link (t)wink 
Amber 
(aka kemona_halftau)
@link why is ram so expensive
@kemona_halftau either big tech AI or RAM manufacturers setting the whatever market conditions they want
Julia :v_bi::therian:@link @kemona_halftau it's ai- they're buying up the dim chips for use in GPUs to prevent competitors from starting up datacenters
Natanox 🇺🇦🇵🇸@julia @link @kemona_halftau More detailed: OpenAI bought 40% of the global supply for the next 12 months of *all* DRAM and even unfinished wafers and some older production machines. They simply want to prevent other AI companies from overtaking them at all cost, as there are zero news of them wanting to produce stuff.
This caused panic-orders of DRAM by every company, sorta like toilet paper in 2020.
Additionally spicy: DRAM manufacturers do not want to increase production for some reason.
Ludovic Archivist Lagouardette@Natanox @julia @link @kemona_halftau Okay I have info on the additional spicy. DRAM manufacturers expect the market to return to normal before they can actually ramp up the production significantly. Just prepping extra wafers would take at minima 6 months so they cannot ramp it fast, and they expect the AIs companies to run out of purchasing steam before they can prep more manufacturing
Fazal Majid@Archivist @Natanox @julia @link @kemona_halftau also they have reallocated fab capacity from vanilla DDR5 to HBM used in GPUs. I'm glad I am done with my last round of hardware refreshes.
Sadly, SSDs have also gone up in price, though to be frank the price of storage has not gone down as it used to, for at least a decade, both Flash and spinning rust.
john localhost@Natanox @julia @link @kemona_halftau if we had an actual functioning government right now, openAI would be punished for pretty blatant anti competitive practices, but our leaders are more preoccupied with sinking random boats on the coast of venezuela just in case they have drugs on them. hopefully another big tech company sues, let them fight
Atomic Fox@Natanox @julia @link @kemona_halftau
RAM manufacturers know that it takes months to years to substantially increase production, and if they do it based on the current price spike, they'll be bankrupted when the new lines start producing, because the price spike will have subsided by then (possibly because OpenAI will have itself gone bankrupt).
There was a huge debacle in the 1980s which the industry hasn't completely forgotten.
