RAM has never been cheaper, but are the historic prices here to stay?
RAM prices are at historic lows. But it hasn't always been that way. If you upgraded your PC's memory in 2018, you might be kicking yourself right now. This writer certainly is. I upgraded from an old, faithful 16GB of 1,600MHz DDR3 to a 16GB kit of Corsair Vengeance RGB 3,000MHz DDR4. It cost me the equivalent of $200 at the time. That same kit today is just $75. What the hell happened? As of mid-2019, prices have finally gotten under control and are currently at an all-time low, making this a great time to upgrade. But is it here to stay?
[...] Ben Miles, managing director of award-winning British system builder Chillblast, explained that "more and more memory foundries [are focusing] on flash type memory to feed the insatiable smart device and mobile phone industries. Turning a DRAM factory into a flash factory or vice versa takes many weeks, so when companies have chosen their path, its[sic] non-trivial to turn it back. When demand outstrips supply, module vendors are forced to stockpile DRAM chips and offer more money to secure stock, driving up prices."
All of this led to a huge increase in RAM prices between 2016 and 2018. Gamers Nexus put together an in-depth report on this at the start of 2018 and showed the near 200 percent increases in price for some modules, both DDR3 and DDR4. Looking at PCPartPicker's historic trend graphs, we can see that early-2018 was the peak for RAM pricing, but that many speeds and kits took many months to even approach a noticeable fall in price throughout the year, only really falling hard in 2019.
[...] "We don't see the current low price of memory being the new normal," Ben Miles of Chillblast said. "As profits fall in DRAM due to abundance, factories switch focus back to flash, so we can expect peak demand in Q4 to see rising prices once again." [Corsair's public relations manager Justin Ocbina] was a little more hesitant to forecast price rises, but he did suggest that other industries were beginning to pick up the slack for the slowing smartphone market. That could lead to rising prices at some point in the near future.
There's also DDR5 to consider. We've heard a lot about the potential capabilities of this next-generation memory for years, and that's something that Corsair will be switching its attention to in the years to come. Ocbina said that from the get-go, it is expected to dethrone DDR4 from its premium, performance spot. That gap will only widen as more kits are launched following the new standard's debut.
"Historic" low prices (that are about the same per GB as in 2012 or 2015)? Nothing DDR5 and a flood, power outage, or nitrogen leak can't fix.
See also: Micron's DRAM Update: More Capacity, Four More 10nm-Class Nodes, EUV, 64 GB DIMMs
Previously: Expect 20-30% Cheaper NAND in Late 2018
Weak Demand for DRAM Could Lead to Price Decreases in 2019
DRAM Prices Will Continue to Decline in Q1/Q2 2019
Huawei Blacklisting Predicted to Cause DRAM Prices to Drop 15%
Related: Manufacturing Memory Means Scribing Silicon in a Sea of Sensors
Related Stories
Micron has temporarily suspended operation of a DRAM production facility, leading to predictions of shortages and rising prices:
TrendForce reports that Micron suspended the operation of its Fab-2 DRAM production facility on June 1 due to a malfunctioning nitrogen gas dispensing system. Micron responded that while there was an event, it didn't involve nitrogen leaking. However, Micron's admission of a problem is telling, as TrendForce predicts the event will eliminate 5.5% of the global DRAM production capacity for July. Interestingly, the market analyst firm also claims this could lead to an impact on production for Apple's new iPhone.
The 5.5% output reduction may not sound like a significant event, but in the past, similar issues have served as the catalyst for massive shortages. This could exacerbate the ongoing DRAM shortage, which has already seen DRAM prices rise appreciably.
DRAM prices are on the rise due to slow transitions to new nodes and increased demand in PC, mobile, and server segments. TrendForce predicts that the first quarter of 2017 suffered a 30% increase in the average contract pricing for DIMM modules. Making matters worse, the soothsayer predicts that we will see another 10% increase this quarter, and that is before accounting for the recent production interruption.
Also at Reuters, which reports that Micron denies the event will affect its business:
"Regarding recent rumours about Micron's fabrication facility in Taoyuan, Taiwan, Micron hereby clarifies that there was no nitrogen leaking incident nor evacuating of personnel," Micron said in a statement. "There was indeed a minor facility event but operations are recovering speedily without material impact to the business."
[...] TrendForce analysts base their reports on channel checks in the supply chain, a media officer with TrendForce told Reuters.
It's the floods all over again!
64-layer 3D NAND is shipping, but the 256Gbit die will come and go rapidly. That's what makes this NAND cycle different. Many of the companies we've spoken to do not want to invest in products with such a limited shelf life. The 512Gbit die are right around the corner from the fabs. Some estimates put a major ramp up coming before mid year. The technology offers a 2x capacity increase while taking only a little more space on the wafer. The bits per wafer doesn't double, but it gets very close. The retail products coming in the second half of 2018 with have a heavy impact on SSD pricing. Some estimates from engineers we've spoken with put retail pricing on track for a 20% to 30% reduction over similar-capacity products shipping today.
Emerging technologies and form factors that reduce the material costs will also play a role. Toshiba Memory America showcased the new RC100 NVMe SSD that uses multi-chip packaging to cram the controller and flash in a single package.
Toshiba has described stacking 8-16 512 Gb dies with through silicon vias (TSVs) to create 512 GB and 1 TB packages. Samsung plans to stack 32 256 Gb dies to make 1 TB packages for an upcoming 128 TB SSD.
Previously: SK Hynix Plans 72-Layer 512 Gb NAND for Late 2017
SK Hynix Developing 96 and 128-Layer TLC 3D NAND
Intel First to Market With 64-Layer 3D NAND SSDs
Western Digital Announces 96-Layer 3D NAND, Including Both TLC and QLC
Toshiba's 3D QLC NAND Could Reach 1000 P/E Cycles
WD Announces 64-Layer 3D QLC NAND With 768 Gb Per Die, to be Shown at Flash Memory Summit
Screeech... DRAM! Weak demand hits memory-makers as they slam on CAPEX brakes – analyst
The three DRAM suppliers are scaling back production growth as memory demand falters with no sign of recovery. The DRAMeXchange research outfit has said annual DRAM capital expenditure (CAPEX) growth has gone negative for 2019 as Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron respond to weak seasonal demand in the first quarter and beyond. DRAM prices had risen for nine consecutive quarters until the last 2018 quarter, when they fell 10 per cent compared to the third quarter.
The demand outlook for PCs, servers, smartphones, and other end-consumer products is weak and the threat of a China-US trade war is not helping things. DRAMeXchange expects first quarter DRAM prices to show a 15 per cent fall, and see 10 per cent in the next, and then 5 per cent in both the third and fourth quarters, unless something positive happens, like China and the USA becoming best buddies.
The three DRAM suppliers are locked into some production output growth this year but have scaled back their CAPEX plans and reduced growth expectations as a result of the price falls.
Related: Tsinghua to Build $30 Billion DRAM/NAND Fabrication Plant in Nanjing, China
IC Insights Predicts Additional 40% Increase in DRAM Prices
Samsung Preparing to Build Another Memory Fab Near Pyeongtaek for $27.8 Billion
U.S. Indicts Chinese DRAM Maker JHICC for Alleged Industrial Espionage
DRAM Prices Expected to Decline as Much as 30 Percent This Quarter
DRAMeXchange, a division of market research firm Trendforce, announced today that it expects contract prices for server DRAM to decrease by 30 percent compared to Q1 2019 prices. DRAMeXchange previously predicted that server DRAM prices would fall over 20 percent in Q1 but is now making its prediction even more dramatic.
TrendForce's analysts believe that the same issues of oversupply and lower-than-expected demand that affected suppliers in Q1 2019 will affect the market in Q2, as prices fall 15 percent compared to Q2 2018.
They also predict that the consumer PC market will continue to see DRAM price declines of 20 percent in Q1 and 15 percent in Q2.
Previously: Weak Demand for DRAM Could Lead to Price Decreases in 2019
Submitted via IRC for SoyCow4463
DRAMeXchange, tech market intelligence firm TrendForce's memeory and storage branch, today added yet another entry to the list of industries expected to be negatively affected by tension between the U.S. and China. The research firm announced that it expects Huawei's blacklisting by the U.S. government to contribute to a DRAM price drop of up to 15% in the third quarter.
"As ripples from the U.S. ban continue to spread, Huawei's shipments of smartphone and server products are feared to face heavy obstacles for the next two to three quarters , impacting peak-season-demand for DRAM products 2H and the time of price precipitation," DRAMeXchange said.
[...] In its report, DRAMeXchange noted its earlier prediction that the likeliness of DRAM prices falling under suppliers' "fully-loaded costs" would be "extremely slim under the premises that the competition only consisted of three giants, and that DRAM production processes were nearing physical limits." The analyst is now changing its stance.
"Yet, a heated U.S.-China trade war may send demand in the second half of this year into quick-freeze, with the increasingly looming uncertainty compelling datacenters to make reductions to capex. Fragile DRAM suppliers may have to admit current inventory casualties on the books by the end of this year, and officially modify their financial statements to report: 'Loss,'" DRAMeXchange said.
Source: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/dram-memory-market-huawei-impact-us-china,39588.html
At Micron's memory chip fabrication facility in the Washington, DC, suburb of Manassas, Virginia, the entire manufacturing area is blanketed in electronic detectors in all their various forms. But the primary purpose isn't to keep intruders out or anything so prosaic. "A lot of them are microphones," a spokesman for Micron said. "They listen to the robots."
It turns out that there are thousands of microphones throughout the facility, or "fab," as silicon manufacturing plants are commonly known. There are microphones inside the giant $70 million cameras that imprint the component layout on the silicon surface of a memory chip. There are microphones lining the tracks of the robot controlled railways that carry colorful plastic FOUPs (front opening universal pods) along the ceiling throughout the plant. There are microphones near essentially every moving part in the facility.
All those thousands of microphones are listening for signs of wear—for variances to develop in the noises made by the machines—so that maintenance can be scheduled before anything breaks and causes downtime. Downtime, as you might imagine, is about the worst thing that can happen to an automated chip-making facility.
Toshiba & WD NAND Production Hit By Power Outage: 6 Exabytes Lost
Toshiba Memory and Western Digital on Friday disclosed that an unexpected power outage in the Yokkaichi province in Japan on June 15 affected the manufacturing facilities that are jointly operated. Right now, production facilities are partially halted and they are expected to resume operations only by mid-July.
Western Digital says that the 13-minute power outage impacted wafers that were processed, the facilities, and production equipment. The company indicates that the incident will reduce its NAND flash wafer supply in Q3 by approximately 6 EB (exabytes), which is believed to be about a half of the company's quarterly supply of NAND. Toshiba does not disclose the impact the outage will have on its NAND wafer supply in the coming months, but confirms that the fabs are partially suspended at the moment. Keeping in mind that Toshiba generally uses more capacity of the fabs than WD, the impact on its supply could be significantly higher than 6 EB with some estimating that it could be as high as ~9 EB.
Both companies are assessing the damage at the moment, so the financial harm of the incident is unclear. Not even counting potential damage to production tools and other equipment used at the fabs, 6 EB of NAND cost a lot of money. Furthermore, analysts from TrendForce believe that a consequence of the outage will be some loss of confidence from clients of both companies, which will have a financial impact as well.
1 exabyte = 1 million terabytes.
Related: TSMC Fab 14 B hit by Massive Wafer Defection due to Chemical Contamination, 16/12nm Production Line
TSMC Contamination Issue Expected to Result in $550 Million in Lost Revenue
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Monday July 01 2019, @07:09AM (5 children)
News at 11
I remember one memory uprade - added a crazy 32mb for a mere $120
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday July 01 2019, @12:32PM (2 children)
It's not cheaper. The price per GB stopped dropping several years ago. But the amount people treat as the "minimum" is up. Games and (some) applications use more, devices and phones have more, servers use more.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Tuesday July 02 2019, @11:30AM (1 child)
Not falling as fast as it used to, but still falling
July 2009 - 4GB for $45 - $11.25/gb
July 2014 - 8GB for $70 - $8.70/gb
July 2019 - 16GB for $61 - $3.80/gb
https://jcmit.net/memoryprice.htm [jcmit.net]
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday July 02 2019, @04:35PM
Not really, for the last 7 years:
https://jcmit.net/memoryprice.htm [jcmit.net]
Nov. 2012 - 8 GB for $30 - $3.75/GB
Sep. 2013 - 8 GB for $53 - $6.63/GB
June 2014 - 8 GB for $65 - $8.13/GB
May. 2015 - 16 GB for $92 - $5.75/GB
Nov. 2015 - 16 GB for $63 - $3.94/GB
May. 2016 - 16 GB for $49 - $3.06/GB
June 2016 - 16 GB for $45 - $2.81/GB
July 2016 - 16 GB for $50 - $3.13/GB
June 2017 - 16 GB for $90 - $5.63/GB
Apr. 2019 - 16 GB for $61 - $3.81/GB
They have a linked chart [jcmit.net] that makes it more apparent.
Keeping in mind that is is logarithmic, you can see prices hit a floor in late 2012, creep up to peak at mid-2014, hit a slightly deeper floor in mid-2016, shoot up again, and then drop to today's prices. 2012 to 2019 is 7 years, during which $/GB barely improved and there are notable spikes in the prices compared to previous decades. The chart is pretty flat from 2002 to 2006 but without the spikes. Some of the other 7 year periods show roughly an order of magnitude decrease in $/GB.
We might get a little cheaper than before in 2019, before we get the next spike. The jagged line trend could continue from 7 to 10 years. During this period, the absolute minimum amount of RAM demanded by Windows, Linux, Android, ChromeOS, etc. has not climbed much, but ordinary users/gamers are shooting for 16-32 GB instead of 4-8 GB (and flagship smartphones are packing 6-12 GB), and there's software that can use up all of it. Core counts are massively increasing with the likes of Ryzen/Threadripper, and some users shoot for 2-4 GB per thread (e.g. up to 512 GB for an upcoming 64-core Threadripper). If you grabbed your RAM during one of the troughs, you saved some money. But it would have been a lot better if you had seen RAM decline to below $1/GB by now.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by EvilSS on Monday July 01 2019, @09:26PM
(Score: 2) by EvilJim on Tuesday July 02 2019, @02:32AM
I'm feeling old reading these and I haven't even reached 40 yet, back before I had a lawn, I had an 8mb memory upgrade for $800... that's MB, not GB
(Score: 2) by BenJeremy on Monday July 01 2019, @12:37PM (1 child)
I remember getting 4GB sticks of Samsung's memory for $20 or less, even. No fancy heatsinks or LED lighting, just solid, overclockable memory that worked, and was very cheap.
Have we gotten back price to that yet?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday July 01 2019, @12:51PM
Prices are around $3.5/GB, give or take. So $27-35 for an 8 GB stick, $55-65 for 16 GB. But it could be a lot more for faster DRAM or non-deals.
https://slickdeals.net/f/13171456 [slickdeals.net]
https://slickdeals.net/f/13166140 [slickdeals.net]
https://slickdeals.net/f/13163269 [slickdeals.net]
4 GB is more expensive per GB but can be found at $20: https://slickdeals.net/f/13125598 [slickdeals.net]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 01 2019, @04:51PM (2 children)
yeah, whatever. prices should be lower. the price per GB might have gone down, but it should have gone down more, in direct proportion to the capacities going up. now that i need 16GB to run a desktop without a bunch of BS, the price per GB should be 1/4 of what it was when i only needed 4GB.
(Score: 2) by Rupert Pupnick on Monday July 01 2019, @06:57PM (1 child)
In skimming through the articles and doing sort of a technical review of what's out there, I wonder if anyone would comment on the following:
1) What's driving the demand these days for memory for the sort of hobbyist who would buy piece parts? High end gaming, like maybe high fidelity flight simulators? More compute intensive stuff like bitcoin mining? Or do power users just like having more space for the OS to work with to avoid loading from slower storage?
2) Is there a good architectural overview of what the typical allowable DIMM configurations on a modern motherboard are? Is something like a Micron 32GB DDR4 DIMM representative of what's state of the art and readily available? It looks like the DQ lines are set up to run on a multidrop bus. I thought that approach was running out of gas, and I certainly don't see how you could hope make the DIMMs in the middle of a main memory data bus run at 6+ Gb/s per pin. Anybody remember RAMBUS?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday July 06 2019, @08:08PM
16 GB is starting to become a more common recommendation for games. Next-gen consoles will supposedly pack in 16-24 GB, although that probably includes the VRAM.
Anybody could benefit from a RAM drive, and beyond that there are plenty of applications out there that can eat as much RAM as you throw at it. Including the web browser.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDR4_SDRAM [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDR5_SDRAM [wikipedia.org]
It's certainly possible to make a 256 GB "DIMM", so the market will probably sort it out eventually.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2, Informative) by deganee on Monday July 01 2019, @08:58PM
Graph of RAM prices over time:
https://www.desmos.com/calculator/kenixgfqjp [desmos.com]