One unit of HBM capacity consumes roughly the wafer capacity that could have produced three units of DDR5 capacity. HBM dies need to be larger than ordinary DRAM dies because of how the final packaging works.

> As discussed previously, the ramp of HBM production will constrain industry supply growth in non-HBM products. Industrywide, HBM3E consumes approximately three times the wafer supply as D5 to produce a given number of bits in the same technology node. With increased performance and packaging complexity, across the industry, we expect this trade ratio for HBM4 to be even higher than the trade ratio for HBM3E. We anticipate strong HBM demand due to AI, combined with increasing silicon intensity of the HBM roadmap, to contribute to tight supply conditions for DRAM across all end markets. As the memory industry is still recovering from the challenging environment in 2023, this tight supply environment will help drive the considerable improvements in profitability and ROI (return on investment) that are needed to enable the investments required to support future growth.

https://investors.micron.com/static-files/4550f98c-1054-4847...

Hmm. Forget about desktops. I'm programming a microcontroller which is actually reasonably priced and has gotten all its 32Mb of RAM in the same die as the processor, but I'm getting nervous and having a strong urge to stockpile...

This is why I'm so hesitant to use AI. There are other reasons (for example: the journey is the fun part, not the destination; and I want to learn not have something done for me), but the pressure AI puts on memory and storage is too much for me. I do use it occasionally, mostly to keep tabs on it and for small problem solving (how do I do this one piece of a query in MySQL, since I'm not a MySQL DBA), but that's it for now, until this memory/storage issue is fixed.

This will have general inflationary consequences for consumer products (phones, consoles, laptops, etc.). On top of current uncertainties regarding oil and fertilizers, I think 2% inflation in the US and Europe would be a very optimistic target.

Amazon has implemented a password system for RAM delivery. You're supposed to give a password to the deliverer before taking delivery of the RAM, and you're not supposed to send the password over the phone at all (although the Amazon delivery guy still called me and asked for it over the phone).

Keep an eye on this page → https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/trends/price/memory/

The boom cycle looks like it's going to last a while, but it never lasts forever. If the current memory manufacturers all conspire to not build more capacity, I'm sure someone else will (eg China).

All those devs who were saying "ram is cheap" BTFO.

How am I going to buy a computer that connects to AI datacenters now?

I saw on Twitter that TSMC has made 1B worth of chips for Apple that they cannot package because of missing memory.

(PS: It is time to let ASML sell to CXMT.)

Yup... And in 2021(5 years ago now) I got 64gb ddr4 for 120 bucks, second hand with a 6 month warranty. I felt like I hit the jackpot then, now that price seems like literal peanuts. I can't wait for the AI bubble to burst.

AI companies would do well to realize that civil disobedience is a thing.

Take what's currently happening to Flock cameras as an object lesson. People are so fed up with Flock that they're cutting their cameras down en masse, sometimes wiping them clean from entire jurisdictions. Tens of thousands of other people in those jurisdictions are cheering them on, even offering alibis for them before they've been caught. Law enforcement doesn't seem too keen to catch them either. You absolutely can be so hated that the law will not be enforced to protect your property.

If AI companies don't slow down and build some good will, AI data centres are probably at risk. They'd probably have been targeted before Flock were they not harder targets. A higher degree of cooperation and organization will be required to sabotage them, but it would be foolish to believe it won't eventually happen.

Monopolizing memory production for another year suggests that lessons have not been learned, the mad build-out will continue, and we're headed for some truly crazy stuff.

This hopefully helps mitigate the risk of putting more production capacity in place, which the Big 3 were not willing to do so far.

Why AI companies wont build their own RAM but prefer to pay multiple times more than what they sold pre AI boom? (And ram business was still profitable). They already make custom processors

But Micron is overpriced and new capacity is about to come online right? Right???

Isn't scalping illegal in some countries?

Turns out AI-maxxing implicates citizens-minning.

The fact that consumer-level DDR4 is getting more expensive makes absolutely no market sense to me.

China RAM entered the US market in quantity a week ago west coast. It’s slow buggy trash but it’ll cool the market until failure rates are known. Europe got its first shipment 3 weeks ago.

Honest question: is this the first time this thing happens?

Besides the AI craze, to me it sounds kinda reasonable. Most large buyers (apple, public clouds, OEMs) do forecasting and orders in advance, right?

[dead]

Lame: Fight the war on general computation by spending decades pushing elaborate technical standards for locking down bootloaders, try to convince society why we need device attestation and hardware-bound keys, gradually establish devices without root access as the norm, get into constant skirmishes with free software and privacy advocates, get drawn into unpleasant political quagmires, etc etc

Game: Just buy up all the RAM...