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IC Insights has predicted that DRAM prices will continue to increase this year:
According to IC Insights, DRAM prices will continue to increase even though they have more than doubled (+111%) over the last 12 months. IC Insights predicts that by the end of the calendar year DRAM's price per bit will have jumped a record 40% (or more).
[...] Of course, the record pricing levels are great for our friends at the major foundries. Samsung, Micron, and Sk Hynix are also raking in their own record profits and enjoying healthy margins. We have both DRAM and NAND shortages occurring at the same time, which is great for the foundries, and unless a player breaks ranks to gain market share, we can expect more foot-dragging before any of the foundries increases output.
The booming mobile industry and server markets are exacerbating the issue, so you would expect that the fabs would boost DRAM output. Unfortunately, the three primary fabs (Micron bought Elpida, reducing the number of players) don't share the same vision.
IC Insights indicates that Micron will not increase production capacity, instead relying upon improvements in yields and shrinking down to smaller nodes to boost its DRAM bit output. Sk Hynix has expressed its desire to boost DRAM output but hasn't set a firm timeline for fab expansion (unlikely to occur in the near term). Samsung is as tight-lipped as usual, so we aren't sure of its intentions.
In the 1980s there were 23 major DRAM suppliers, but cutthroat pricing and continual oversupplies eventually led to the wave of consolidation that left us with the current three suppliers.
Previously:
December 2015: DDR4 Memory Prices Declined 40% in 6 Months
May 2017:
DRAM Price Surge Continues
Samsung Set to Outpace Intel in Semiconductor Revenues
July 2017:
Micron Temporarily Suspends Operation of DRAM Production Facility
Samsung Increases Production of 8 GB High Bandwidth Memory 2.0 Stacks
August 2017:
DRAM Prices Continue to Climb
Samsung & SK Hynix Graphics Memory Prices Increase Over 30% In August
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 19 2017, @05:55PM (6 children)
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We ain't never fuck no old pussy.
But yeah we fuck a lot of young pussy.
Dick Niggers gonna DickRAM this big black nigger dick up yo cunt.
(Score: 0, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 19 2017, @06:42PM (4 children)
Then why, precisely, did you pick the banana peel of damaging nights over the gun of modification?
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 19 2017, @06:47PM (3 children)
Wow. Dick niggers meet chat bot.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 19 2017, @07:00PM (2 children)
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(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 19 2017, @07:32PM (1 child)
Me neither.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 19 2017, @07:45PM
In what way does "Me neither." remind you of your relationship with your father?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday September 19 2017, @07:54PM
I was beginning to despair of your creativity. I can still think of six ways around the regexes in place. Can you?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 19 2017, @06:41PM (6 children)
This is why competition is so important; it's an essential element of evolution by variation (supplier competition) and selection (consumer choice).
However, such competition can be a lot more complex than the obvious: Maybe now, programmers will have an incentive once again to make their programs less memory intensive; improvements in software can make negate the undue gains being sought by these colluding manufacturers. Decentralized solutions FTW!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 19 2017, @06:55PM
Since most programmers can't actually program, I'm not sure they even know how to make their programs less memory intensive. Why not just use up every last resource available, after all? Who on Earth would want to run countless programs simultaneously!?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 19 2017, @07:53PM (2 children)
Oligopolies almost also suck. Always have, always will. Telecoms, the big-3 in Detroit before Japanese competition, Wintel, etc. are examples of self-protecting crap. They use "economies of scale" as an excuse, but the value of competition is usually greater than the benefit of economies of scale.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Gault.Drakkor on Tuesday September 19 2017, @09:13PM (1 child)
Economies of scale do help the corporation as an individual corporation. Competition hurts the individual corporation in the short term. So from corporations point of view its a win-win to have fewer players.
Whether or not they share those benefits of economies of scale is a different issue. As you suggest, sharing is strongly influenced by how much competition there is.
My problem with what you said is that you seem to be merging it to being one point of view, that oligopolies, and monopolies suck. Which is false, where very clearly some parties benefit.
I do agree with you in that once again shows; if there are large barriers to entry, which chip fabs represent, capitalism doesn't work so well. So this implies there should be market regulation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 20 2017, @12:14AM
I meant from a consumers' standpoint. Tim Cook and Mark Zuckerberg obviously loves oligopolies.
(Score: 2) by richtopia on Tuesday September 19 2017, @08:40PM (1 child)
DRAM is an example where barriers to entry slow market corrections. It takes A LOT of money to build a modern fab, and a long time. And that assumes it is one of the major players who already know how to make memory; if a new player is entering the industry then you have to learn how to yield too.
Ultimately, memory is still affordable, so unfortunately I don't think this will result in programmers being more memory conscious. The one exception would be a mobile operating system: if Google prioritizes memory management in future builds of Android it would help the lower end devices. However, I'm skeptical that will happen, as features get promotions and sell phones, not better memory management.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday September 19 2017, @09:18PM
Samsung Galaxy S8 [wikipedia.org] = 4 GB DRAM
iPhone 8 Plus and iPhone X = 3 GB DRAM
LG V30 = 4 GB DRAM
Ok, lower end devices...
Best cheap phones (September 2017) [androidauthority.com]
Honor 8 = 4 GB
Moto G5 Plus = 2, 3, or 4 GB
Honor 6X = 3 or 4 GB
Motorola Moto E4 = 2 GB
Best budget smartphone 2017 [expertreviews.co.uk]
Lenovo P2 = 4 GB
Alcatel Pixi 4 = 1 GB
Moto G4 = 2 GB
Samsung Galaxy J5 = 2 GB
Vodafone Smart Prime 7 = 1 GB
Motorola Moto E (2nd Gen, 2015) = 1 GB
Vodafone Smart N8 = 1.5 GB
Vodafone Smart E8 = 1 GB
Finding 3-4 GB on a cheaper phone isn't too hard but the 1 GB phones could use such improvements.
There are some flagship smartphones/phablets that have 6-8 GB of DRAM. This massive hike in DRAM prices could delay smartphone peddlers from cramming 10-12 GB of DRAM in new models.
2015: Samsung Announces 12Gb LPDDR4 DRAM, Could Enable Smartphones With 6 GB of RAM [soylentnews.org]
2016: Samsung Announces 8 GB DRAM Package for Mobile Devices [soylentnews.org]
2017: SK Hynix Announces 8 GB LPDDR4x DRAM Package for Mobile Devices [soylentnews.org]
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(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 19 2017, @06:52PM
Hmm, I wonder if they own all the patents. It seems that the collusion here is pretty heavy. Maybe a little compulsory licensing would reinvigorate the market?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by jelizondo on Tuesday September 19 2017, @08:27PM (4 children)
The market is working as advertised! Just like evolution, the market prunes the inefficient, the lazy and the unfortunate leaving just one or two players, which then dominate the market and can do whatever they please. (I know there are three players now in this market, watch it shrink to maybe two, perhaps one.)
Is this good for consumers?
Before answering think about Microsoft, the most ruthless competitor currently in the market: it eliminated Borland, Lotus, Netscape, WordPerfect and many others to coronate itself king of the hill; exactly as the free market allows.
Is a world full of Microsofts worth an unrestricted market or should we put some restrictions to promote diversity and competition?
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday September 19 2017, @08:46PM
Do not worry, citizen, the OCP has new products to ensure your safety.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 19 2017, @10:34PM (2 children)
You want a monopoly known as "government" to prevent monopolies.
That just doesn't make sense.
I'll stick with the Free Market, thanks; at least under a cultural appreciation for the free market, people have a way to route around bad centralization.
(Score: 4, Informative) by maxwell demon on Wednesday September 20 2017, @02:50AM (1 child)
I prefer a monopoly on which everyone has influence to a monopoly on which only those with money have influence.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 20 2017, @04:57AM
Surely, you're not suggesting such a government has ever existed.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by FakeBeldin on Tuesday September 19 2017, @09:01PM (1 child)
Is there anyone on SN who follows this sort of thing with an inkling of when price drops can be expected?
It'd be nice to have an idea when the times, they might be a-changing.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by takyon on Tuesday September 19 2017, @09:48PM
Well, the exascale race should be heating up from around now to around 2023. Supercomputer centers may be building more machines during this period, targeting the 1 exaflops level, and ordering a lot of DRAM as a result.
Businesses are buying into deep/machine learning and there are more chips targeting that. Google with its TPUs, Xeon Phi Knights Mill adding half-precision capabilities, the latest Nvidia Tesla GPUs, GPUs in vehicles, etc. Many if not all of these applications will need DRAM.
Watch the PC and smartphone markets. PC demand had stabilized last time I checked but could fall again, and smartphones may be poised to fall.
But analyzing these trends might be overkill. I was talking about DRAM oversupply in January [soylentnews.org]. These higher prices will eventually result in a glut of DRAM on the market and falling prices, although the same fabs are working hard to meet the insatiable demand for NAND so maybe it will take longer than we'd hope for.
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(Score: 1, Offtopic) by realDonaldTrump on Tuesday September 19 2017, @09:02PM
It’s got to be fair. Every agreement has an end. Every agreement has to be fair. Every agreement has a defraud clause. We’re being defrauded by all these countries. The only power that we have with China is massive trade. I would tax China on products coming in. I would do a tariff, yes -- and they do it to us. I am a free trader but it’s got to be reasonably fair. I would do a tax. and the tax, let me tell you what the tax should be. The tax should be 45%. 🇺🇸