.
See Bolt Graphics…dual PCI connect options, upgradable VRAM, non proprietary hardware…
Ah yes, history has shown that prices never fluctuate.
It’s obviously to Lenovo’s benefit to have people believe that RAM prices will not drop, so that they will not wait out the current price surge.
The price will drop if supply exceeds demand, and if competition increases.
Supply demand economics was a great concept in grade 8, but in the real world, price fixing and monopolies rule unchecked.
Myth vs reality type thing. A charitable thing to say is that its an incomplete theory. There are political interests to keep it that way.
Imagine if all of us cared about the regulatory capture rampant in the baby formula industry they gave us that US baby formula crisis at the start of the decade, as much as we care about our computer memory.
The prices will never go back to normal because that’s not how pricing works. Once its proven that consumers will pay the price, they will modulate supply to keep the price where it is. Why do more for less when they can do less for more.
We’re fucked. It’s not going to get better. Act accordingly.
We’re fucked. It’s not going to get better. Act accordingly.
we can just blow up these factories and the CEOs if they are so greedy they wouldn’t be of any use anyway.
If that were the case then why are we currently talking about these insane price hikes when RAM was more expensive than it is now 20 years ago? That could only have happened if prices went down.
Well, it’s not like it would be the first time something like that happened.
Yeah guys, this is true for sure and we should all panic buy now. Because prices for computer hardware never come down over time.
Exactly, I’m just not buying any more computers for now and that’s it. If I have to I’ll order from taobao while they have supply
