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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."
Let's see... it's a false silicon shortage created for the purpose of invading... um... no, wait: Bush's Saudi oil-family buddies are artificially driving production down, resulting in a... er, wait, how about this one: it's a Pentagon ploy to reduce civilian computing power and prevent blogs from getting the truth out about the phony oil war.
That'll do. Another Slashdot truth is created.
IMHO the reduction won't affect serious computer users except in terms of the cost. If it costs me $50 more to get the 1GB of DDR RAM, well, I'll probably pay it.
Where it will hurt people is the technologically illiterate, who simply take the default Dell configuration or whatever and then wonder why their systems are always low on RAM.
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You mean that they are again artificially forcing up the price of RAM?
RAM prices are like oil prices, they have nothing to do with supply and demand but instead, are controlled by some secret or not so secret cartel.
Ewe shouldn't make baad ram jokes, they make others feel sheepish.
It's sad that people need to reserve tons of memory for the OPERATING SYSTEM itself and not just the programs that run on top of it.
Those are finished products, not components. Think plywood and sheet aluminium for better examples. The price of both of these varies a lot but the finished products homes and soda cans is relatively stable. A RAM module on it's own doesn't do a whole lot, it's just a component. The component price can vary like mad but video cards and MP3 player prices would be realtively stable. The problem is that those prices are stable, but within a rising trend.
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
are because the industry is so cut-throat. In good DRAM times, companies crowd in, adding new production capacity and trying to make a quick buck. They know this is going to kill prices a couple years down the road, but if they don't do it, they'll be left out in the cold as competitors grab their market share. Sure enough, a couple of years later oversupply kicks in. Companies manufacture less DRAM, shift production to more profitable products, etc... And the cycle begins anew. I really don't know what started it, unless it was the 1987 DRAM crash, when all but one US manufacturer dropped the DRAM business due to intense Japanese competition. (And illegal dumping, as it turned out.)
Adding to this now is a fairly major transition from 200-300mm wafers. No matter what the DRAM companies tell you, they're never as good with their process as they claim they are. (I used to work for one of them.) Everyone is struggling to some degree with 0.11 micron compared to 0.13, and everyone (except perhaps Infineon, who started with it about three years ago) is struggling with 300mm wafer technology compared to 200mm.
Add it all up, and it very likely is a legitimate shortage. No price fixing here.
Toasters are made using a wholly different process, to much weaker tolerances. There's no uptight timing or voltage requirements for a toaster.
Setup cost for a toaster factory would be minimal compared to chip fabs, and there are no doubt more toaster factories out there. When one toaster factory burns down (as some big chip fab did not to long ago, IIRC) its more easily replaced, and doubtless has minimal impact on the worlds toaster resources.
Plus the demand for toasters is pretty constant. People buy toasters when their old one breaks. They dont rush out to buy a 5% faster "upgraded" toaster just because it's there.
With computer tech there'll be a big rush to a tech, it'll get cheap as it reigns supreme, then get pricier as the industry moves away from it. It happened to EDO, FPDRAM, SDRAM, and now DDR as makers want to move quickly into the more lucrative DDR2 market. You can see the same trend with CPUs and other chipsets.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
You have obviously never run any Java applications. Here's how to use up the first 128 MB:
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