...except current peak in demand is mostly driven by build-out of AI capacity.

Both inference and training workloads are often bottlenecked on RAM speed, and trying to shoehorn older/slower memory tech into that niche requires non-trivial amount of R&D into widening memory bus on CPU/GPU/NPUs, which is unlikely to happen - there is plenty demand on those as is.

If there is high demand for the former due to AI, they can increase production to generate higher profits. This cuts the production capacity of consumer DRAM, and lead to higher prices in that segment too. Simple supply & demand at work.

A consumer DDR5 module has two 32-bit-wide buses, which are both for example implemented using 4 chips which each handle 8 bits operating in parallel - just like RAID 0.

An enterprise DDR5 module has a 40-bit-wide bus implemented using 5 chips. The memory controller uses those 8 additional bits to store the parity calculated over the 32 regular bits - so just like RAID 4 (or RAID 5, I haven't dug into the details too deeply). The whole magic happens inside the controller, the DRAM chip itself isn't even aware of it.

Given the way the industry works (some companies do DRAM chip production, it is sold as a commodity, and others buy a bunch of chips to turn them into RAM modules) the factory producing the chips does not even know if the chips they have just produced will be turned into ECC or non-ECC. The prices rise and fall as one because it is functionally a single market.

Each memory DIMM/stick is made up of multiple DRAM chip. ECC DIMMs have an extra chip for storing the error correcting parity data.

The bottleneck is with the chips and not the DIMMs. Chip fabs are expensive and time consuming, while making PCBs and placing components down onto them is much easier to get into.

I don't really understand why every little thing needs to be spelled out. It doesn't matter. We're not getting the RAM at an affordable price anymore.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRAM_price_fixing_scandal

Even China has no reason to reduce prices much for memory sold to the US when they know we have no choice but to buy at the prices already set by the cartel. I expect that if China does start making memory they'll sell it cheap within China and export it at much higher prices. Maybe we'll get a black market for cheap DRAM smuggled out of China though.

So, it would happen even with best intentions and no conspiracies. AI boom already hiked GPU prices, memory was next in line.

Do we really think the current level of AI-driven data center demand will continue indefinitely? The world only needs so many pictures of bears wearing suits.

I feel like the question of how many computers are needed to steer a bunch of self-driving taxis probably has an answer, and I bet it's not anything even remotely close to what would justify a decade's worth of maximum investment in silicon for AI data centers, which is what we were talking about.