Its Official The Memory Situation Is Ridiculous

[maxfly]

https://www.gamersnexus.net/industry/3212-ram-price-investigation-ddr4-same-price-as-initial-launch
a good read if your into graphs. notice how they very carefully avoid using samsungs name.

 

[Alaric]

https://www.gamersnexus.net/industry/3212-ram-price-investigation-ddr4-same-price-as-initial-launch
a good read if your into graphs. notice how they very carefully avoid using samsungs name.

That was interesting. The trends may be familiar, but the peak to peak swings are new territory. I think the atmosphere exists to lay all manner of nefarious intent on Samsung's doorstep, but they aren't the 800 lb. gorilla because they cheated. Their memory is far and away the best out there. When people who care about such things buy RAM they're going for Samsung dies, and here's just one example of why http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php/787371-3866-MHz-Too-much-is-enough The likelihood of getting 3866 MHz from a 3000 MHz Hynix kit is slim to ain't-gonna-happen.
Interesting that they mentioned the HDD situation a couple years ago. I'm not sure prices ever got all the way back to where they were prior to that. I assume that's due to inflation and "We're making more money now, why stop?"

 

[maxfly]

no, thats not what i meant. they time and again used micron and hynix but not once did they use samsungs name...odd. specifically when trying to illustrate the main players. samsung being the biggest by far you would think they would include samsung in the discussion rather than omit them. why would the author do that?

 

[UltraTaco]

I just skimmed through the article and they mentioned Samsung a few times, also saw them in one of the table

 

[Alaric]

A quick count shows "Samsung" 8 times in print, "Micron" 8 times, and "SK Hynix" 10 times, qualified with 2 of them being the mention of the stock prices/plant fire for Hynix. However, with Samsung having almost half the market I think I see your point. Are you saying that Samsung being the biggest player (by a wide margin) should have been more of the focus?

 

[corpsejockey]

Yeah... Open non compete agreement between the big 3. What a crock. Here's where it gets interesting... Tsinghua Unigroup acquired xmc a year or so ago. State backed Chinese dram and nand flash is coming and no amount of collusion from the big 3 is going to stop it.

 

[Alaric]

I would imagine Samsung cooperating in a non compete situation would be to keep from being targeted for "unfair" trade practices. They certainly don't have to worry from a business standpoint about Hynix and Micron. And if push comes to shove, Samsung is their own biggest customer anyway. Based on the article's numbers, Samsung will sell close to half a billion GBs of RAM in phones. That makes the PC market an afterthought. And try as China might, they already have that Big Korean Dog in their yard. Too much of their market depends on SK DDR. Poking them too much could result in prices that leave China's electronics without a pricing advantage-not where they want to be right now.

And I'll only touch on the political situation on the DDR peninsula to add that has the potential to upset everyone's apple cart. Over 74% of the world's DDR comes from South Korean companies, and if that situation goes south, and if China is on the wrong side, they will likely find themselves without DDR. That alone could send their economy over the edge.

 

[maxfly]

A quick count shows "Samsung" 8 times in print, "Micron" 8 times, and "SK Hynix" 10 times, qualified with 2 of them being the mention of the stock prices/plant fire for Hynix. However, with Samsung having almost half the market I think I see your point. Are you saying that Samsung being the biggest player (by a wide margin) should have been more of the focus?

right on, i was expecting the focus to be the behemoth or at least give up some of the ic data etc... seems like a big part of the article is missing, particularly as to why samsung is so dominant right now.

from what ive read the non compete rumors are mostly because samsung/hynix/micron (samsung in particular) are making it almost impossible for new manufacturers(competition) to gain a foothold in ANY market right now. they have the world completely dominated when it comes to all new and current memory tech(ddr4/5/6,nand etc). china is dumping huge amounts of capital into their state run fabs(ddr and nand) but they are so far behind(generationally) they wont be able to catch up unless they can somehow work out a deal with one of the big 3 to share current tech with them. and pretty much anyone with an opinion thinks the big 3 are price colluding but there is no way to prove it. weve been reminded time and again of the slap on the wrist they recieved for price fixing before. they learned the hard way not to put anything in writing when it comes to pricing. unless someone at the very top of the big 3 decides to talk price fixing, there wont be any prosecution.

 

[Alaric]

samsung is so dominant right now

Better product+more manufacturing capacity=800 lb. Corporate Gorilla Same thing Intel did, just without the cheating on performance claims.

 

[corpsejockey]

Yeah, most of the alleged collusion seems to have been focused on squashing any new comers to the market. Can't say I'm anywhere near an expert on the subject, but it appears we may see Chinese dram hit commercial market in roughly 3 years unless big 3 pull more shenanigans. Flood the market dropping prices and squashing the competition?

 

[Alaric]

I wouldn't put it past them. I wonder if the "collusion" isn't just SK Hynix and friends hanging on to Samsung's coattails and picking up the change that falls out of their pockets. LOL

 

[Johan45]

These guys are pouring billions into new fab facilities. I do believe the demand is higher than they can accomodate easily. When you think about it, it's not just desktop memory, SSD, M.2 and GFX cards that need the flash it's almost every electronic device out there. Phone and tablet sales are off the charts. Estimated 1.5 Billion smart phones sold last year we aren't the focus. So the majority of their capacity isn't dedicated to us.

 

[Dolk]

These guys are pouring billions into new fab facilities. I do believe the demand is higher than they can accomodate easily. When you think about it, it's not just desktop memory, SSD, M.2 and GFX cards that need the flash it's almost every electronic device out there. Phone and tablet sales are off the charts. Estimated 1.5 Billion smart phones sold last year we aren't the focus. So the majority of their capacity isn't dedicated to us.

You forgot the new and latest devices that are starting to emerge at a rapid pace: IoT

The largest contributors for the market shortage is IoT and Smart Cars for the past two years.

 

[Johan45]

I didn't even think about the auto industry which is quite ironic

 

[wingman99]

These guys are pouring billions into new fab facilities. I do believe the demand is higher than they can accomodate easily. When you think about it, it's not just desktop memory, SSD, M.2 and GFX cards that need the flash it's almost every electronic device out there. Phone and tablet sales are off the charts. Estimated 1.5 Billion smart phones sold last year we aren't the focus. So the majority of their capacity isn't dedicated to us.

SSD prices are the same now as they were in 2015 when I purchased Samsung 850 EVO 500 GB. So I don't see other fabs effecting DDR4 production.

I read the Samsung article from electronic times and the DRAM production will not go up significantly until 2019, so prices will continue to go up in 2018. The short story is they are converting a line for image sensor production. There in the process of converting of image sensor production line then expansion of DRAM lines starting production 2019.

 

[EarthDog]

SSD prices on the whole have gone down since 2015. That is, if you are looking at $/GB...there are other variables of course, but, SSDs are not really a good example.

 

[petteyg359]

dang i had no idea XD.
my $70 16gb ddr4 sticks now cost $198

neat-o

4x16 DDR4 I got for $350 from Fry's with my 5930k is $800+ now. On the other hand, the 4x8 DDR3L I got way back when with my FX-8350 is now only half the price it used to be. Makes me seriously consider taking half the RAM out of my 5930k system and selling it at a huge markup and hoping prices go back down for me to replace it later

 

[Dolk]

SSD prices are the same now as they were in 2015 when I purchased Samsung 850 EVO 500 GB. So I don't see other fabs effecting DDR4 production.

Look at which SSD you have bought. It may not be a NAND/NOR based SSD. Most likely you bought a vertical stacked SSD. Any vertical stacked SSDs should stay close to the same, but their demand price will spike at times. Most companies building devices don't need the newly sophisticated vNAND SSDs, and so they buy the cheaper kind. Which everyone likes to do in the first place.

 

[wingman99]

Look at which SSD you have bought. It may not be a NAND/NOR based SSD. Most likely you bought a vertical stacked SSD. Any vertical stacked SSDs should stay close to the same, but their demand price will spike at times. Most companies building devices don't need the newly sophisticated vNAND SSDs, and so they buy the cheaper kind. Which everyone likes to do in the first place.

The Samsung 850 EVO is TLC V-NAND, and the new Samsung 860 EVO is the more expensive to manufacture MLC V-NAND. In 3 years from the time I purchased the Samsung 850 EVO I can buy the Samsung 860 EVO for the same price. So like I was saying I don't see SSD's effecting the increased memory pricing.

Price point 860 EVO
Fabbing your own controller, your own PCB, your own cache chips and own NAND flash memory does have advantages as Samsung is able to keep the prices very competitive as this product is made 99% in-house...

4 TB - $1399.99 = 34 cent/GB
2 TB - $649.99 = 32 cent/GB
1 TB - $329.99 = 32 cent/GB
500 GB - $169.99 = 34 cent/GB
250 GB - $94.99 = 38 cent/GB
http://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/samsung-860-evo-2tb-ssd-review,19.html

 

[UltraTaco]

https://www.androidauthority.com/intel-samsung-largest-chipmaker-world-834293/

View attachment 196446View attachment 196447

No kiddin' eh?