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by gruez 33 days ago
The point is that just because there's a handful of people (relatively speaking) looking to buy more RAM to upgrade their last gen systems, doesn't mean there's robust demand for DRAM manufacturers to keep DDR4 manufacturing lines going. It's like arguing Sony shouldn't have exited the CRT business because there's retro enthusiasts on youtube scouring the earth for CRT monitors.
2 comments
pdimitar 33 days ago
For the reasons stated above -- that DDR5-gen hardware is expensive right now -- I'd think the DDR4-gen market will remain alive for quite a big longer. Though that's likely much more on the second-hand market side of things.

While I wouldn't necessarily agree with "a handful of people", the fact is that neither of us can prove their lean -- so no point pursuing that argument thread.

So you might be right that it's a pure numbers/statistics decision. Or I might be right that they want to herd people into the more expensive hardware while forcing them to do so by phasing out production of the cheaper hardware.

No way to truly know IMO. We are exchanging hypotheses.

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cosmic_cheese 33 days ago
I’m not sure that comparison makes much sense. By the time CRTs were phased out, demand was down to almost nothing and what little existed was confined to the extreme budget market. While I don’t have industry insights or anything I don’t think demand for DDR4 is anywhere near the bottom yet, and the remaining demand is centered on premium product (nobody running cheap DDR4 is upgrading). In a more normal market would be more than enough to justify continued production for several more years.

DDR4 production is likely still quite profitable, just not drowning-in-money AI-bubble profitable. If smaller foundries existed they’d be happy to take up the business.

Maybe really what needs to happen is some busting up of the giants…

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ksec 33 days ago
There is a minimum amount of production volume for it to fit the price equation. If the market doesn't have that demand, it is fundamentally no different to CRT.

Otherwise they could continue to make DDR4 at a higher cost and sold at a higher price to which people will complain price fixing again.

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