RAMageddon? 2027 Memory Capacity Reportedly Sold Out (ign.com)
- Reference: 0184903296
- News link: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/26/08/09/0547220/ramageddon-2027-memory-capacity-reportedly-sold-out
- Source link: https://www.ign.com/articles/ramageddon-continues-another-year-as-2027-memory-capacity-is-reportedly-sold-out
> [A] new report suggests that all three memory manufacturers — Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron — have collectively sold through their 2027 memory manufacturing capacity to, you guessed it, AI companies.
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> According to a report [2]from Digitimes and spotted [3]by TweakTown , all DRAM and HBM capacity has been sold through for 2027, with no further supply planned. (The companies themselves have not yet confirmed this to be the case.) Of course, that only means that retail prices are going to go up even further in the near future. Selling through all the capacity for next year would be bad enough for consumers, but the problem is that most of the companies buying up this capacity have done so through long-term purchasing agreements, essentially pre-ordering memory that hasn't even been manufactured yet over a five-year term. Unless more capacity opens up somewhere in the next few years, it's hard to imagine that RAM will become more affordable and less scarce any time soon.
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> It's not just memory that's affected. According to that Digitimes report, NAND storage is growing in demand too. Luckily, NAND capacity hasn't been completely absorbed, because there are more companies supplying the stuff. But it's not exactly hard to see that SSDs have been growing steadily more expensive over the last six months or so.
[1] https://www.ign.com/articles/ramageddon-continues-another-year-as-2027-memory-capacity-is-reportedly-sold-out
[2] https://www.digitimes.com.tw/tech/dt/n/shwnws.asp?CnlID=1&id=0000763847_DVY7YHX65GMLYZ6UQEEMP
[3] https://www.tweaktown.com/news/113004/memory-capacity-for-all-of-2027-has-reportedly-been-booked-and-sold-with-no-more-dram-or-hbm-available/index.html
An Example of Market Failure (Score:3)
The market optimising for profit and income in the short term does exactly this: AI companies are willing to pay more. Whether or not this qualifies as 'the market is working' is another question. I'd put it as another example where leaving things to the market does not serve people's needs.
Re: (Score:2)
At this point computer storage is a national security issue and a huge economic problem for governments.
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Eh, market logic as designed (as high profits should attract more manufacturers).
But...
The amount of cash sloshing through will probably purchase that supply too.
The problem isn't exactly the market but the gradient of cash. When only dollars get a vote, the distribution starts looking tyrannical.
If Only It Were Possible... (Score:1)
...to make new factories.
Like imagine if it were possible to create new semiconductor factories, making chips en masse, -- you could perhaps do it in a BIIIG state with a lot of land. You could have a factory with like 100 million square feet. Wouldn't that be something?
Maybe we should have more factories.
If only there were a price incentive to do so.
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Can you do it before 2027?
Massively stupid (Score:4, Interesting)
They're just opening the doors wide for cheap Chinese memory, which will come, and then it will be RAMageddon for the cabal of manufacturers who so smugly announce that they've locked in obscene profits for years. With prices twice or more expensive than they need to be, there are many markets where it doesn't matter that China can't manufacture the same densities (yet). With enough money flowing in and this strategic opportunity given to them in a completely unforced fault, China will not take long enough to catch up for the established manufacturers to ramp up and do something about it.
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> They're just opening the doors wide for cheap Chinese memory, which will come, ...
... and (assuming this happens prior to 2029) then it will get banned in America. But at least other countries will be able to buy it.
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Meh, the USA is only about 20% of world trade, China will be happy to supply the other 80% of the world trade.
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CXMT is already making DDR5. It's not the fastest, but it works. Hopefully output can ramp up really fast.
So no more new data centers? (Score:2)
If you can't buy more RAM I guess there is no point in planning any more new data centers for next year, what are you going to put in them?
I just wish this whole AI as a service bubble would hurry up and deflate.
Moore's law finally defeated (Score:2)
In 2017 you could get Laptops with 8GB ram very cheap, now 8GB is a luxury again. And those laptops ran Windows 10 which had more forgiving hardware requirements and had browsers that weren't yet AI slopped. You even still had a lot of Windows XP users hanging on back then using computers with less than 1GB ram.
Microsoft should be forced to extend Windows 10 until the RAM apocalypse is over or drop the artificial upgrade blocks to Windows 11. Yes Linux is an option for around ~5-10% of users now, too. Bu
No RAM, dwindling customers for AI (Score:2)
If there is no more RAM for consumer devices, there will be an ever dwindling number of consumer devices able to use AI services. "Come use our AI for your business", "Oups, I guess you can't do that with devices with no RAM". Maybe it's a good thing, all those AI driven social media feeds, no customers able to read them on devices with 0 RAM, only old devices still floating around. Perhaps it will make the AI companies spend money to optimize the client software to run on old, old hardware, like a PC with
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Sixteen 8gb phones or one 128gb laptops? We'll still have computers and phones.
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All that is true... But maybe it's time people started exploring the 2nd hand market.
Buying a new computer isn't always necessary. A computer from 2020 will do just fine for most people. And DDR4 ram is considerably cheaper than DDR5.
Maybe this IS the year of the Linux desktop, cause people can't afford to use anything else (given Windows 10 is EOL, and everyone and their aunt is finding bugs everywhere, and Windows 11 needs TPM == new hardware). Or you could also just buy an Apple Neo, good value these day
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The market will be flooded with used hardware when the big AI companies start to go bust or sell off their older hardware that is being replaced. It will have had a hard life in a server rack, but stuff like RAM rarely fails due to age or use, and even consumables like SSDs are often for consumers if they are enterprise grade with 5% life left. I've been using some old Intel server SSDs with 5-10% life left for years, for bulk temporary storage.
Re: (Score:2)
First, yes, they arent wanting to serve the people... glad you caught up
Second, there are sites being built to increase capacity, but none dedicated to consumer.
Third, there is a bubble, and its about to pop. Unless governments keep stepping in to delay it....