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A DIMM Future for RAM Bundles
VeggiePossum23 writes "PC WORLD has an article about rising concerns that computer manufacturers will be cutting the amount of bundled RAM they sell with their PCs owing to rising prices of dynamic memory. The article claims that spot pricing shows a rise of almost $15.00 for 256MB modules of DDR DRAM in some markets. According to a Reuters article on ZDNet, the price rises are caused by shortage of memory chips, and this is causing the prices of memory to raise at the fastest rate in four years. Even Intel is said to be worried at the overall trend of price hikes for all types of memory. The Inquirer has a similiar article from a couple of weeks ago which includes a chart showing how the third-party memory manufacturers are doing. Kingston tops the chart for revenue."
Yeah, I remember waiting for prices to drop to $100 / 1 MB SIMMs before upgrading.
It wasn't all that long ago it would cost several times more to max our your RAM than it did to purchase the computer. Buy a $3k computer, put in $5-10k RAM (and drop another couple grand on a 20 MB hard drive).
Sorry, couldn't resist.
Seriously though, it's been nice for the flash market, which is where the manufacturers are shifting capacity. Prices there have dropped nicely. If both markets continue to do well, more capacity will come online, and prices will drop again across the board until manufacturers start ramping up DDR2 capacity at the expense of DDR1 (as has happened to PC133).
Normal fluctuations in the RAM market - nothing to see here.
High-speed Road Trip (18.000KPH)
If there is a toaster shortage, you can build a new factory pretty rapidly. Not so with chips. With cars, demand is pretty steady and factories are rarely used to capacity. If you have a chip factory which is not used to capacity, producing an extra chip is very cheap, so it is a waste to not produce as many as you can. On the other hand, producing an extra car is rather expensive even when the factory is otherwise idle -- so idle capacity doesn't push car prices down to unsustainable levels.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
Eight months ago I built a computer with two Kingston 512 MB PC2700 memory modules at a cost of $75 each. Today the exact same memory costs $115 each on newegg.
Too bad he never really did say that
"Some things have to be believed to be seen." - Ralph Hodgson
If it's getting more expensive, that means that memory purchased today will be worth more to buyers tomorrow and worth the same to you (plus warehousing of course). You can charge tomorrow's prices for the ram and make a profit. If the price is rising faster than the cost to store it, then you are making money. So, your reason for not stocking it shouldn't be the rising price but rather the decreased demand for the product that makes it not cost effective to stock.
That wasn't a "language card", although it was installed in the "language card" slot. The Apple Language Card had a ROM chip on it that contained the version of BASIC that wasn't installed in your machine by default. This was so that you could run Applesoft BASIC programs on an Apple II or Integer BASIC programs on an Apple II+ at the flip of a switch. What you got was a RAM expansion card.
Show me on the doll where his noodly appendage touched you.
So, who would that be? China and . . . China?
Well... there's the "People's Republic of China", and the "Republic of China", two completely different countries (well, in the eyes of the PROC, the ROC is a breakaway republic, sort of like how Saddam viewed Kuwait). So, "Chinese countries" would be technically correct--and that's the best kind of correct!
Also, the ROC (aka Taiwan) is the source of much of the world's RAM, so the original poster's comment has some validity.
M-
You catch enchiladas by picking them up behind the head and holding them underwater until they don't kick anymore -VeGas
Yes. Since there is more than twice as much available area on a 300mm wafer as a 200mm one, you come out ahead if the 300mm wafer is = 2x the price of the 200mm one. That wafer price crossover is near, or has already happened, depending on what sort of deal you get from your wafer suppliers.
The chips made on the wafer don't get bigger--they're the same size or smaller. The advantage is that you get more than twice as many chips on a wafer. Time spent on each machine in the fab is money--if you can pattern more chips at once at photo, etch more chips at once in dry etch, and test more chips at once in probe, you can make chips more quickly and more cheaply than your competitors.
The big downside of 300mm (and the reason most companies put it off so long) is that it requires either extensive refittings of existing equipment or (more commonly) a completely new fab. Since we're talking ~3B USD, very few companies could justify that.
As you might imagine in such an industry, once your competitors begin doing something like that, you better have an answer for it. Infineon's move to build 300mm (first DRAM maker to do it AFAIK) looked like a bad move at the time, as it was an enormous cash sink, but now they've come out of it much more competitive for it.
Now a quad Opteron box....
A Shadeless room is a brighter room.