[gruntled-worker]

Look at it this way: while the upfront cost to scale up production is huge, prices are now high enough to justify it even if demand is expected to drop abruptly later on. So if you can wait 5 years for your next PC, 1TB RAM might go for what 64GB would have cost without the AI demand spike.

Granted, if you need a new system before then, you're SOL.

One thing to look out for is supply capacity curiously going offline in 2030 or whatever. That would hint at market power or collusion.

[Retric]

Memory prices per GB were cheaper in 2012.

It’s possible we’ll see a huge price drop on the near term but SSD + Cache + GPU’s seems to have changed the equation where RAM speed is considered more important than size. And from a pure architecture standpoint it makes sense.

[AbsurdCensor]

They weren't though when you adjust for inflation. If you took inflation into account, ram is cheaper now by $0.89/GB for DRAM compared to 2012.

[Retric]

Lowest 2012 price listed is 3.7 (2012-10-30) vs highest listed in 2026 is 5.375 (2026-2-1), which overlaps based on the margin for error involved. https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/

[fc417fc802]

Even being vaguely in the same ballpark is a wild regression when you consider the difference in density.

[AbsurdCensor]

So you are trying to compare the lowest with the highest and not the current price. RUn that number with the current price.

[Retric]

The most recent price listed is from a month ago and the prior prices are increasing. So really you can roughly compare years but not Today.

There’s plenty of data to say prices in 2012 and 2016 overlap, which is wild.

[Schlagbohrer]

It's crazy that a AAA video game cost $60 when I was a child in the 90s and costs $60 today, sticker price! Not adjusted for inflation!

[fc417fc802]

> while the upfront cost to scale up production is huge, prices are now high enough to justify it even if demand is expected to drop abruptly later on.

Given the nature of the industry and how critical the product is I think it would make more sense for governments to bankroll fab construction in a way that the public takes on the risk of consumer prices falling below a certain level within some limited timeframe. Mildly subsidized chip production seems like a much better downside than the current sky high prices.