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Re:RAM now represents 35 percent of bill of materials for HP... by zarzavat on Thursday February 26, 2026 @06:13AM (#47164519)
RAM didn't get more expensive to produce. It just got more desirable. The prices will come down again when supply responds. It may take some time, but it will happen eventually.
Re:RAM now represents 35 percent of bill of materials for HP... by StopDisinfo910 on Thursday February 26, 2026 @06:39AM (#47164699)
RAM production is highly inelastic and controlled by an oligopoly. They have little desire to increase production considering the lead time and the risk that the AI demand might be transient.

They actively prefer keeping confortable margins than competing between each other. They have already been condemned for active collusion in the past.

New actors from China could shake things up a bit but the geopolitical situation makes that complicated. The market can stay broken for a long time.

Re:RAM now represents 35 percent of bill of materials for HP... by zozbot234 on Thursday February 26, 2026 @06:50AM (#47164828)
They are increasing production as fast as they can (which is not fast at all, it's more like slowly steering a huge ship towards the correct direction) because current prices are too high even when accounting for the historical oligopoly dynamics. They can easily increase their collective profits by making more.
Re:RAM now represents 35 percent of bill of materials for HP... by StopDisinfo910 on Thursday February 26, 2026 @09:49AM (#47166871)
As far as I know, they are merely shifting capacities from the customer market towards the data center market with minimal retooling. I am unaware of any of the three actively investing in new capacity. Some modest increase are planned but nowhere near what you would expect given current demand.
Re:RAM now represents 35 percent of bill of materials for HP... by toast0 on Thursday February 26, 2026 @12:07PM (#47168820)
RAM manufacturers don't increase production as fast as possible, because they've been through enough boom and bust.

Rapid increase in capacity leads to oversupply which leads to negative margins. They've been there before, and they don't want to go there again.

RAM manufacturers do routinely setup new fabs and decommision old fabs. Maybe they're trying to hurry up new fab construction in times like these, and they would likely defer shutting down old fabs or restart them where possible. But they're less likely to build new fabs that weren't already part of their long term plans.

Re:RAM now represents 35 percent of bill of materials for HP... by zozbot234 on Thursday February 26, 2026 @02:18PM (#47170723)
They've actually not seen such prices before. DRAM now costs as much per Gb as it did around 2006-2007 - despite around 20 years of real technical progress since then! That's genuinely unprecedented.
Re:RAM now represents 35 percent of bill of materials for HP... by zozbot234 on Thursday February 26, 2026 @06:23AM (#47164594)
RAM actually got more expensive to produce in the medium term because production is bottlenecked. It takes years to expand production.