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Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months, up to 10x the lowest ever tracked prices — 128GB of DDR5 now $3,399
(www.tomshardware.com)
this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2026
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This has been said before. Like I said maybe this time is different, but I’m not betting on it.
There has been consolidation among a few manufacturers for a long time. The silicon part isn’t the most expensive it’s the chip designs. If the prices say high we should see new startups emerge with new approaches and cheaper silicon. China is already making progress here, and nothing I’m seeing is telling me this time would be different from us chip designers. Also Europe is looking to get some us resilience and startups in chip design could happen there too.
It’s convenient to blame greed, and in some industries this is very relevant, but silicon is so much less defensible at least in the chip design industry that startups are likely to keep on coming as long as opportunity exists, which high prices are a pretty good indicator of high demand and limited supply.
I have worked in this industry for a long time, I’ve seen the cycles, and again I expect this time to cycle again.
I hope you are correct. I really do. But my fear is that they see how dependent we have become on this and what a tool of control it can be and simply make it illegal or otherwise very difficult for other start ups to get started.
Oh I don’t doubt that the current market leaders would love to price fix and play monopoly, that’s the desired end goal of all businesses.
The question is how hard is it for a startup or competitive country to get in and compete on price. I’m watching China’s chip fab especially for this reason, they have an economy that can take massive losses on something even at this scale to lock in new customers with cheap Chinese RAM. They’ve done this in many other industries I fully expect they will be competitive in this one too, and that’s just ONE credible threat to monopolies.
The us government going back to a rule of law government could also help enforce changes and break up monopoly, we will see if and how long that will take.