Thread

Samsung is expected to more than double output of its HBM4 and HBM4E DRAM

562 points · 458 comments · giuliomagnifico

shevy-java · 1789929023 · focus · HN ↗
About 2 years ago I bought some SDRAM or something like that, DDR4 or DDR5, don't recall offhand. A few months ago I looked at the price today, and it was over 3x as high. That's just insane. Governments need to do something against this abuse system that AI amplified here.
1. digdigdag · 1789929314 · focus · HN ↗
  > Governments need to do something against this abuse system that AI amplified here.
  Which governments, and what exactly would you want these governments to do? The demand is global. There are no levers a single government can pull to meaningfully influence the global demand without fully committing to an protectionist economic policy, in which case the U.S. doesn't have the facilities to magically pop up world class fabs overnight, and South Korea and Taiwan don't have the market demand that the U.S. generates to justify their investments in making these chips and China lacks the IP to be able to build anything comparable to Nvidia's silicon at the moment.
  No one has all the cards and no one controls all the levers.
  1. carlm42 · 1789929936 · focus · HN ↗
    Governments have sued DRAM companies for price fixing and forming cartels before: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRAM_industry_price_fixing" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRAM_industry_price_fixing. They can absolutely step in and if there are evidence of price fixing or anti-competitive behaviours, can impose fines. The choice of whether to do that though is political.
    daedrdev · 1789932137 · focus · HN ↗
    Several of these companies almost went under before the AI boom. There isn’t a cartel.
    lovich · 1789932789 · focus · HN ↗
    Is there any allegations of price fixing in this case? The demand just skyrocketed. Other than legislation like the defense act in the US I don’t know of any governments that have jurisdiction over these ram makers that mandate companies produce more of a product.
    Especially not for consumer goods.
    wmf · 1789934076 · focus · HN ↗
    If they're charging one customer $X and another customer $5X for the same chips... there's got to be some law about this.
    srdjanr · 1789939407 · focus · HN ↗
    I missed that this is happening, is it really? I thought it's 5X for everyone
    wmf · 1789939628 · focus · HN ↗
    Supposedly OpenAI is paying 2025 prices.
    niltecedu · 1789978796 · focus · HN ↗
    So you mean people with contracts are having their contracts honoured.... thats just normal business.
    SideQuark · 1789959509 · focus · HN ↗
    And on that page govts have tried and failed at it also. Thinking the current prices are the result of fixing and not insane demand is surely going to lose in court. It’s trivial to show massive demand, and thus production line changes, as the driving forces here.
    If you look over all such lawsuits, they extremely rarely succeed.

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