this post was submitted on 07 Mar 2026
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Freaking finally. Maybe RAM prices will finally start coming down.
They can just keep prices same and pocket the profif, no?
They could but that just begs for a random country to start developing cheap ram to swoop in.
Only if they can still find buyers at the inflated price. I'm not aware of any consumers buying RAM right now, so I doubt they would be able to.
Too late, I'm afraid. The supply for DRAM basically can't adjust, and already-manufactured chips can't be repurposed, so even if Oracle, Meta, and OpenAI went bankrupt tomorrow, it would take some time to build up inventory again.
I don't actually buy it. It won't fit on memory modules as they are today, but in the end, it's just faster, higher density, prob has some extra features, but nothing you can't rework a motherboard or modules to support. of course, min quantity will be like 128GB :)
edit: looks like the most likely they'll just put stacks on the CPUs in a few years. Apple is already heading that way. AMD has some open patents to put HBM on CPUs
That's not true, unfortunately. It's not economical to transplant RAM ICs once they're packaged and soldered onto something.
And if they're produced as, say, HBM modules, they absolutely cannot be repurposed for, say, DDR5 or LPDDR5 CPUs, or GDDR GPUs. There's no reworking, the memory buses on processors simply do not support them electrically, and altering those processors would have a massive development cost with years of lead time.
Some of the RAM (like the LPDDR5X for the Nvidia Grace Hopper ARM CPUs) can be re-used, but it seems most is being made as HBM.
Look at it from the bright side. Manufacturers are building massive new capacity for demand that will never come. Already produced chips can't be repurposed but machinery can, easily. In a few years RAM will be dirt cheap.
That's not true, from what I've read:
https://www.trendforce.com/presscenter/news/20251113-12780.html
Memory makers seem skeptical, hence aren't planning to spend on more capacity in 2026.
They also have a history of forming cartels and colluding to fix ram prices, so I doubt prices will normalize for a while.
I was pleasantly surprised to find my laptop is two generations behind so new RAM only cost $20 for an upgrade. One of the few times it pays to be poor.
Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit discounted hardware
The data centers are still in high demand, Oracle just wants clients to bring their own chips.