DRAM Prices Predicted to Jump a Record 40% in 2017

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Megalith

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According to IC Insights, DRAM prices will continue to increase even though they have more than doubled (+111%) over the last 12 months: it predicts that by the end of the calendar year, DRAM's price per bit will have jumped a record 40% (or more). The three remaining major DRAM suppliers—Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron—are each currently enjoying record profits from their memory sales.

Previously, when DRAM capacity was tight and suppliers were enjoying record profits, one or more suppliers eventually would break rank and begin adding additional DRAM capacity to capture additional sales and marketshare. At that time, there were six, eight, or a dozen DRAM suppliers. If the supplier was equipping an existing fab shell, new capacity could be brought on-line relatively quickly (i.e., six months). A greenfield wafer fab—one constructed on a new site—took about two years to reach high-volume production. Will the same situation play out with only three DRAM suppliers left to serve the market?
 
HaloSVT said:
hmmm price fixing anyone ???
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I believe it is because of demand. The DDR4 platform shift because of AMD's Ryzen platform and newer Intel platforms has increased demand as the current platform refresh is in it's early stages. I think prices will continue to rise until December as the holiday demand plays out. Even the Corsair LPX 3200 kit I got back in June went from $135 to $155 last I checked. Memory production has ramped up in various places around the world, mostly China, but demand continues to rise. A lot of this can be attributed to defense spending as well as corporate server refresh. As stated in the article it takes 2 years to bring new fabs up to volume so I believe it won't be until next year until prices start to moderate and even then they will remain high for the first half of the year.
 
gigaxtreme1 said:
I believe it is because of demand. The DDR4 platform shift because of AMD's Ryzen platform and newer Intel platforms has increased demand as the current platform refresh is in it's early stages. I think prices will continue to rise until December as the holiday demand plays out. Even the Corsair LPX 3200 kit I got back in June went from $135 to $155 last I checked. Memory production has ramped up in various places around the world, mostly China, but demand continues to rise. A lot of this can be attributed to defense spending as well as corporate server refresh. As stated in the article it takes 2 years to bring new fabs up to volume so I believe it won't be until next year until prices start to moderate and even then they will remain high for the first half of the year.
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Well I am sure the 3 companies in the world making ram are happy to hear you say that. Yes, yes that is for sure the reason. :)
 
They said this would never happen in a free market. They said a free market ensures fair prices.

Or, it actually ensures the big players can eliminate all smaller players, and then set a price where they can "enjoy maximal profits"
 
There's a very simple solution for the ever increasing high prices. STOP BUYING. But that's like telling those who shop Walmart, to stop shopping Walmart. It's a disease, the shopping thing I mean. Most people are never happy. They go from toy to toy in a vain attempt to make themselves feel good and they succeed for a week or three and then the new car smell goes away and they're left paying off the credit cards. So they get depressed and go out and buy more stuff to make themselves feel good again and they succeed for a week or three and ...
 
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No Ryzen and Intel had nothing to do with it given how everyone is saying how the PC market is generally down in sales given most people only really need their phone/tablet these days. There was a huge bump in prices at the end of 2016. I just paid $717 for 64GB of DDR4 3200 CAS 14 G.Skill Trident Z ram that exactly a year ago from the date I purchased it was $300 less or around $417.
 
M76 said:
They said this would never happen in a free market. They said a free market ensures fair prices.

Or, it actually ensures the big players can eliminate all smaller players, and then set a price where they can "enjoy maximal profits"
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There isn't a free market.

With that said, why don't we make you world president and you set the selling price for everything? Let's see how long you last before everything collapses and you are killed. I give it less than 6 months.
 
Well, this stinks.

One of the main reasons I have held off upgrading my server is because it will require me to buy all new RAM. 256GB of Registered DDR4 is just too damned expensive.

So, instead my older dual socket Xeon hexacore L5640 trucks on. It is more than adequate performance wise, but it draws a ton of power, and the fact that my 12 total cores are split over two sockets instead of all on the same die like with a more modern chip costs me more in licensing which for some ridiculous reason is billed "per socket" instead of "per core"...
 
Computers are supposed to be getting cheaper. They've gotten more expensive. Same as phones, more expensive each time. All of these component makers have one job to do, they know what they're supposed to be making, so anything less than full production should not even be considered.
 
MV75 said:
Computers are supposed to be getting cheaper. They've gotten more expensive. Same as phones, more expensive each time. All of these component makers have one job to do, they know what they're supposed to be making, so anything less than full production should not even be considered.
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It's all about supply and demand. DRAM goes into a lot more than just PC's. Mobile devices, connected cars, IOT devices, etc., etc. With so many new uses, demand is simply outstripping supply faster than manufacturers can bring new production online.

RAM is probably going to keep getting more expensive for a while, as are chips, as demand, especially for small node processes for mobile chips, keeps going up up up, and it takes billions of dollars and lots of time to bring new production online.

The cost per unit is probably going to keep going up slowly for a while. On the other hand, the cost per instruction is still in a free-fall like it has been for 60 years.
 
Nexus6 said:
The last time this happened didn't they all get sued for market manipulation and price collusion?
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Sure did. Got $181 from that settlement. They don't care, they will keep on price fixing, make bank, and pay out pennies on the dollar for lawsuit settlements.

Wish I had bought all the ddr4 I'll need back when it was "cheap". The 32gb 3200 cas14 kit I bought not too long ago has more then doubled in price. It's keeping me on older platforms, ddr3 is cheap & plentiful.
 
I was going to build a new system too, but with these prices I can wait. Sucks for those who can't wait it out though.
 
I think the miners may have something to due with the DDR4 shortage.
 
The 16GB G.SKILL kit I got in the spring has gone up 10 bux. Eh, the memory makers have always played their games, shifting production between markets. It's fairly shitty even when they're not price fixing.
 
DooKey said:
There isn't a free market.

With that said, why don't we make you world president and you set the selling price for everything? Let's see how long you last before everything collapses and you are killed. I give it less than 6 months.
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Oh yes, there isn't. I suspected someone might throw that old chestnut in, but I hoped not. C'mon, educate how is government regulation responsible for the current ram prices? And how and why would it be different if there would be no government oversight of commerce at all?

And yes, the second favourite argument of those in love with the free market: Everything else is communism, or is it straight to marxism this time? And of course everyone who says anything against a free market wants to control the world! Projection much?


And tell me, how can free market prevent the forming of interest groups? The first thing a free market produces is price fixing by the established players on the market.
 
I would say phones have got to be the biggest market for DRAM. That is where the most growth is. Everyone has got to have their new iPhone, you know. The problem is that producers of RAM can't pop up overnight. When the smaller players get driven out during hard times, that's pretty much it for them. After the next economic correction, watch prices magically drop.
 
Flogger23m said:
Will this affect SSD prices to? Been needing to pick up a replacement.
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No, their price changes will be on their own merits. But look at something like Optane/QuintX and selling everything they make to datacenters.
 
M76 said:
They said this would never happen in a free market. They said a free market ensures fair prices.

Or, it actually ensures the big players can eliminate all smaller players, and then set a price where they can "enjoy maximal profits"
Click to expand...
We don't have a free market. We have some weird corporate socialism thing going on. If you would like me to point out the regulations that mean the bigger players get to eliminate the smaller players i can start listing them. There hasn't been a monopoly created in history without some kind of governmental help.
 
Fab construction and tooling takes years. So if a demand is unexpected or happens before planned. Then here we are.
 
M76 said:
Oh yes, there isn't. I suspected someone might throw that old chestnut in, but I hoped not. C'mon, educate how is government regulation responsible for the current ram prices? And how and why would it be different if there would be no government oversight of commerce at all?

And yes, the second favourite argument of those in love with the free market: Everything else is communism, or is it straight to marxism this time? And of course everyone who says anything against a free market wants to control the world! Projection much?


And tell me, how can free market prevent the forming of interest groups? The first thing a free market produces is price fixing by the established players on the market.
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Statist Corporatism is not the same as Free Market Capitalism.

When a few corporations are allowed to manipulate the government into approving numerous mergers so they can buy up every smaller company in order to form mega-corporations, then further manipulate the government even more with their special interest groups to "look the other way" while they are pulling this kind of racketeering, and further manipulate the government into regulating things so heavily that any smaller newcomers have zero chance of success, then statism has been reached, overthrowing a free market. And even further, allow the government to be manipulated so any judicial action taken if the plot is uncovered is nothing more than a light swat on the wrist settlement compared to the benefits reaped by past collusion.

Call it, and blame, this a result of a free market all you want...but you're actually arguing in favor for the statism that shat this out.
 
M76 said:
Oh yes, there isn't. I suspected someone might throw that old chestnut in, but I hoped not. C'mon, educate how is government regulation responsible for the current ram prices? And how and why would it be different if there would be no government oversight of commerce at all?
Click to expand...

This is a bit of a interesting situation actually, but government regulation is effectively blocking investment into this area.

China has been looking to aggressively grow its own semi-conductor industry for quite awhile now. The fastest way for them to do this is to acquire outside talent, infrastructure, and technology. The US however has been repeatedly now blocking such sales to China, the most notable being the acquisition of Micron as it specifically relates to memory. Had these gone through they would've likely ramped production much more aggressively and in a much shorter time frame (as the article in this case explains why its faster for existing producers to ramp).

Instead however they now need to build much slower. However that capacity will be coming online, the incumbent industry players know it which is also why they are reluctant to go with capacity expansion as they know what will happen when that Chinese capacity comes online. So instead they will choose to enjoy as much margins as possible in the mean time.
 
limitedaccess said:
This is a bit of a interesting situation actually, but government regulation is effectively blocking investment into this area.
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How so? Companies invest massively into these segments. Samsung for example is still busy building a 14B$ plant mainly for DRAM.
 
DejaWiz said:
Statist Corporatism is not the same as Free Market Capitalism.

When a few corporations are allowed to manipulate the government into approving numerous mergers so they can buy up every smaller company in order to form mega-corporations, then further manipulate the government even more with their special interest groups to "look the other way" while they are pulling this kind of racketeering, and further manipulate the government into regulating things so heavily that any smaller newcomers have zero chance of success, then statism has been reached, overthrowing a free market. And even further, allow the government to be manipulated so any judicial action taken if the plot is uncovered is nothing more than a light swat on the wrist settlement compared to the benefits reaped by past collusion.

Call it, and blame, this a result of a free market all you want...but you're actually arguing in favor for the statism that shat this out.
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The way I see it, even if you'd remove all government influence, the leading corporations would just re-create them eventually. Government corruption is not the cause of monopolies it's a symptom.
 
Just checked the price on the RAM in my sig rig. Got it for $290 at the end of June 2016 from Amazon and now the cheapest it's going for there is $600 from 3rd party resellers. In all of the years I've been building PCs I can't recall anything doubling in price the next year.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Well, this stinks.

One of the main reasons I have held off upgrading my server is because it will require me to buy all new RAM. 256GB of Registered DDR4 is just too damned expensive.

So, instead my older dual socket Xeon hexacore L5640 trucks on. It is more than adequate performance wise, but it draws a ton of power, and the fact that my 12 total cores are split over two sockets instead of all on the same die like with a more modern chip costs me more in licensing which for some ridiculous reason is billed "per socket" instead of "per core"...
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The price of memory is also why I haven't upgraded, yet. I'll just keep trucking along with my Haswell platform for another year. Hopefully things will have calmed down by the time Icelake arrives.
 
M76 said:
The way I see it, even if you'd remove all government influence, the leading corporations would just re-create them eventually. Government corruption is not the cause of monopolies it's a symptom.
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When you aren't busy attacking the straw men you build, have you thought about what you'd replace that "evil free market" with? Do you have any examples where your alternative is working well? Venezuela perhaps, they have quite a few government panels setting the prices and production goals for many goods.

PS: RAM is cheaper than it was 30 years ago by a factor of several hundred thousand. And it's cheaper than it was 20 years ago, and cheaper than it was 10 years ago. Which government policy mandated those enormous price drops?

1 Gigabyte RAM:
1980: $6,750,000
2017: $10
 
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Manufacturers of other computing components should be upset. More money spent on RAM leaves less for everything else. I'll just keep using my i7 2700K system purchased in 2012 that still works great. I am no glad I got that 32 GB Corsair RAM kit for $150 many years ago!
 
GlowingGhoul said:
When you aren't busy attacking the straw men you build, have you thought about what you'd replace that "evil free market" with? Do you have any examples where your alternative is working well? Venezuela perhaps, they have quite a few government panels setting the prices and production goals for many goods.

PS: RAM is cheaper than it was 30 years ago by a factor of several hundred thousand. And it's cheaper than it was 20 years ago, and cheaper than it was 10 years ago. Which government policy mandated those enormous price drops?

1 Gigabyte RAM:
1980: $6,750,000
2017: $10
Click to expand...

What strawmen? Point to just one, and I'll gladly clarify. Broad statements that doesn't point to anything particular I can't address. It seems to me you're the one creating a strawman. I've never said the free market is evil. Evil is a meaningless word in itself. Evil compared to what? Evil is a label created for actions that people couldn't rationalize within their frame of reference.
The free market is perfectly rational. Rational in it's effort to self regulate. Monopolies and cronism are methods of cementing the status quo. Much like the first interest groups formed in the early days of the emerging market. You want to sell your product in our area? You must join our trade union! Of course trade unions were nothing but a way for the established players to prevent the new players from changing the status quo. They aren't government created top down organizations. They're organizations created by the free market itself to keep the market leaders on top. Governments are little more than glorified trade unions. Even if you removed all governments currently in power, new ones would emerge. As I've said they're not causing the problem, they're a symptom of the problems of the market system.
The problem is not the free market, it's THE market. The market that incentifies players not to create the best and most reliable product they can, and serve the most people they can. But to make the most profit margin, regardless of any other consequences. And monopolies help them do that. You can't expect a system that rewards monopolies to not create monopolies.
In other words if the rules of the game says the goal is to make money, why would you expect anything else than for companies to hunt the profit margin at any and all costs? You know oil spills, and other ecological catastrophes, are all symptoms of the market that prefers profits over the preservation of the future. Safety and reliability are not goals of the market. "Yeah but what about Volvo cars, wiseguy? They're all about safety! Explain that if you're that clever!" Yes, they're all about safety, as a marketing ploy. Volvo doesn't create the safest cars that would be possible with currently available technology, they only create cars that are marginally safer than the rest, while still keeping in line with the hunt for profits. And no I'm not saying Volvo is evil either. They're perfectly normal for what the (free) market dictates. One company makes luxury their selling point, the other makes reliability, the third makes safety. And they only strive to be slightly better than the rest within their chosen discipline.

As for the price of 1 gigabyte ram, let me hear what do you think, why is it changed like that, I guess your answer would be the free market, but I want to be certain before I give my answer to that.
 
And this pretty much settles it. I won't be upgrading to Ryzen this generation, I refuse to pay this much for simple ram. Instead if my 2500k simply falls to its knees and starts to bottleneck my gtx1080 too much I'll just hunt down a used 2600k or Ivy Bridge equivalent just so I can get 8 threads for gaming.
 
LurkerLito said:
No Ryzen and Intel had nothing to do with it given how everyone is saying how the PC market is generally down in sales given most people only really need their phone/tablet these days. There was a huge bump in prices at the end of 2016. I just paid $717 for 64GB of DDR4 3200 CAS 14 G.Skill Trident Z ram that exactly a year ago from the date I purchased it was $300 less or around $417.
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Right, it's from the switch-over in the Mobile market, the Galaxy S6 (2014) and the iPhone 6S (2015) both switched to DDR4 before the price increases in 2016. All the major OEMs followed-suit within 6 months, and thus the prices doubled in 12 months.

These devices sell an order-of-magnitude more than high-end PCs and servers, and they all include 2-6GB DDR4 ram. Prices won't go down until demand is sated, and the market is sill growing in regions like China and India.

I'm sure that PCs have an impact, but Intel has been selling DDR4 servers since Haswell-EP in 2014, which way predates these price hikes. There was also a very slow transition from DDR3 to DDR4 in Skylake mobile devices.

But DDR4 transition in mobile devices was much more abrupt. 12 months and it was complete. I tend to blame such fast transitions on price surges.
 
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