Posted by
emmett
on from the do-you-suffer-from-long-term-memory-loss dept.
CitizenC writes: "ACK! According to this C|Net story, RAM prices are expected to go up again this week, due to the low supply and high demand. Buy your RAM now!"
From a competitive prospective, you couldn't be more correct. Going forward, there are going to be shortages and market jumps in one subsystem or another. The OS that adapts quickly with the right solution will be prefered.
There are plenty of shopping bots that search online stores for current prices, so you don't get the "special pricwatch price" effect. I run the largest of these in Austria (www.geizhals.at), but I know that there plenty of these in the US. dealtime.com is somewhat well-known these days because of the evenbetter.com merger.
-- "I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
Stayed 2 years behind the "curve" is the only way to do powerfull computing at a reasonable price. ___
OT: .10 really *is* a lot of money...
by
Guppy
·
· Score: 2
"This is what we freak out about now? This is a sad sad day..."
Ten cents is a huge amount of money. Geeze, doesn't anyone remember the tortured screams last time gasoline prices went up.10 in the US? "Give us cheap gas for our gigantic three-ton SUVs, you greedy OPEC bastards!" Dangit, they could have wrecked our economy, and then how would we afford our Ford Expeditions and GM Yukons?
Re:OT: .10 really *is* a lot of money...
by
schematic
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· Score: 1
I have no sympathy for land yacht owners, of which I am not one.
What about us muscle car owners?;-)
-- My/. number is leeter than you.
Re:OT: .10 really *is* a lot of money...
by
the+eric+conspiracy
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· Score: 2
Geeze, doesn't anyone remember the tortured screams last time gasoline prices went up.10 in the US?
Give me a break. Gas prices are DOUBLE what they were a year ago, and it hurst, not only at the pump, but when the home heating bill comes in, too, or when you see that fuel surcharge on the electric bill.
how would we afford our Ford Expeditions and GM Yukons
I have no sympathy for land yacht owners, of which I am not one.
Re:OT: .10 really *is* a lot of money...
by
billybob+jr
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· Score: 1
Gas prices are double? Not here in Indiana. Last I bought gas I paid around 1.60 for gas.
Re:OT: .10 really *is* a lot of money...
by
spudnic
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· Score: 1
Prices are double? Where are you living? Geez, I'd move.
I'm paying about $1.40 per gallon.
Or maybe where you live gas was like $.70 last year? Cool!
--
load "linux",8,1
Re:Slightly off topic but!
by
Kryptonomic
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· Score: 1
And what you can get with that increased price is nothing but "crippled" RFC-2 drives.
I'm not convinced that these RAM price fluctuations are for real. Remember when that plastic factory in Korea burned down a few years back? It was immediately reported that RAM prices would skyrocket, because this was just 1 of 2 factories in the world that made this particular type of plastic for RAM.
Then, about a month later, some interesting articles appeared. Just a few. (This was pre-web-journalism, for the most part, so I can't find anything to link to.) The reports were that the amount of plastic that was in warehouses was unbelievable. There was enough for years of RAM, more than enough time to rebuild the factory and replenish the stocks. Further, this other factory in the world was fully capable of producing enough plastic to satisfy the world's demand. (If anybody has a more accurate recollection of this than I, please correct my errors.)
Yet, still, the industry continued to insist that the price would go up, which it did. Smacked of price-fixing to me, like oil from the mid-east.
It's kinda sneaky everytime something like this happens. When Coca-Cola demand goes up, the price doesn't increase. When carpet demand goes up, the price doesn't increase. Yet somehow we're to believe that the RAM industry is so grossly incompetent as to be unable to adequate predict the demand for their sole product more than a month in advance?
Call me a conspiracy theorist, but it seems weird to me.
When Coca-Cola demand goes up, the price doesn't increase. When carpet demand goes up, the price doesn't increase. Yet somehow we're to believe that the RAM industry is so grossly incompetent as to be unable to adequate predict the demand for their sole product more than a month in advance?
They don't call it "supply and demand" for nothing.
In the case of Coke and Carpets there is an ample supply of both, so both are cheap regardless of demand. If demand goes up it's easy to increase production by hiring more workers and buying more raw materials.
With RAM chips the supply is (supposedly) not ample. Demand fluctuates. Increasing production to meet demand requires building or converting a fab. Ramping up production to meet demand takes a while, during which time prices are high.
In the case of Coke and Carpets there is an ample supply of both, so both are cheap regardless of demand. If demand goes up it's easy to increase production by hiring more workers and buying more raw materials.
With RAM chips the supply is (supposedly) not ample. Demand fluctuates. Increasing production to meet demand requires building or converting a fab. Ramping up production to meet demand takes a while, during which time prices are high.
You're absolutely right -- demand should increase the price if there's not enough supply. The question is this: Why isn't there enough supply? It's not exactly a dead-end industry. It's probably one of the more expansive industries out there with, as we've learned doing the math in this story, one hell of a markup.
But I do think that your last point is interesting: Ramping up production to meet demand takes a while, during which time prices are high. Logical, and something that I've heard quite a bit, but I wonder how much truth there is to it. Does anybody know (somebody -- unlike Admiral Burrito and I -- who *is* an economist) of other industries that has this 'ramping-up' problem so often?
Well, almost all of the costs involved in making memory are fixed costs, so overcapacity is very expensive. I would have thought that memory prices were pretty elastic though: most peoples approach to buying computers seems to be `memory's so cheap so I may as well have a 128MB machine, even though I don't really need it'. People will just buy the 64MB machines and wait 'til they need it to buy the upgrade.
Dynamic scalability of output is a micro-economic concern and effects all industries from one degree to another. It is captured in the slope of the market supply curve (when aggregating individual firms supply curves) and labeled supply elasticity.
ps. Does having an econ degree make one an economist?:)
pps. When you refered to "demand should increase", what you really meant was "quantity demanded should increase"- the demand curve presumably doesn't shift with supply curve shifts.
-- Pax -- Ob
Re:Obligatory prediction poll
by
DrEldarion
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· Score: 1
Someone started it, then everyone else jumped on the bandwagon, I'm sure.
-- Dr. Eldarion -- It's not what it is, it's something else.
Re:Who loses?
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 1
Multiply by 8. They are talking about 64 Mbit modules, 8 of which are needed to make a 64 MByte module.
Also, you often see DIMMs with 16 chips instead of 8. (So 16 * 32 Mbit for 64 MByte.) And I'm guessing that 32 Mbit module cost less per Mb than 64 Mbit.
Not to mention, Micron probably buys higher quality memory that costs more than the stuff that goes into the bargain RAM on PriceWatch. I've never had a problem with the bargain RAM.
Flamebait comment; sorry, but the moderation of the parent story annoyed me enough to have to do this: *Sigh* I wish more moderators would moderate down stuff that's obviously mis-moderated way up. It's mis-information like this that makes/. suck. Personally, I always try to spend at least half of my moderation points on posts that are obviously moderated too high.
Is anyone familiar with something known as the Slashdot Effect®? Imagine that applying to RAM prices...
Even if the C|Net article is full of horse feathers, the above statement alone, from Slashdot, is perfectly capable of raising RAM prices all by itself.
the $6 is the chip price, thay also have to add the price of the pcb & other components, and as we all know pcbs are made from crushed diamond and wired with a coating of pure gold.
please do not begrudge the chip manufacturers their losses or the OEMs & retailers their profits, they need their BMs or they wither & die from being unable to bathe in the glow of their own obvious greatness.
Just be thankful you have SDRAM and not an old machine with EDO (or fast page). The prices are double, and they go in machines that are worthless. Oh, the irony.
No kidding! Recently I had to replace the RAM on my P200, and I was shocked to find that 2 32MB EDO SIMMS were more than 1 64MB SDRAM DIMM. Luckily I had a DIMM slot. Crazy.
Re:Who loses?
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 1
No.
Take your 64MByte DIMM out of its slot. Count the chips. It will either be single sided and have 8x64Mbit or be double sided and have 16x32Mbit.
Your point about the relative price increase is still correct.
But this really does illustrate the way there is no satisfactory way to abbreviate quantities of bits and bytes. People use MB and Mb interchangeably for both, even if they shouldn't. It happens when I buy bandwidth, it happens when I but flash ROM, I'm sick of always checking with an email: "is that bits or bytes"
Remember that the overall trend in RAM markets is 1% price reduction per week. Even two months of static prices are a skyrocket.
()
Re:$0.10 more a stick? Try $0.10 more a chip.
by
binarybits
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· Score: 1
If the price of a 64Mb chip is $6, you need 16 of those chips to make a 256MB DIMM, and 8 of them to make a 64MB DIMM.
How can twice as many chips give you four times the capacity?
Re:Only up by 1 dime / 64 MB
by
ZanshinWedge
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· Score: 1
Yes it is true.
Exp(i*x) = Cos(x) + i*Sin(x)
Thus, Exp(i*pi) = Cos(pi) + i*Sin(pi)
Cos(pi) = -1, Sin(pi) = 0, leaving you with Exp(i*pi) = -1
Also, Exp(i*2*pi) = 1, cool eh?
I could have told you this a week ago...
by
supabeast!
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· Score: 1
If you want to know about this sort of thing in advance, check out http://www.asiabiztech.com/. This site picks up stories from major Asian news sources and posts them in English. If you watch the site over time, you can pick up rising price stories in Asia before the American press catches on.
It's also a good way to watch and see when prices are going to go back down...
My guess is that they meant 64Mb, because 64Mb for $6 would be 64MB for around $48, which is much more plausible than believing that consumers are paying a 1200% markup.
-- My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
this article is the major reason for the RAM to scyrocket? anyways of course scyrocketing is possible but not for long. More dangerous times would be when Microsof will release 64 bit version of Windows...
Re:Somewhere, deep in a bunker of M$ Hate
by
delysid-x
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· Score: 1
Is there something wrong with hurting average people? The average should be scorned and stoned (the bad kind) and forced to live in outhouses.
Re:Nothing makes prices skyrocket like panic buyin
by
TheDeal
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· Score: 1
Doesn't this story sound something like the OPEC problem?
Results are in - it's #6!
by
SuperKendall
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· Score: 1
Actual title of next story posted:
Science: Proving General Relativity with Crystal Balls
-- "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Re:Only up by 1 dime / 64 MB
by
billybob+jr
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· Score: 1
I love the scene where the comic book guy gets thrown out of the movie theatre. I can't remember which episode that was though. Maybe the one with Mel Gibson???
Re:Nothing makes prices skyrocket like panic buyin
by
Yardley
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· Score: 1
This reminds me of when the United States was "pretty pissed off" by the European Union's decision to drop all export regulations on encryption software. Yep, we were pretty pissed off. Except no mention of being pissed off appeared in the article. Taco inferred it. What great journalism!
--
-- He lives in a world where those who do not run the client software of the omnipresent meme are unacceptable.
Re:Only up by 1 dime / 64 MB
by
Midnight+Coder
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· Score: 1
What does "Exp()" mean?
Exp() is the function such that for any complex number x, Exp(x) equals the limit as n tends to infinity of the sum of x raised to the i'th power divided by the factorial of i, for all whole numbers i less than or equal to n.
If strictly necessary I can define the terms "function", "complex number", "equal", "limit as n tends to infinity", "sum", "raised to the i'th power", "divided by", "factorial", "whole number", and "less than".
For the sake of brevity I must assume you have knowledge of such words as "is", "the", "such", "that", "for", "any", "of", "by", "all" and "to".
Hardware is hugely expensive in australia anyway, what sort of difference is a few cents going to make?
-- On the other hand, you have fingers:)
Re:Obligatory prediction poll
by
Kryptonomic
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· Score: 1
9. A new MS Outlook worm is discovered... (Janet Simons' resume)
Pricewatch and vendor price strategies
by
fence
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· Score: 1
Is it just me, or does everyone else find it difficult to get vendors to sell you memory at the prices that they advertise on pricewatch?
Statements such as "on-line orders only" and "must mention pricewatch" are great, but most of them don't give you a place on the order form to mention pricewatch. So, you must call, and half the time the customer service rep will say something like "that price is for online orders only, but I'll honor that price THIS time. Next time, please order online at www.excessmicro.com, etc....
As far as Slashdot posting stories such as this--I have no problem with it, even if young Emmett DOES sell memory on the side to suppliment his Andover.net income!
anyways, just wanted to vent here--
Interested in the Colorado Lottery? Check out colotto.com --- Interested in the Colorado Lottery?
--
Interested in the Colorado Lottery or Powerball games?
check out http://colotto.com
We're talking here about wholesale, contract prices. Once the RAM reaches the user, it's gonna be a heck of a lot more expensive. My guess is that the price hike is gonna be much more than that, due to extortionate markup along the way. What's the deal with 6 dollars for 64mb, anyway? Buy.com is offering it for $57.95, so somewhere along the way, some whacking great profit is being made.
--Remove SPAM from my address to mail me
High SDRAM prices are bad for Rambus
by
Guppy
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· Score: 5
On the surface, it sounds like a SDRAM price hike would be good for RDRAM, as it would close (slightly) the price gap between the two sorts of memory. In reality, though, this is bad for Rambus. There are plenty of other issues with Rambus (die size, yield, packaging, royalties, etc...), but the biggest one in simple economics.
A year or two ago, the big carrot that Rambus had to offer to manufacturers was a potentially profitable product. SDRAM prices were in the dumps, so nobody was making any money no matter how much they could churn out. Fast forward to present day, and just about every fab is guaranteed a nice fat profit, just for producing a commodity chip. The only way to justify the risk and cost of switching production from SDRAM to RDRAM is if RDRAM fetches a huge margin. Hence low supplies and sky-high prices for Rambus.
Intel has been pushing manufacturers to "voluntarily" cut their margins and drop prices on RDRAM. For once, though, it seems the memory makers have the upper hand, and there have been no takers so far.
too true, I was going to wait until i setteled in my new flat before using mail order but now i'll buy it and send it to my parents address. Prices will go up
Re:Somewhere, deep in a bunker of M$ Hate
by
mbaker
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· Score: 1
I hope this was made in jest, and not a serious cry for prices of memory to increase, so as to keep people from using Windows.
This may or may not come as a surprise, but not everyone is the same. We've all different interests and needs, and Windows certainly does fill a need (perhaps several) for people. And though it may not suit your needs, and you may disagree with the practices of its manufacturer, it's still a product that people use for work, education, entertainment, and several other meaningful human activities.
It seems that having prices go up for RAM, enough so that Windows users can't afford a computer, can only hurt average people. People that want a computer for their child to do homework, people that want a computer for entertainment, and people that own small businesses that want a computer to help them keep track of finances, or for their employees to work on. In short, people that can benefit from the "standard" that Windows offers them.
I find it a bit cruel to wish a small business owner, educator, or parent ill, simply because they'd use what worked for them.
But I imagine you were only joking, so perhaps this post is a bit irrelevant. I apologize for wasting your time, if it was.
Perhaps the contract price has set variables on the upper and lower prices, these contracts usually exclude selling below cost price
Profit mongers are everywhere.
by
cdtoad
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· Score: 1
There would be a shortage of water if the profit mongers of the world could figuer out how to cause world droughts.
-- when they ban enctryption only criminals wi$21*J *#JF$%!@#$':
A few coments on this one...
by
seebs
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· Score: 2
First off, that sure sounds like they mean megabits, not megabytes.
Anyway, I think this story is patent bullshit. RAM prices do not increase over time, except for brief spikes. In general, given a time T, at T+6 months, RAM will cost less. Maybe not always, but pretty often.
Every time there's a glut, even a brief one, more people decide to play. There are plenty of companies that can make chips; if prices start getting high, more of them come in.
Might RAM prices go up for a little while? Sure. I don't expect them to stay up, and I don't think people should worry much. They're still going to be cheap compared to a while back...
-- My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
Not according to the CNET article
by
drsoran
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· Score: 1
"Contract prices for the standard 64-MB chip, now at $6, will rise about a dime"
MB=MEGABYTE Mb=MEGABIT
CNET quoted it as $6 for 64 MEGABYTE chip. If you have a qualm with it, don't bitch at some slashdot user, tell CNET to correct their article.
Re:Not according to the CNET article
by
billybob+jr
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· Score: 1
It must be megabit. My 128 Meg DIMM has 16 chips on it. 16x64 Mbit = 128 Megabytes. I doubt 64 Megabyte chips are in production. We should have gigabyte dimms right now if they were.
Re:Not according to the CNET article
by
VAXman
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· Score: 1
Anybody who has any clue at all about computers knows that RAM parts hold bits, not bytes, and you need 8 or 9 of them to make a full memory system. The poster who thought that RAM parts held bytes is a moron, and should have seen through the CNET typo.
Linux doesn't require much RAM to run
by
[TWD]insomnia
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· Score: 1
Windows requires twice the amount of RAM to run properly (ie. as fast as Linux) imho, and even then, it still runs flaky. The latest 2.3.99-pre's kernels have been rocking hard on its memory management.
Since/. is a penguin's dream, it won't be/. that'll cause this artificial raise (I hope)
Re:Yelling "fire" in a crowded theater.
by
mbaker
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· Score: 1
I tend to agree that it's a bit irresponsible on their part, but the impact may very well be minimal, or even nonexistant.
It's a bit like seeing someone in a crowded room cough, and start yelling "That man has an air-born infectious disease!" Perhaps the biggest difference, though, is Slashdot isn't going to get trampled by a horde of people running for the exit. =)
Re:$0.10 more a stick? Try $0.10 more a chip.
by
jonnythan
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· Score: 2
16 to make a 256 MB DIMM? 64Mb / 8 = 8 MB. That means _32_ to make a 256 MB DIMM, and I have yet to see a DIMM with 32 chips. Expect the price increase for the 256 MB DIMM to be a little greater than you predicted.
Re:Wow do you need to learn how to shop!
by
generic-man
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· Score: 2
Just a quick glance at pricewatch shows 64MB pc100 sticks as low as $35.
Pricewatch may be a decent price searching site, but you should never trust the lowest price (or any price within the first page, for that matter). Oddly enough, all of those really low prices come from Back-Of-The-Truck Enterprises, Inc., based in scenic Crown Heights, NY.
Decent RAM might not be $126/64MB, but don't believe every price you see.
D'oh! Everywhere I said "256MB" should be "128MB." Damn... that's what I deserve for getting up at 9:00 am on a Sunday!:)
High demand fueled by these rumors
by
gklyber
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· Score: 5
Of course, with articles like this, everyone will go out and buy RAM. There may be high demand right now, but these rumors will make demand skyrocket and make the prices even higher. Somebody at C|Net must want their memory stock to improve in value.
Re:High demand fueled by these rumors
by
TheReverend
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· Score: 1
Hey, I'm not complaining, I have a few extra DIMMs lying around that I'll be able to sell now.
--
"Let me open these blinds so the snipers can see in." - Kevin Giffhorn
Re:High demand fueled by these rumors
by
Betcour
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· Score: 4
Out of the last 5 RAM price hike, the IT press has successfully predicted 47 of them.
The key to success in today's volatile market is maintaining a diverse portfolio. A mix of high-risk stocks, blue chips, RAM chips and bonds maximizes potential while guaranteeing long term value.
...and here I am with my money tied up in pumpkins. D'oh!
The semiconductor industry is about to be slashdotted!
Re:Nothing makes prices skyrocket like panic buyin
by
befletch
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· Score: 1
But starting a buying panic is very much in their interest. CNet bought the story, hook-line&sinker. Now you.
CNet did not 'buy' any story about skyrocketting prices or panic buying. The words panic and skyrocket do not occur in the referenced story; those were inferred here on/. CNet's story simply says Micron is, "expected to boost memory prices," which is pretty calm language, I think.
Here's a critical thinking exercise for you; who is the intended audience of CNet's story? It isn't, "the hobbyist market," nor, "the big OEMs," as you seem to believe. A hint from the article:
"Demand has been pretty good all spring, and we expect business to pick up for them in the summer," said Josephthal & Co. analyst Larry Borgman, who rates the stock a "buy."
If you produce a commodity product like DRAM, a 10 cent price increase on a $6 product is a big deal to your profitability, and that matters greatly to the investing public.
-- If you say, "now I'll be modded down because of X", I'll happily oblige.
Contract prices for the standard 64-MB chip, now at $6, will rise about a dime
Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't a dime only a few cents? So this isn't like the doubling in price which happened last September.
--
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
Re:Only up by 1 dime / 64 MB
by
Huge+Pi+Removal
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· Score: 1
Excuse my ignorance, but what's a "contract price"?
- Oliver "exp(i*Pi)+1=0" - Euler
-- - Oliver
The right to bear arms is only slightly less stupid than the right to arm bears...
Re:Only up by 1 dime / 64 MB
by
stripes
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· Score: 2
Part of the reason is technological; a troy ounce of gold is, was, and forever shall be the same thing; same goes for a bushel of wheat or most other commodities. But memory technology is changing very fast; a 1 meg SIMM might have looked like a really good benchmark at one time, but certainly not now. In that sense, RAM is a very strange commodity
I can see how this would make for a lot of diffrent futures symbols, but not that it is an impossable obsticle. Of corse I would pay a diffrent ammount for PC133 64MBit 7-1-1-1 Jan2001 options then i would for DDR PC200 128Mbit 12-1-1-1 Jan2001 options. And of corse I probbably wouldn't pay much at all for any 2004 options as I think we'll be off to a new technology. but I think the diffrences are easally quantifyed, and most of the boilerplate (delevered to X, loose parts/finished sticks, acceptable defect rate, transaction rules) can remian the same. After all a share of WCOM now is vastly diffrent from a share of WCOM four years ago, yet it is traded on CBOE. A share of UUNT is no longer available, but it was once traded on the CBOE. There is a chance that AWE shares will be swollowd back into T shares, yet they trade on the CBOE.
I'm with you on the other oddamints. I hadn't thought of them. Well with the possable execption of large consumers. I would think this would help them even more. Then again it would also help the small consumers a whole lot, which the large ones might not like. I think most of all that like wheat futures, DRAM futures would help DRAM producers.
Re:Only up by 1 dime / 64 MB
by
stripes
·
· Score: 2
Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't a dime only a few cents? So this isn't like the doubling in price which happened last September.
Yep, next weeks price increse is only ten cents a 1.6% price hike.
The article seems to think the demand will continue (or rise), and that Micron has additonal idle production capacity, but pretty much nobody else does (they could switch back to DRAM from FLASH, if DRAM becomes more profitable then FLASH again, incresing hte price of FLASH of corse).
If it is right then we are in for more price hikes. How many or how much is, of corse, pretyt much unknown. If anyone could tell for sure they could make a huge amount of money from buying and selling futures on RAM. Hmmm, I can't find DRAM futures at CBOE (which has other futures and options), anyone know where they might be?
In other words this is the begining. Possably the begining of nothing. Possably the begining of a huge increse. Probbably merely something in between.
Re:Only up by 1 dime / 64 MB
by
wolfywolfy
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· Score: 1
finally, the messiah has come! you ARE comic book store guy incarnate!
-- *meep*
Re:Only up by 1 dime / 64 MB
by
iserlohn
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· Score: 1
Probably just the self-fulfilling prophecy of some "industry analyst".
Re:Only up by 1 dime / 64 MB
by
ZanshinWedge
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· Score: 2
It's a term derived from the English language.
Contract = a contract (I would guess, probably, to buy RAM, though goats may or may not be involved)
Price = the actually monetary payment in exchange for the RAM (in the modern world, we use "money" to trade for goods and services, such as RAM).
So, if a big company (like say Dell), buys a huge block of RAM from a memory company (like say Micron) then they will have a contract and thus pay the "contract price" for said large quantity of RAM.
</condescending tone>
Re:Only up by 1 dime / 64 MB
by
divec
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· Score: 1
the UK [...] has english as it's official language
Nope, the UK does not have an official language [1]. And there are at least 250,000 people here who don't have English as a mother-tongue. (Not claiming the original poster is likely to be one of these).
[1] Wales does have an official language, well two: Welsh and English.
--
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
Re:Only up by 1 dime / 64 MB
by
King+Babar
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· Score: 2
If anyone could tell for sure they could make a huge amount of money from buying and selling futures on RAM. Hmmm, I can't find DRAM futures at CBOE (which has other futures and options), anyone know where they might be?
I know that open futures and options markets in DRAM have been contemplated on several occasions, but I don't believe there are any "real" ones, yet. Part of the reason is technological; a troy ounce of gold is, was, and forever shall be the same thing; same goes for a bushel of wheat or most other commodities. But memory technology is changing very fast; a 1 meg SIMM might have looked like a really good benchmark at one time, but certainly not now. In that sense, RAM is a very strange commodity, and an exceedingly risky one; RAMBUS memory futures, anyone?
Other oddities include the facts that RAM markets have a relatively large proportion of foreign corporatoins involved, and that they have proven to be really easily manipulated in the past.
But one of the biggest factors behind a lack of RAM-based securities might be the simple point that large consumers of RAM, unlike large consumers in many other industries, can and do make huge contracts directly with producers (which can be themselves!), and this might reduce the need for then to do hedging in the markets.
--
Babar
Re:Only up by 1 dime / 64 MB
by
ZanshinWedge
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· Score: 1
Let's see, he appears to understand english correctly. He seems to be from the UK, which, the last I heard, actually has english as it's official language.
P.S. I am so hurt by your witty cut-down, especially the exquisitely timed usage of the words "fuckwit" and "dweeb". I think I will go in a corner and cry.
Just like Gasoline
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 1
Price of oil barrel rises a few cents, and pump prices double.
This is what we freak out about now? This is a sad sad day...
-- [SIG-/. insurance grp?]
Re:Nothing makes prices skyrocket like panic buyin
by
redelm
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· Score: 1
Fair comments. CNet hardly overreacted, but/. did. And CNet mostly goes for the investor crowd.
As for the effect of a 10cent increase it will increase revenues 1.7% -- hardly anything to write home about. Of course, costs will probably have a negligible increase, so the effect on profits will be multiplied.
But even so, I doubt this will have any lasting effect on Micron stock. But it's good for a kick up on Tuesday. To the dubious extent that these things are subject to any quantative evaluation, sales growth seems to be the key metric. And this hardly counts.
Relax, don't do it, when you wanna go to it
by
Money__
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· Score: 2
Keep in mind that this story reports on the analysis of just one, allbeit the largest, DRAM company, Micron Technology. There will be oportinity for other DRAM mfg. to get production into place to try and meet demand.
From the article: Contract prices for the standard 64-MB chip, now at $6, will rise about a dime, Thomas Weisel Partners analyst Eric Ross said. Micron's inventory has been halved to two to three weeks worth from six to seven weeks in March, he said.
This is hardly a panic in the market and will only serve as a window to other lower cost fabs to grab some share from Micron. ___
I heard about the rise in RAM prices months ago. And, it's only a few percent increase, not "skyrocketing".
Think yourselves lucky .....
by
doctor_oktagon
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· Score: 1
I remember paying 100 quid for a second hand 4MB SIMM for my am*ga back in the dark old days. You kiddies don't know the half of it! [disclaimer: just ignore this, it's my first post and I had to get it out of my system]
If the contract price for a stick of 64M PC100 SDRAM is $6, and at any local retail we pay around $1 per meg for this ram ($64).
If this logic is correct... then we are paying a 1066% mark up.
If the contract cost goes up, then the cost for retail stores will go up. Retail stores will increase prices to maintain the same profit on each unit...
The Yo-yo of memory prices....
by
aliastnb
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· Score: 1
It seems only a year ago since due to high demand and short supply, memory prices shot up to a ridiculous amount as supplies dropped. Until of course, they got so high that almost no-one would buy them. Then they dropped again/ Oh, wait a minute, it *WAS* only a year ago. The way memory prices shoot up at around the summer and then take a dive again is almost a reflection of the UK car market until recently, when prices were at their highest as new numberplate letters came out in August and people wanted new cars then, to the decline until the next August when it started again. In this case, the government took steps to ensure a steady flow of car-buying by changing the times at which number plates to twice a year and soon to four times (I think). I believe it would be sensible for memory manufacturers to adopt a similar timetable. Decide on what would be a "fair price" for memory, and release their goods to the world steadily across a whole year. If the prices are too low, then release less memory to the world that month. Should they be too high, release more to the markets, or even turn a higher profit. It wouldn't be that hard, it would prevent the price of memory dropping to too low, and everybody wins. --
-- Said it couldn't last, said it wouldn't last...
This is the last stand against tomorrow's world.
Re:The Yo-yo of memory prices....
by
MadCamel
·
· Score: 1
Compare memory prices to the stock market. There are many similarities. My point is, they will go up, and they will drop back down. Wait a few months and you'll be able to find dirt cheap RAM. I like it this way, you can get some very good deals when they have an "excess".
I am a Microbiologist... I consider chirality to be two things 1) an amazing concept 2) one of those things that when explained to a 'lay-person' they will be amazed as well. Read about it.
In early 1995 A simular thing with RAM was happening there was a high dammand and the companies could keep the company stocked. Knowing that Win95 will be soon released which would most likly chew up massive amount of ram for no reason. I desided to buy my chips ASAP because it seemed like after win 95 cam out there will be a higher dammand. 16megs of RAM $750 2 months work at parttime minimum wage. 2 to 3 months later the price for 16 megs of RAM was $50. The moral of the story is if you really dont need the RAM right now Wait a couple of months for a new technology to come out and you can get some cheap memory again.
-- If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Amdahl's 2nd Law predicts large memory demand
by
peter303
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· Score: 1
The law says the average CPU requires a one second buffer of core memory, e.g. 1 GHz wants about one GB. So with CPU speeds doubling every two years, memory needs double every two years. Traditionally memory manufacturers have keep a little ahead of the curev- a new 4x generation every three years. But still demand will be insatiable.
How does the price go from $6 to nearly $100?
by
gutterface
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· Score: 1
I was surprised at the high markup from the company to the consumer. I'm no hardware expert, so maybe I'm missing something. Does a middleman make modifications to the memory? Anyone care to answer?
-- gutterface
Re:How does the price go from $6 to nearly $100?
by
Money__
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· Score: 1
What the middleman does is take inventory in large blocks. It's cheaper for the mfg. to sell to 10 middlemen than to 500,000 individuals. The middleman takes the profit when the market is strong, and suffers with huge inventory when the market lags. He adds no value to product production, but the middleman is the prefered customer for the mfg because when you only have 10 customers that have to buy your product, you can acuratly predict large purchases and manage capitol with confidence. ___
While $0.10 dosen't exactly seem like "skyrocketing", nontheless it is a strong sign of a possibile sea change in a market where, until now, prices have been on a general downward trend. If other manufacturers go along, it could harbinge a sudden increase in prices. What is more telling is the comment about the 50% decrease in inventory that micron has engineered, which sets the stage for sudden price increases based on limited supply. I might be tempted to buy some, but of what real use is PC133 SDRAM when DDR SDRAM, i.e. PC200 is on the immidiate horizon!? I remember buying a lot of EDO dram one day, only to find it essentially useless in newer sytems where you wanted decent performance. With a significant increase in speed the coming soon, my money is staying in the bank for now.
------------------------------------------------ Rambus is an evil intel plot! DDR SDRAM anyday now! For a fascinating story on intel and rambus, read http://www.32bitsonline.com/article.php3?file=issu es/200004/rambusb&page=1
--
--- the pen is mightier then the sword. the sword is mightier then the court. the court is mightier then the pen.
Yeah! Buy your ram now!
by
Ron+Harwood
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· Score: 2
Make sure that you drive up demand and decrease the supply so they can jack up the price more!
Re:Slashdot Mad Libs v.2.0
by
saridder
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· Score: 1
Don't forget the " releases the release of . Check out and happy downloading;)."
Then for comments:
"I guess this site will get/.'ed.;)"
I submitted under HTML.
-- --- RFC 1149 Compliant.
Re:Slashdot Mad Libs v.3.0
by
saridder
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· Score: 1
Don't forget the "{insert linux deveoper here} releases the {insert random number here} release of {kernel/OS}. Check out {insert ftp site here} and happy downloading;)."
Then for comments: {insert username}>
"I guess this site will get/.'ed.;)"
If this dosen't work, I'm a real jackass and i won't release a v4.0 comment.
-- --- RFC 1149 Compliant.
$0.10 more a stick? Try $0.10 more a chip.
by
Marcus+Aanerud
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· Score: 4
I think the article is confusing "MB" and "Mb". Megabytes is what we typically measure our computer storage in. Megabits is what chip vendors measure the individual chips by. 8 Megabits = 1 Megabyte. What's that mean? If the price of a 64Mb chip is $6, you need 16 of those chips to make a 256MB DIMM, and 8 of them to make a 64MB DIMM. That's $96 for the actual RAM chips on a 256MB DIMM, and $48 for the chips that go on a 64MB DIMM. That sounds a lot more realistic.
So, if there's a price hike from $6 to $6.10, the cost of the 256MB module is now $97.60. Up $1.60. Not too big of a deal until you consider markups, profit margins, and hype-stories like the one on c|net. If people see that story, they're bound to believe it, and rest assured, the good resellers are going to be reading articles that concern them (like this one).
And, of course, you need to add to the price of the RAM chips assembly of the actual DIMM, the circuit board that the chips are put on, testing of the board, distribution, further markups in retail, and so on. All together, that maks a 256MB module about $200-$270, depending where you buy.
Let's see, My I-opener has 64Meg of ram and runs very very nicly.. X and Slackware with star-office is speedy, and faster than my NT box at work running Bloatware office suite 2000. All my other machines here have 128 meg of ram. Who the hell needs more than that? I run raytracing systems and that doesn't need it, therefore I use more of my machine than the large bulk of users out there (I actually do complex mathematical computations with pov-ray)
Could someone please give me one Legitimate reason to have more ram than 128 meg? Autocad wont use it, Hell the AVID at work has only 128 meg of ram and it does studio quality non-linear video editing at levels that no one here can accomplish with their computer. (And the AVID is crippled by running NT 4.0!)
so we hear about ram going up in price... GREAT! I hope ram goes up to $35.00 per meg! and force these talentless,sloppy programmers to actually optimize their code! (NOTE: this comment is directed to Microsoft OS application programmers. there ae vey few bloated Linux apps... except for Real audio,Netscape,Acrobat reader... basically evey app that started as a windows app..... that's interesting!
Everytime people at work want faster machines, they ask "can't we just put more ram in it?".. I have to explain that doubling the ram in that p100 running win95 is just not going to double their performance..
That said, I have one reason to use over 128 megs of ram -AfterEffects. I use AfterEffects daily, and it uses a 'ram preview' function that stores as much of your video comp in a ram buffer as possible, then lets you view it playing back smoothly with sound - This is such an important tool to me at work, my G3 there has 768 megs. (this also lets me be lazy about running multiple apps at the same time). -
Audio mixing.. The the next part is not a joke but a real example of something i did just a few weeks ago. Two big 60 meg wav files.. The first one was Julie Andrews - Doh Ray Me (from the sound of music)... the was the product of a lowpass filter on some heavy bass hitting rap some (dont remember the song).. I was laying one on top of the other so as to produce a very cool and 90's kind of Julie Andrew beat..
on a machine with 128 meg ram it would swap to death and backwards and tear the life out of this disk... But with 512, Its pure bliss.
Now imagine slashdot.org with 128 megs ram -> You'll never be able to read this comment the server will be so fucked by the amount of hits and queries. i'm making a pretty good guess the slashdot servers have 512 at least in them.. if not, you boneheads at slashdot should get a clue.
Raytracing isn't the big RAM eater - the modelling is. I have 320MB in my P2 (and 512 in my Alpha, but that's purely "because I can", I never use anywhere near all of it:-) Anyway, the 320MB in my P2 gets used up routinely when I'm doing 3D work (take a look at this picture for an example of one that used the full 320 and then some virtual memory as well.) This is using 3D Studio and Bryce 4, not Povray, which needs far less RAM.
On a related note, whose fucking bright idea was it to put only 3 RAM slots in my damn motherboard instead of 4 like it should? I would *love* to put some of the RAM from my ALpha into my P2 and actually put it to use. --
May I suggest the RAM price index:
by
Wakko+Warner
·
· Score: 4
Go here to see if prices really do go up. This page tracks and graphs the prices of CPU, SDRAM, and RDRAM and has done so for a couple of years now. Very interesting site.
- A.P. --
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
-- "Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
It really depends on how new/old your machine is. I have found that memory prices for previous-generation non-peecees have been very stable compared with peecee memory prices. When peecee DRAM prices tripled last year, memory for my Sparc 20 stayed exactly the same price - quite a bit lower than peecee memory in fact. So I think it really depends on whether your memory is the same stuff peecees use. If it is, prices will fluctuate. Otherwise they'll probably be stable. It also depends very much on where you get your memory. If you get it new from the workstation vendor it will be much more expensive than third-party and/or used memory. Whether this matters depends on whether you have a service contract.:)
I have a couple thoughts that probably aren't going to jibe with the rest of the (more market-related) comments, so I'm starting a new thread.
Does anyone know why the fabs for the higher density modules (i.e. 256 and 512 Mb) are taking so long to come online? I can get 256 MB modules at a price premium, but they seem to be taking their time getting to market. I have yet to see a consumer box ship with a single 256 MB chip, as opposed to two 128's which I see all the time.
Doesn't Moore's Law apply to memory fabrication as well as processor fabs? When the graphics chipset makers like nVidia are able to cut the product cycles time to 6-12 months, instead of 12-18, as Moore predicted so famously, why is there such a holdup in the memory market? Is it because memory isn't quite as glamorous and, dare I say, sexy as graphics or CPUs?
Anyway, what would be ideal would be to see a few high density fabs come online and start pushing out the 256 and 512 MB modules. Otherwise, we're going to keep getting whiplash trying to track the prices of 128 MB SDRAM.
Why this hasn't happened (Taiwan earthquake? Poor market analysis?) yet is beyond me.
The simple answer is that DRAM is a commodity. People produce what there is demand for. Now, as far as fab capacity goes you have to remember that the DRAM industry has been in a major downturn where even the lowest cost producers were losing hundreds of millions a year.
Steppers and such are very expensive so, in general the DRAM industry is not as aggressive in moving to the new equipment since they are still recovering. In addition to using steppers capable of finer work, they haven't adopted 300mm wafer technology yet either (though there is an entirely different set of reasons there as well).
Anyway, DRAM prices always drop over time. Just wait 6 months to a year and the prices will generally be significantly lower. I think we are getting to a point where even the bloatware can't keep up with DRAM capacities. 128MB is a lot of memory, especially when coupled with an efficient virtual memory system.
Re:Wow do you need to learn how to shop!
by
Wakkow
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· Score: 1
A small local retailer I always purchase ram from has 64 megs for $59.. I use my local free weekly computer publication as a true pricewatch..
Daniel daniel@splink.net
Uh - "skyrocket" you say?
by
-Harlequin-
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· Score: 2
"Prices expected to skyrocket this week" claims the heading. The C/net article tells a different story. A 2% base price rise, while it may be the start of a bigger trend, doesn't seem as PaNiC!!!-worthy as the headline suggests.
Ok, I don't know anything about the downstream effects this is going to have, and it does sound like the start of something bigger that will eventually result in much higher prices, but it is definitely yet another of the horde of indicators showing that/. could do with a lot less sensationalism in its journalism.
Your standard 64MB Chip costs $6.00 from Micron. That price is going up about 10 cents. The consumer purchases a 64MB chip for about $126.00. (Based on Simple 64MB EDO 168-pin DIMM)
Now, $6.00 goes into $126.00 21 times. Take $.10 and multiply it by 21, and you get $2.10.
So in a worst-case scenario (being the company charges you DOUBLE the increase in price) the price of a 64MB DIMM from Simple Technology goes from $126.00 to $130.20. I'd hardly call that skyrocketing. Even if you pay QUADRUPLE the price increase, it's still under $10 more.
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
--
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.:P)
Stacker didn't slow your machine down
by
divec
·
· Score: 2
Well, not if it was a typical 386SX or better. The time it took to do the decompression was typically less than the time it saved by not having to read as much from the disk. This was true for hard disks, but particularly true for floppies. I only stopped using the floppy "stacker anywhere" compression when I switched to Linux.
BTW I have known of memory compression being used to get round physical limits. E.g. ymight want to keep more than 2G of data in memory w/o swapping, on a system that supports only 2G physical memory.
--
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
Emmetts definition of 'Skyrocket'
by
Money__
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· Score: 2
Recently, our beloved Emmett was buying a Britney Spears CD single at the record store and he had only $6. When he found the price had gone up a dime (and he was forced to take 10 pennies from the 'have a penny leave a penny' tray) Emmet was heard to say "These prices are Skyrocketing!"
Later, that same afternoon, while cruising in his AMC pacer with Britney pounding through the sub woofers, our beloved Emmett rolled through the drive through for a super size number 6 with an extra order of fries and noticed that the price had gone up from 6 to 6.10, Emmett was heard to say, "These prices are Skyrocketing!"
;) ___
Obligatory prediction poll
by
PollMastah
·
· Score: 3
What is the most likely Slashdot article to appear next?
Yet Another Fiasco involving Napster
Yet Another {DMCA, RIAA, UCITA, insert-your-favorite-enemy} bashing session.
Famous Person X (or not-so-famous person X) writes something inflammatory about {Napster, Open Source, Linux, GPL}. News site gets slashdotted, Slashdot gets filled with zealot posts.
You can run your Linux box off potatoes! Serious!
RAM prices are dropping! Run for cover! CPU prices are rising! Ride the tide!
Scientists have discovered Yet Another Innovation! Rabid slashdotters rush to post uninformed, nonsensical posts that get modded up to +5!
Hemos re-posts something redundant! Addicted slashdotters complain that slashdot isn't reading itself, but they're too hooked to find a better site!
Slashdot posts a movie review. Sane slashdotters complain that the movie sucks. Insane slashdotters elaborately explain why Natalie Portman is hotter than the lead actress.
--
Poll Mastah
Re:Obligatory prediction poll
by
swinge
·
· Score: 4
Addicted slashdotters complain...
9. carefully constructed parody of slashdot appears and gets moderated up, ostensibly making fun of slashdot but clearly mired in it, simultaneously complaining about yet adding to the noise.
slashdot would be better if we ditched all the emotion. Emotion is stuff that does not matter.
Re:Obligatory prediction poll
by
PollMastah
·
· Score: 1
Hahaha, you obviously missed the whole point of my post. The punchline in my post wasn't in the parodying of Slashdot. It was in the fact that the post parodies itself.
that will just drive the price up more for everyone.
argh. it is like selling all your stocks for fear of a market crash. doesn't make good sense.
and no, i am not trolling. just pointing out mistakes.
Nothing makes prices skyrocket like panic buying
by
redelm
·
· Score: 5
C'mon/. , you're playing right into the hands of the DRAM mfrs. They don't like the current low prices and have lost a bundle on Rambus. So they're taking this low-profit time to do some maintenance/retooling on some fabs. Perfectly normal.
They've also got lots of chips in inventories to meet sales. A plant fire when demand is tight is one thing, but a planned shutdown when demand is slack is quite another.
But starting a buying panic is very much in their interest. CNet bought the story, hook-line&sinker. Now you. Fortunately, the hobbyist market is fairly small, and I doubt can move prices. The big OEMs (Dell, Compaq, HP, IBM) are smarter than to fall for this.
It's fairly obvious that prices are not 'skyrocketing'. But if they did, as happened last year, and stayed high, what would happen?
When software was just beginning to get bloated (I remember being shocked that CorelDraw required a massive 20Mbyte), it became expensive to get a large enough hard disk (80Mbyte or so). Disk prices, at least at first, didn't drop enough for consumers to keep up with the increased demand for disk space. This led to a brief period of disk compression programs such as Stacker, which slowed down your machine a little but let you fit about 60% more stuff on your disk (typically). Eventually {Double,Drive}Space was included as a standard feature of MS-DOS (and then Win95). But now that disks are so cheap, I doubt if anyone bothers with it on a new system.
Similarly, a couple of years later, starting just before the launch of Win95, it started getting expensive to fit a system with the amount of RAM needed to run modern bloated applications. Products such as RAM Doubler appeared for the PC and Mac. (The PC version of one such program turned out to be a total fraud - it didn't compress things at all - but the others did actually do something.) In common with the disk compressors, the 'Double' in the name is misleading; you don't get anywhere near the same performance as a system with twice the RAM.
The way these RAM compressors (or at least Quarterdeck's offering) work is to set aside an area of memory, say 25% of physical RAM, for compressed pages. When the remaining memory gets full, pages are compressed and stored in the buffer instead of being paged to disk. When the buffer gets full you do have to go to disk, but you can write compressed pages and several of them at once, so disk activity is less. Compressing the pages takes CPU time, but most PCs have fast CPU relative to disk speed so the speed burden isn't too great.
Having said that, I didn't notice any wonderful speedup from Quarterdeck's RAM booster (can't remember the name) on a 16Mbyte machine, and it made Windows less stable. But done right, it might work.
Could you do something similar for Linux? One tactic might be to create a RAM disk with some of your memory, and use something like the crusty old DoUbLe (or however it's spelt) code to make it a 'compressed partition'. Then get Linux to swap to that before going to disk.
However you wouldn't get the benefit of pages being compressed when they go to disk, nor of compressed pages being simply moved from the RAM-swap to the swap partition. AFAIK you can tell Linux to use one swap device in preference to another, but you can't ask for a tiered swap scheme where pages from one device spill onto the next. (Please correct me if I am wrong.)
Another problem is that with DoUbLe, the size of the device varies according to how well things have compressed so far, and swapping requires a fixed-size device. So none of this would probably work at all.
But there are plenty of ultra-fast compression algorithms out there (LZO is fast and GPLed) which you might stick in the kernel. Then get the kernel to compress pages and dump them in a big pile somewhere, and to swap them out only when there is no alternative (or when the system is idle).
I have no idea whether such a scheme would make a significant difference; I'd guess that many of the most bloated programs do have highly compressible data areas though. If it did work, then Linux would be able to survive a memory shortage better than other OSes. It might also help ultra-cheapskate manufacturers making thin clients or mobile devices.
I think the idea of compression is a good one, especially for items stored temporarily, and I think Linux would be the excellent proving ground for an idea like this.
With the Win* world, the memory compression had to take place outside of the operating system, and "tacked" on to make it work. This sort of "tacking" is always unstable and likely to have problems. With Linux, of course, we have access to the source code of the actual operating system, thus there is no tacking required.
Of course the fanatics will yell that Linux runs on 8MB of RAM, and fast at that (I don't know what kernel version it is downstairs, but one of my 486s does run RedHat on 8MB, simply because I had the choice of Linux or OS/2 2.1 to run on that machine at a good speed.) Why not examine something like this? It'd make a great little feature.
(Now that I say that I can say that'd be the only problem with incorporating a feature like this: let Linux do the job of OS, and other tools do the job of everything else. Keep feature creep out. But damn, it's a cool idea to me.)
-B
-- My reality check bounced.
Micron Technology not the biggest, but important
by
Software+Cowboy
·
· Score: 1
Micron is the third largest DRAM manufacturing in the world behind Samsung and Hyundai. It is however the lowest cost manufacturer of DRAM in the industry. It is unlikely that anyone would be able to seriously threaten Micron's market share by trying to undercut them since they are also very aggressive (and successful) in protecting their position by using the product dumping laws against any DRAM manufacturer that sells lower than them.
Of course, knowing that Micron is the lowest cost producer and that they are raising their prices, makes it likely that the other producers are going to want to increase their prices as well since they aren't making the same margin on the product as Micron. Since the whole DRAM market has been in a severe downturn for the past couple of years, they are all looking to recoup some of those losses.
I built my rig back in September, and it cost me about $2 a meg (show price), but I just upgraded last week and it cost me about $.75 a meg. I'm not questioning that this news is valid, but let's face it folks, the price of RAM changes on a weekly basis, so this isn't that big a shocker. Give it a few weeks and prices will drop again. A few months later it will go back up, and then come down a few weeks after. It happens all the time... what's the big deal? --Forager
-- student of animation and the fine arts
I hate the timing on this, I really do...
by
TellarHK
·
· Score: 1
I read the articles, was a bit worried after the specter of last year. Why? Well, granted it's a 10 cent increase, but last month I got screwed by putting off a RAM purchase just a week too damn long. I thought to myself ''Hey, next week I'll buy some RAM when I have some cash.'' and that was good. The following week rolled around, and wow, whee, yippee, RAM had gone up nearly fifty damn percent. I could no longer afford to buy any RAM.
Last month I said to myself ''Hey, this month I'll pick up a new harddrive for the game machine so I can drop my 8.4G into the Linux box. NEXT month, I'll get that 256M RAM upgrade I've been dreaming about.''
Next damn weekend. Saturday, I was going to place my order. But now THIS stuff happens and I wind up needing to get a loan from folks in order to get the RAM now instead of next weekend, when, despite what -really- happens with the market, it's pretty sure the prices will be somewhat higher than now.
Sigh. Sometimes I feel like I need to just sell the computers and start lumberjacking.
The fresh air, the forests, the ability to scream at the top of my lungs and only tick off the deer.
Well I'm sorry! That definition was my first thought, but I just reckoned $6 was rather cheap considering it sells for about 10 times that... Thought there might be another explanation apart from the "huge profit" one. I can understand/spell English fine, but I have difficulties with company jargon.
But as the real price is so hugely different from the contract price, if the contract price goes up by a dime, does that mean the real price to us goes up by nothing, ten dimes, or $30?
- Oliver "exp(i*Pi)+1=0" - Euler
-- - Oliver
The right to bear arms is only slightly less stupid than the right to arm bears...
Is the $6.00 component a 64Mbit device or a 64Mbyte device?
I think it's the former, but I'm not sure. --
--
Peter
how is this offtopic? moderator, please explain.
by
Wakko+Warner
·
· Score: 1
The post seems pretty damned topical to me. And, I agree, these stories today have been pretty lackluster.
I guess the moderator monkies are getting restless.
- A.P. --
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
-- "Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Yelling "fire" in a crowded theater.
by
Wakko+Warner
·
· Score: 1
Is there any way to get this story removed? It seems 99% of the comments point out the fact that ten cents is by no means a "skyrocket" in price, and, it also seems to me that spreading this type of rumor is *exactly* the way to ensure an artificial, significant rise in prices *does* occur.
Slashdot has a few hundred thousand casual readers. If just a few percent of them make a "run" on RAM and stock up on it *for no good reason*, it *might* affect dealer prices a lot more than if this story hadn't run.
Maybe I'm just a little too paranoid...
- A.P. --
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
-- "Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Slashdot Mirror
___
There are plenty of shopping bots that search online stores for current prices, so you don't get the "special pricwatch price" effect. I run the largest of these in Austria (www.geizhals.at), but I know that there plenty of these in the US. dealtime.com is somewhat well-known these days because of the evenbetter.com merger.
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
Stayed 2 years behind the "curve" is the only way to do powerfull computing at a reasonable price.
___
"This is what we freak out about now? This is a sad sad day..."
.10 in the US? "Give us cheap gas for our gigantic three-ton SUVs, you greedy OPEC bastards!" Dangit, they could have wrecked our economy, and then how would we afford our Ford Expeditions and GM Yukons?
Ten cents is a huge amount of money. Geeze, doesn't anyone remember the tortured screams last time gasoline prices went up
And what you can get with that increased price is nothing but "crippled" RFC-2 drives.
I'm not convinced that these RAM price fluctuations are for real. Remember when that plastic factory in Korea burned down a few years back? It was immediately reported that RAM prices would skyrocket, because this was just 1 of 2 factories in the world that made this particular type of plastic for RAM.
Then, about a month later, some interesting articles appeared. Just a few. (This was pre-web-journalism, for the most part, so I can't find anything to link to.) The reports were that the amount of plastic that was in warehouses was unbelievable. There was enough for years of RAM, more than enough time to rebuild the factory and replenish the stocks. Further, this other factory in the world was fully capable of producing enough plastic to satisfy the world's demand. (If anybody has a more accurate recollection of this than I, please correct my errors.)
Yet, still, the industry continued to insist that the price would go up, which it did. Smacked of price-fixing to me, like oil from the mid-east.
It's kinda sneaky everytime something like this happens. When Coca-Cola demand goes up, the price doesn't increase. When carpet demand goes up, the price doesn't increase. Yet somehow we're to believe that the RAM industry is so grossly incompetent as to be unable to adequate predict the demand for their sole product more than a month in advance?
Call me a conspiracy theorist, but it seems weird to me.
-Waldo
Someone started it, then everyone else jumped on the bandwagon, I'm sure.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
It's not what it is, it's something else.
Multiply by 8. They are talking about 64 Mbit modules, 8 of which are needed to make a 64 MByte module.
/. suck. Personally, I always try to spend at least half of my moderation points on posts that are obviously moderated too high.
Also, you often see DIMMs with 16 chips instead of 8. (So 16 * 32 Mbit for 64 MByte.) And I'm guessing that 32 Mbit module cost less per Mb than 64 Mbit.
Not to mention, Micron probably buys higher quality memory that costs more than the stuff that goes into the bargain RAM on PriceWatch. I've never had a problem with the bargain RAM.
Flamebait comment; sorry, but the moderation of the parent story annoyed me enough to have to do this: *Sigh* I wish more moderators would moderate down stuff that's obviously mis-moderated way up. It's mis-information like this that makes
Buy your RAM now!
... "Be a beacon?"
Is anyone familiar with something known as the Slashdot Effect®? Imagine that applying to RAM prices...
Even if the C|Net article is full of horse feathers, the above statement alone, from Slashdot, is perfectly capable of raising RAM prices all by itself.
--
"Give him head?"
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft Ad
please do not begrudge the chip manufacturers their losses or the OEMs & retailers their profits, they need their BMs or they wither & die from being unable to bathe in the glow of their own obvious greatness.
~ppppppppö
Just be thankful you have SDRAM and not an old machine with EDO (or fast page). The prices are double, and they go in machines that are worthless. Oh, the irony.
Take your 64MByte DIMM out of its slot. Count the chips. It will either be single sided and have 8x64Mbit or be double sided and have 16x32Mbit.
Your point about the relative price increase is still correct.
But this really does illustrate the way there is no satisfactory way to abbreviate quantities of bits and bytes. People use MB and Mb interchangeably for both, even if they shouldn't. It happens when I buy bandwidth, it happens when I but flash ROM, I'm sick of always checking with an email: "is that bits or bytes"
Remember that the overall trend in RAM markets is 1% price reduction per week. Even two months of static prices are a skyrocket.
()
If the price of a 64Mb chip is $6, you need 16 of those chips to make a 256MB DIMM, and 8 of them to make a 64MB DIMM.
How can twice as many chips give you four times the capacity?
Exp(i*x) = Cos(x) + i*Sin(x)
Thus, Exp(i*pi) = Cos(pi) + i*Sin(pi)
Cos(pi) = -1, Sin(pi) = 0, leaving you with
Exp(i*pi) = -1
Also, Exp(i*2*pi) = 1, cool eh?
If you want to know about this sort of thing in advance, check out http://www.asiabiztech.com/. This site picks up stories from major Asian news sources and posts them in English. If you watch the site over time, you can pick up rising price stories in Asia before the American press catches on.
It's also a good way to watch and see when prices are going to go back down...
Make a modified ext2 filesystem using some form of compression and build it as a kernel module. That'd be cool and probably not all that hard to do.
My guess is that they meant 64Mb, because 64Mb for $6 would be 64MB for around $48, which is much more plausible than believing that consumers are paying a 1200% markup.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
this article is the major reason for the RAM to scyrocket? anyways of course scyrocketing is possible but not for long. More dangerous times would be when Microsof will release 64 bit version of Windows...
Is there something wrong with hurting average people? The average should be scorned and stoned (the bad kind) and forced to live in outhouses.
Doesn't this story sound something like the OPEC problem?
Actual title of next story posted:
Science: Proving General Relativity with Crystal Balls
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I love the scene where the comic book guy gets thrown out of the movie theatre. I can't remember which episode that was though. Maybe the one with Mel Gibson???
This reminds me of when the United States was "pretty pissed off" by the European Union's decision to drop all export regulations on encryption software. Yep, we were pretty pissed off. Except no mention of being pissed off appeared in the article. Taco inferred it. What great journalism!
--
He lives in a world where those who do not run the client software of the omnipresent meme are unacceptable.
What does "Exp()" mean?
Exp() is the function such that for any complex number x, Exp(x) equals the limit as n tends to infinity of the sum of x raised to the i'th power divided by the factorial of i, for all whole numbers i less than or equal to n.
If strictly necessary I can define the terms "function", "complex number", "equal", "limit as n tends to infinity", "sum", "raised to the i'th power", "divided by", "factorial", "whole number", and "less than".
For the sake of brevity I must assume you have knowledge of such words as "is", "the", "such", "that", "for", "any", "of", "by", "all" and "to".
Hardware is hugely expensive in australia anyway, what sort of difference is a few cents going to make?
On the other hand, you have fingers
9. A new MS Outlook worm is discovered... (Janet Simons' resume)
Is it just me, or does everyone else find it difficult to get vendors to sell you memory at the prices that they advertise on pricewatch?
Statements such as "on-line orders only" and "must mention pricewatch" are great, but most of them don't give you a place on the order form to mention pricewatch. So, you must call, and half the time the customer service rep will say something like "that price is for online orders only, but I'll honor that price THIS time. Next time, please order online at www.excessmicro.com, etc....
As far as Slashdot posting stories such as this--I have no problem with it, even if young Emmett DOES sell memory on the side to suppliment his Andover.net income!
anyways, just wanted to vent here--
Interested in the Colorado Lottery?
Check out colotto.com
---
Interested in the Colorado Lottery?
Interested in the Colorado Lottery or Powerball games?
check out http://colotto.com
We're talking here about wholesale, contract prices. Once the RAM reaches the user, it's gonna be a heck of a lot more expensive. My guess is that the price hike is gonna be much more than that, due to extortionate markup along the way. What's the deal with 6 dollars for 64mb, anyway? Buy.com is offering it for $57.95, so somewhere along the way, some whacking great profit is being made.
--Remove SPAM from my address to mail me
On the surface, it sounds like a SDRAM price hike would be good for RDRAM, as it would close (slightly) the price gap between the two sorts of memory. In reality, though, this is bad for Rambus. There are plenty of other issues with Rambus (die size, yield, packaging, royalties, etc...), but the biggest one in simple economics.
A year or two ago, the big carrot that Rambus had to offer to manufacturers was a potentially profitable product. SDRAM prices were in the dumps, so nobody was making any money no matter how much they could churn out. Fast forward to present day, and just about every fab is guaranteed a nice fat profit, just for producing a commodity chip. The only way to justify the risk and cost of switching production from SDRAM to RDRAM is if RDRAM fetches a huge margin. Hence low supplies and sky-high prices for Rambus.
Intel has been pushing manufacturers to "voluntarily" cut their margins and drop prices on RDRAM. For once, though, it seems the memory makers have the upper hand, and there have been no takers so far.
i wonder if there is a relationship between the quality of someones code, and the price of memory.
As price of memory decreases, the motivation to do implement good memory management decreases, thus quality of code decreases.
just my 2c.
If the contract price for a stick of 64M PC100 SDRAM is $6,
The article said 64 MB chip; I am sure they meant a 64 Mb chip, of which it takes 8 to make a 64 MB DIMM.
too true, I was going to wait until i setteled in my new flat before using mail order but now i'll buy it and send it to my parents address. Prices will go up
I hope this was made in jest, and not a serious cry for prices of memory to increase, so as to keep people from using Windows.
This may or may not come as a surprise, but not everyone is the same. We've all different interests and needs, and Windows certainly does fill a need (perhaps several) for people. And though it may not suit your needs, and you may disagree with the practices of its manufacturer, it's still a product that people use for work, education, entertainment, and several other meaningful human activities.
It seems that having prices go up for RAM, enough so that Windows users can't afford a computer, can only hurt average people. People that want a computer for their child to do homework, people that want a computer for entertainment, and people that own small businesses that want a computer to help them keep track of finances, or for their employees to work on. In short, people that can benefit from the "standard" that Windows offers them.
I find it a bit cruel to wish a small business owner, educator, or parent ill, simply because they'd use what worked for them.
But I imagine you were only joking, so perhaps this post is a bit irrelevant. I apologize for wasting your time, if it was.
Perhaps the contract price has set variables on the upper and lower prices, these contracts usually exclude selling below cost price
There would be a shortage of water if the profit mongers of the world could figuer out how to cause world droughts.
when they ban enctryption only criminals wi$21*J *#JF$%!@#$':
First off, that sure sounds like they mean megabits, not megabytes.
Anyway, I think this story is patent bullshit. RAM prices do not increase over time, except for brief spikes. In general, given a time T, at T+6 months, RAM will cost less. Maybe not always, but pretty often.
Every time there's a glut, even a brief one, more people decide to play. There are plenty of companies that can make chips; if prices start getting high, more of them come in.
Might RAM prices go up for a little while? Sure. I don't expect them to stay up, and I don't think people should worry much. They're still going to be cheap compared to a while back...
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
"Contract prices for the standard 64-MB chip, now at $6, will rise about a dime"
MB=MEGABYTE
Mb=MEGABIT
CNET quoted it as $6 for 64 MEGABYTE chip. If you have a qualm with it, don't bitch at some slashdot user, tell CNET to correct their article.
Windows requires twice the amount of RAM to run properly (ie. as fast as Linux) imho, and even then, it still runs flaky. The latest 2.3.99-pre's kernels have been rocking hard on its memory management.
/. is a penguin's dream, it won't be /. that'll cause this artificial raise (I hope)
Since
I tend to agree that it's a bit irresponsible on their part, but the impact may very well be minimal, or even nonexistant.
It's a bit like seeing someone in a crowded room cough, and start yelling "That man has an air-born infectious disease!"
Perhaps the biggest difference, though, is Slashdot isn't going to get trampled by a horde of people running for the exit. =)
16 to make a 256 MB DIMM? 64Mb / 8 = 8 MB. That means _32_ to make a 256 MB DIMM, and I have yet to see a DIMM with 32 chips. Expect the price increase for the 256 MB DIMM to be a little greater than you predicted.
Just a quick glance at pricewatch shows 64MB pc100 sticks as low as $35.
Pricewatch may be a decent price searching site, but you should never trust the lowest price (or any price within the first page, for that matter). Oddly enough, all of those really low prices come from Back-Of-The-Truck Enterprises, Inc., based in scenic Crown Heights, NY.
Decent RAM might not be $126/64MB, but don't believe every price you see.
For more information, click here.
D'oh! Everywhere I said "256MB" should be "128MB." Damn... that's what I deserve for getting up at 9:00 am on a Sunday! :)
Of course, with articles like this, everyone will go out and buy RAM. There may be high demand right now, but these rumors will make demand skyrocket and make the prices even higher.
Somebody at C|Net must want their memory stock to improve in value.
Drinking will help us plan!
The semiconductor industry is about to be slashdotted!
CNet did not 'buy' any story about skyrocketting prices or panic buying. The words panic and skyrocket do not occur in the referenced story; those were inferred here on /. CNet's story simply says Micron is, "expected to boost memory prices," which is pretty calm language, I think.
Here's a critical thinking exercise for you; who is the intended audience of CNet's story? It isn't, "the hobbyist market," nor, "the big OEMs," as you seem to believe. A hint from the article:
"Demand has been pretty good all spring, and we expect business to pick up for them in the summer," said Josephthal & Co. analyst Larry Borgman, who rates the stock a "buy."
If you produce a commodity product like DRAM, a 10 cent price increase on a $6 product is a big deal to your profitability, and that matters greatly to the investing public.
If you say, "now I'll be modded down because of X", I'll happily oblige.
lucky i stashed all ram into my y2k bunker...
i knew it would come in handy sooner or later.
Be you Admins? nay, we are but lusers!
I'm Glad I just upgraded my ram last week. =]
EOT
Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't a dime only a few cents? So this isn't like the doubling in price which happened last September.
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
Price of oil barrel rises a few cents, and pump prices double.
This is what we freak out about now? This is a sad sad day...
[SIG-
Fair comments. CNet hardly overreacted, but /. did. And CNet mostly goes for the investor crowd.
As for the effect of a 10cent increase it will increase revenues 1.7% -- hardly anything to write home about. Of course, costs will probably have a negligible increase, so the effect on profits will be multiplied.
But even so, I doubt this will have any lasting effect on Micron stock. But it's good for a kick up on Tuesday. To the dubious extent that these things are subject to any quantative evaluation, sales growth seems to be the key metric. And this hardly counts.
From the article:
Contract prices for the standard 64-MB chip, now at $6, will rise about a dime, Thomas Weisel Partners analyst Eric Ross said. Micron's inventory has been halved to two to three weeks worth from six to seven weeks in March, he said.
This is hardly a panic in the market and will only serve as a window to other lower cost fabs to grab some share from Micron.
___
I heard about the rise in RAM prices months ago. And, it's only a few percent increase, not "skyrocketing".
I remember paying 100 quid for a second hand 4MB SIMM for my am*ga back in the dark old days. You kiddies don't know the half of it!
[disclaimer: just ignore this, it's my first post and I had to get it out of my system]
If the contract price for a stick of 64M PC100 SDRAM is $6, and at any local retail we pay around $1 per meg for this ram ($64).
If this logic is correct... then we are paying a 1066% mark up.
If the contract cost goes up, then the cost for retail stores will go up. Retail stores will increase prices to maintain the same profit on each unit...
-S
Scott Ruttencutter
We Apprentice Developers and Designers
It seems only a year ago since due to high demand and short supply, memory prices shot up to a ridiculous amount as supplies dropped. Until of course, they got so high that almost no-one would buy them. Then they dropped again/ Oh, wait a minute, it *WAS* only a year ago. The way memory prices shoot up at around the summer and then take a dive again is almost a reflection of the UK car market until recently, when prices were at their highest as new numberplate letters came out in August and people wanted new cars then, to the decline until the next August when it started again. In this case, the government took steps to ensure a steady flow of car-buying by changing the times at which number plates to twice a year and soon to four times (I think). I believe it would be sensible for memory manufacturers to adopt a similar timetable. Decide on what would be a "fair price" for memory, and release their goods to the world steadily across a whole year. If the prices are too low, then release less memory to the world that month. Should they be too high, release more to the markets, or even turn a higher profit. It wouldn't be that hard, it would prevent the price of memory dropping to too low, and everybody wins. --
Said it couldn't last, said it wouldn't last... This is the last stand against tomorrow's world.
pronoblem
In early 1995 A simular thing with RAM was happening there was a high dammand and the companies could keep the company stocked. Knowing that Win95 will be soon released which would most likly chew up massive amount of ram for no reason. I desided to buy my chips ASAP because it seemed like after win 95 cam out there will be a higher dammand. 16megs of RAM $750 2 months work at parttime minimum wage. 2 to 3 months later the price for 16 megs of RAM was $50. The moral of the story is if you really dont need the RAM right now Wait a couple of months for a new technology to come out and you can get some cheap memory again.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
The law says the average CPU requires a one second buffer of core memory, e.g. 1 GHz wants about one GB. So with CPU speeds doubling every two years, memory needs double every two years.
Traditionally memory manufacturers have keep
a little ahead of the curev- a new 4x generation every three years. But still demand will be insatiable.
I was surprised at the high markup from the company to the consumer. I'm no hardware expert, so maybe I'm missing something. Does a middleman make modifications to the memory? Anyone care to answer?
gutterface
pronoblem
Every time I buy RAM, it sends a destructive wave back through time, causing a natural or man-made disaster in the RAM industry.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Don't forget the " releases the release of . Check out and happy downloading ;)." Then for comments: "I guess this site will get /.'ed."
--- RFC 1149 Compliant.
I remember buying a lot of EDO dram one day, only to find it essentially useless in newer sytems where you wanted decent performance.
With a significant increase in speed the coming soon, my money is staying in the bank for now.
------------------------------------------------ Rambus is an evil intel plot! DDR SDRAM anyday now! For a fascinating story on intel and rambus, read http://www.32bitsonline.com/article.php3?file=issu es/200004/rambusb&page=1
---
the pen is mightier then the sword. the sword is mightier then the court. the court is mightier then the pen.
Make sure that you drive up demand and decrease the supply so they can jack up the price more!
Or you could be patient and wait things out.
BlackNova Traders
Don't forget the " releases the release of . Check out and happy downloading ;)."
/.'ed. ;)"
Then for comments:
"I guess this site will get
I submitted under HTML.
--- RFC 1149 Compliant.
Don't forget the "{insert linux deveoper here} releases the {insert random number here} release of {kernel/OS}. Check out {insert ftp site here} and happy downloading ;)."
/.'ed. ;)"
Then for comments:
{insert username}>
"I guess this site will get
If this dosen't work, I'm a real jackass and i won't release a v4.0 comment.
--- RFC 1149 Compliant.
I think the article is confusing "MB" and "Mb". Megabytes is what we typically measure our computer storage in. Megabits is what chip vendors measure the individual chips by. 8 Megabits = 1 Megabyte. What's that mean? If the price of a 64Mb chip is $6, you need 16 of those chips to make a 256MB DIMM, and 8 of them to make a 64MB DIMM. That's $96 for the actual RAM chips on a 256MB DIMM, and $48 for the chips that go on a 64MB DIMM. That sounds a lot more realistic.
So, if there's a price hike from $6 to $6.10, the cost of the 256MB module is now $97.60. Up $1.60. Not too big of a deal until you consider markups, profit margins, and hype-stories like the one on c|net. If people see that story, they're bound to believe it, and rest assured, the good resellers are going to be reading articles that concern them (like this one).
And, of course, you need to add to the price of the RAM chips assembly of the actual DIMM, the circuit board that the chips are put on, testing of the board, distribution, further markups in retail, and so on. All together, that maks a 256MB module about $200-$270, depending where you buy.
Let's see, My I-opener has 64Meg of ram and runs very very nicly.. X and Slackware with star-office is speedy, and faster than my NT box at work running Bloatware office suite 2000. All my other machines here have 128 meg of ram. Who the hell needs more than that? I run raytracing systems and that doesn't need it, therefore I use more of my machine than the large bulk of users out there (I actually do complex mathematical computations with pov-ray)
... GREAT! I hope ram goes up to $35.00 per meg! and force these talentless,sloppy programmers to actually optimize their code! (NOTE: this comment is directed to Microsoft OS application programmers. there ae vey few bloated Linux apps... except for Real audio,Netscape,Acrobat reader... basically evey app that started as a windows app..... that's interesting!
Could someone please give me one Legitimate reason to have more ram than 128 meg? Autocad wont use it, Hell the AVID at work has only 128 meg of ram and it does studio quality non-linear video editing at levels that no one here can accomplish with their computer. (And the AVID is crippled by running NT 4.0!)
so we hear about ram going up in price
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
It really depends on how new/old your machine is. I have found that memory prices for previous-generation non-peecees have been very stable compared with peecee memory prices. When peecee DRAM prices tripled last year, memory for my Sparc 20 stayed exactly the same price - quite a bit lower than peecee memory in fact. So I think it really depends on whether your memory is the same stuff peecees use. If it is, prices will fluctuate. Otherwise they'll probably be stable. It also depends very much on where you get your memory. If you get it new from the workstation vendor it will be much more expensive than third-party and/or used memory. Whether this matters depends on whether you have a service contract. :)
Does anyone know why the fabs for the higher density modules (i.e. 256 and 512 Mb) are taking so long to come online? I can get 256 MB modules at a price premium, but they seem to be taking their time getting to market. I have yet to see a consumer box ship with a single 256 MB chip, as opposed to two 128's which I see all the time.
Doesn't Moore's Law apply to memory fabrication as well as processor fabs? When the graphics chipset makers like nVidia are able to cut the product cycles time to 6-12 months, instead of 12-18, as Moore predicted so famously, why is there such a holdup in the memory market? Is it because memory isn't quite as glamorous and, dare I say, sexy as graphics or CPUs?
Anyway, what would be ideal would be to see a few high density fabs come online and start pushing out the 256 and 512 MB modules. Otherwise, we're going to keep getting whiplash trying to track the prices of 128 MB SDRAM.
Why this hasn't happened (Taiwan earthquake? Poor market analysis?) yet is beyond me.
Free music from Jack Merlot.
A small local retailer I always purchase ram from has 64 megs for $59.. I use my local free weekly computer publication as a true pricewatch..
Daniel
daniel@splink.net
"Prices expected to skyrocket this week" claims the heading. The C/net article tells a different story. A 2% base price rise, while it may be the start of a bigger trend, doesn't seem as PaNiC!!!-worthy as the headline suggests.
/. could do with a lot less sensationalism in its journalism.
Ok, I don't know anything about the downstream effects this is going to have, and it does sound like the start of something bigger that will eventually result in much higher prices, but it is definitely yet another of the horde of indicators showing that
Your standard 64MB Chip costs $6.00 from Micron. That price is going up about 10 cents. The consumer purchases a 64MB chip for about $126.00. (Based on Simple 64MB EDO 168-pin DIMM)
Now, $6.00 goes into $126.00 21 times. Take $.10 and multiply it by 21, and you get $2.10.
So in a worst-case scenario (being the company charges you DOUBLE the increase in price) the price of a 64MB DIMM from Simple Technology goes from $126.00 to $130.20. I'd hardly call that skyrocketing. Even if you pay QUADRUPLE the price increase, it's still under $10 more.
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
Well, not if it was a typical 386SX or better. The time it took to do the decompression was typically less than the time it saved by not having to read as much from the disk. This was true for hard disks, but particularly true for floppies. I only stopped using the floppy "stacker anywhere" compression when I switched to Linux.
BTW I have known of memory compression being used to get round physical limits. E.g. ymight want to keep more than 2G of data in memory w/o swapping, on a system that supports only 2G physical memory.
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
Later, that same afternoon, while cruising in his AMC pacer with Britney pounding through the sub woofers, our beloved Emmett rolled through the drive through for a super size number 6 with an extra order of fries and noticed that the price had gone up from 6 to 6.10, Emmett was heard to say, "These prices are Skyrocketing!"
___
What is the most likely Slashdot article to appear next?
Poll Mastah
buy your ram now?
that will just drive the price up more for everyone.
argh. it is like selling all your stocks for fear of a market crash. doesn't make good sense.
and no, i am not trolling. just pointing out mistakes.
C'mon
They've also got lots of chips in inventories to meet sales. A plant fire when demand is tight is one thing, but a planned shutdown when demand is slack is quite another.
But starting a buying panic is very much in their interest. CNet bought the story, hook-line&sinker. Now you. Fortunately, the hobbyist market is fairly small, and I doubt can move prices. The big OEMs (Dell, Compaq, HP, IBM) are smarter than to fall for this.
It's fairly obvious that prices are not 'skyrocketing'. But if they did, as happened last year, and stayed high, what would happen?
When software was just beginning to get bloated (I remember being shocked that CorelDraw required a massive 20Mbyte), it became expensive to get a large enough hard disk (80Mbyte or so). Disk prices, at least at first, didn't drop enough for consumers to keep up with the increased demand for disk space. This led to a brief period of disk compression programs such as Stacker, which slowed down your machine a little but let you fit about 60% more stuff on your disk (typically). Eventually {Double,Drive}Space was included as a standard feature of MS-DOS (and then Win95). But now that disks are so cheap, I doubt if anyone bothers with it on a new system.
Similarly, a couple of years later, starting just before the launch of Win95, it started getting expensive to fit a system with the amount of RAM needed to run modern bloated applications. Products such as RAM Doubler appeared for the PC and Mac. (The PC version of one such program turned out to be a total fraud - it didn't compress things at all - but the others did actually do something.) In common with the disk compressors, the 'Double' in the name is misleading; you don't get anywhere near the same performance as a system with twice the RAM.
The way these RAM compressors (or at least Quarterdeck's offering) work is to set aside an area of memory, say 25% of physical RAM, for compressed pages. When the remaining memory gets full, pages are compressed and stored in the buffer instead of being paged to disk. When the buffer gets full you do have to go to disk, but you can write compressed pages and several of them at once, so disk activity is less. Compressing the pages takes CPU time, but most PCs have fast CPU relative to disk speed so the speed burden isn't too great.
Having said that, I didn't notice any wonderful speedup from Quarterdeck's RAM booster (can't remember the name) on a 16Mbyte machine, and it made Windows less stable. But done right, it might work.
Could you do something similar for Linux? One tactic might be to create a RAM disk with some of your memory, and use something like the crusty old DoUbLe (or however it's spelt) code to make it a 'compressed partition'. Then get Linux to swap to that before going to disk.
However you wouldn't get the benefit of pages being compressed when they go to disk, nor of compressed pages being simply moved from the RAM-swap to the swap partition. AFAIK you can tell Linux to use one swap device in preference to another, but you can't ask for a tiered swap scheme where pages from one device spill onto the next. (Please correct me if I am wrong.)
Another problem is that with DoUbLe, the size of the device varies according to how well things have compressed so far, and swapping requires a fixed-size device. So none of this would probably work at all.
But there are plenty of ultra-fast compression algorithms out there (LZO is fast and GPLed) which you might stick in the kernel. Then get the kernel to compress pages and dump them in a big pile somewhere, and to swap them out only when there is no alternative (or when the system is idle).
I have no idea whether such a scheme would make a significant difference; I'd guess that many of the most bloated programs do have highly compressible data areas though. If it did work, then Linux would be able to survive a memory shortage better than other OSes. It might also help ultra-cheapskate manufacturers making thin clients or mobile devices.
Does any of that make sense?
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Micron is the third largest DRAM manufacturing in the world behind Samsung and Hyundai. It is however the lowest cost manufacturer of DRAM in the industry. It is unlikely that anyone would be able to seriously threaten Micron's market share by trying to undercut them since they are also very aggressive (and successful) in protecting their position by using the product dumping laws against any DRAM manufacturer that sells lower than them.
Of course, knowing that Micron is the lowest cost producer and that they are raising their prices, makes it likely that the other producers are going to want to increase their prices as well since they aren't making the same margin on the product as Micron. Since the whole DRAM market has been in a severe downturn for the past couple of years, they are all looking to recoup some of those losses.
I built my rig back in September, and it cost me about $2 a meg (show price), but I just upgraded last week and it cost me about $.75 a meg. I'm not questioning that this news is valid, but let's face it folks, the price of RAM changes on a weekly basis, so this isn't that big a shocker. Give it a few weeks and prices will drop again. A few months later it will go back up, and then come down a few weeks after. It happens all the time ... what's the big deal?
--Forager
student of animation and the fine arts
I read the articles, was a bit worried after the specter of last year. Why? Well, granted it's a 10 cent increase, but last month I got screwed by putting off a RAM purchase just a week too damn long. I thought to myself ''Hey, next week I'll buy some RAM when I have some cash.'' and that was good. The following week rolled around, and wow, whee, yippee, RAM had gone up nearly fifty damn percent. I could no longer afford to buy any RAM.
Last month I said to myself ''Hey, this month I'll pick up a new harddrive for the game machine so I can drop my 8.4G into the Linux box. NEXT month, I'll get that 256M RAM upgrade I've been dreaming about.''
Next damn weekend. Saturday, I was going to place my order. But now THIS stuff happens and I wind up needing to get a loan from folks in order to get the RAM now instead of next weekend, when, despite what -really- happens with the market, it's pretty sure the prices will be somewhat higher than now.
Sigh. Sometimes I feel like I need to just sell the computers and start lumberjacking.
The fresh air, the forests, the ability to scream at the top of my lungs and only tick off the deer.
My own pointless vanity vintage computing page
Well I'm sorry! That definition was my first thought, but I just reckoned $6 was rather cheap considering it sells for about 10 times that... Thought there might be another explanation apart from the "huge profit" one. I can understand/spell English fine, but I have difficulties with company jargon.
But as the real price is so hugely different from the contract price, if the contract price goes up by a dime, does that mean the real price to us goes up by nothing, ten dimes, or $30?
- Oliver
"exp(i*Pi)+1=0" - Euler
- Oliver
The right to bear arms is only slightly less stupid than the right to arm bears...
Is the $6.00 component a 64Mbit device or a 64Mbyte device?
I think it's the former, but I'm not sure.
--
Peter
I guess the moderator monkies are getting restless.
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Slashdot has a few hundred thousand casual readers. If just a few percent of them make a "run" on RAM and stock up on it *for no good reason*, it *might* affect dealer prices a lot more than if this story hadn't run.
Maybe I'm just a little too paranoid...
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"