Memory crisis expected to last until 2031, supply already allocated for 2026
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What I heard on the ground floor from various system integrators, components manufacturers, and other companies, is memory supply has been tied up for all of 2026, and that shortages could last as long as until 2031.
Sure it’s scuttlebutt but wouldn’t surprise me as being true.
The solution is surprisingly simple:
“Sorry, I can’t use your online services. My electronics died. Oh well.”
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A 5 year DRAM shortage is pretty hard to imagine. I have to suspect that’s a projection that assumes no AI bubble popping (which given how insanely over-leveraged basically every company involved in the bubble is, its inevitable. They’re literally spending more building these datacenters than they can ever dream of recouping once built!) The last DRAM shortage (around 2017-2019 by memory) was only really bad for about a year or so, getting gradually better until it became an absolute glut of DRAM supply that lasted until…well about 3 months ago. $60 per terabyte of SSD storage was glorious, and hopefully I can afford to benefit from the next DRAM glut in 2-5 years
DOJ launches criminal investigation into Fed Chair Jerome Powell, he says
Federal prosecutors have launched a criminal investigation into Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, he confirmed in a statement Sunday night.
ABC News (abcnews.go.com)
Saw this in the news. They’re trying really hard to stack the federal reserve board and send interest rates back down to financial crisis/pandemic levels. AI bubble can have some leg room if interest rates tank
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The AI bubble will pop long before then, and everyone will have more RAM and GPUs than they know what to do with.
For the dram unfortunately won’t be possible to use it in the consumer space, at least not in the current form. Hbm is really server stuff, and as is, you cannot repurpose it. As for the GPUs, maybe they can be used for the consumer space but I am not entirely sure the specs would be wise to use it at home, since they need some very serious cooling capabilities, as well electricity consumption. Biggest winners of this pop in my opinion would be anyone who need cheap server rack stuff.
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DOJ launches criminal investigation into Fed Chair Jerome Powell, he says
Federal prosecutors have launched a criminal investigation into Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, he confirmed in a statement Sunday night.
ABC News (abcnews.go.com)
Saw this in the news. They’re trying really hard to stack the federal reserve board and send interest rates back down to financial crisis/pandemic levels. AI bubble can have some leg room if interest rates tank
Honestly interest rates dropping might be ultimately be a good thing. The job market is so tight and most recession indicators have already been blazing. I doubt they’ll do the same hard drop they did in Q2 of 2020, but I do think more aggressive rate cuts might alleviate a lot of the burden consumers (especially young adults and anyone unfortunate enough to have been/be jobless over the last couple of years) have been feeling. A big chunk of the inflation consumers were seeing on goods in 2024 was just companies making opportunistic price increases, as evidenced by the heavily advertised price drops afterwards.
Additionally there is the statistic that nearly 50% of all retail spending in the United States is made by the top 10% of earners which is a heck of a dangerous tightrope for the economy. I do think that’s the other shoe waiting to drop right this second. If the wealthier Americans get spooked and start to pull back their spending this economy is going to tumble
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Well, great. So looking at 2008 for the most recent model, I suppose that means government bailouts or subsidies using taxpayer money to save the companies and thereby prevent a complete collapse of markets?
Kind of? Except the lenders with the largest amounts of loans in order are: 1.Blue Owl (USA) (remember this company, it’ll be important as a canary probably) 2. Mitsubishi UFJ financial group (Japan) 3. JP Morgan Chase (USA) 4. Deutsch Bank (Germany) 5. BnP Paribas (France) 6. Morgan Stanley (USA) 7. Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation (Japan)
So kinda like 2008 but you need (at the very least) Japan, Germany, France, the USA, and possibly South Korea to all coordinate and do bailouts cooperatively together to maybe have a chance.
Good thing we haven’t pissed off our allies or disrupted trade in general, and we also haven’t fucked with interest rates or bonds or anything so we have plenty of tools in our arsenal (god help us all, puts on all of our collective livers.)
There is no saving the AI companies because it is mathematically impossible for them to make money. You would have better luck investing in your local meth heads trying to make alchemy real using nothing but books published by Wizards of the Coast.
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For the dram unfortunately won’t be possible to use it in the consumer space, at least not in the current form. Hbm is really server stuff, and as is, you cannot repurpose it. As for the GPUs, maybe they can be used for the consumer space but I am not entirely sure the specs would be wise to use it at home, since they need some very serious cooling capabilities, as well electricity consumption. Biggest winners of this pop in my opinion would be anyone who need cheap server rack stuff.
Part of it is not finished DRAM that was sold yet, it’s wafer capacity at the factory.
Sam Altman has promised orders for a kazillion wafers that don’t exist yet. It’s been argued this is less legitimate demand and more an effort to crimp the scaling ambitions of other competitors.
If his cheque bounces early on, the manufacturers are likely to reassign his slots to other buyers.
The manufacturers are taking a fair bit of risk though. If they aren’t getting paid before work starts, and the bubble pops in the middle, thry could end up with a lot of (partially or fully) finished wafers that they can’t just slice up and sell to Corsair and G.Skill.
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The solution is surprisingly simple:
“Sorry, I can’t use your online services. My electronics died. Oh well.”
️Or we hunt them down
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Part of it is not finished DRAM that was sold yet, it’s wafer capacity at the factory.
Sam Altman has promised orders for a kazillion wafers that don’t exist yet. It’s been argued this is less legitimate demand and more an effort to crimp the scaling ambitions of other competitors.
If his cheque bounces early on, the manufacturers are likely to reassign his slots to other buyers.
The manufacturers are taking a fair bit of risk though. If they aren’t getting paid before work starts, and the bubble pops in the middle, thry could end up with a lot of (partially or fully) finished wafers that they can’t just slice up and sell to Corsair and G.Skill.
You are not wrong about the reallocation part. However, if you see the actions from micron (fuck you micron BTW), they are going all in and having a shit storm in PR on the consumer side. If they are taking these risks without proper assurances, then they are utterly deranged
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This is for one purpose if it’s true: To force consumers to rent everything, including their computer, so they can be surveilled.
Don’t use GeForce NOW, even if there’s a Linux client in the works, because it’s surveilled too.
Surveillance isn’t the reason, it’s a larger and more consistent profit margin.
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They’ll sell it.
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Thank god I never sold my old desktops.
I have a i5-3470 with 16gb, i7-8700 with 16 gb, a steamdeck, and recently bought an m4 air.
I’m only gaming on the steamdeck, and those other computers are used for home server stuff.
My old computer is 16gb DDR-3, as I used it long time before jumping over to 32gb DDR-5 based systems. And thanks to consoles and rising handhelds (first gen Steam Deck <3), 16gb will be still the base floor for long time it seems.
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Why would they sell it for cheap, if they can sell it for just a little but under current market value and maximize the profit? People would buy it, if it is the cheapest option. Which does not mean it will be cheap overall, if its constantly sold out.
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My old computer is 16gb DDR-3, as I used it long time before jumping over to 32gb DDR-5 based systems. And thanks to consoles and rising handhelds (first gen Steam Deck <3), 16gb will be still the base floor for long time it seems.
I really hope tha devs target the steamdeck as a baseline for all future games.
I love it when they have a steamdeck graphics profile too.
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Or we hunt them down
So be it, then… We ride at dawn.
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I really hope tha devs target the steamdeck as a baseline for all future games.
I love it when they have a steamdeck graphics profile too.
The only problem is the current most used AAA game engine Unreal Engine 5. It is not very good for low end hardware, as the system and developers struggle to optimize it. Even the best devs struggle. But they can’t afford to require high end or just mid PCs. Handhelds become quite popular now. Devs want to make games run on Switch 2, which is beneficial as whole because it has to run under constraints of the system and environment.
Given that RAM prices may stay this expensive, my prediction is that developers absolutely have to make their games run on less powerful hardware (and on 16gb). I wonder how the Steam Machine (PC from Valve) will impact developers focus on Steam Deck.
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What I heard on the ground floor from various system integrators, components manufacturers, and other companies, is memory supply has been tied up for all of 2026, and that shortages could last as long as until 2031.
Sure it’s scuttlebutt but wouldn’t surprise me as being true.
To spell this out clearly, the reason RAM has quadrupled in price is that a huge quantity of RAM that hasn’t been produced yet has been bought with money that doesn’t exist to populate GPUs that also haven’t been produced to go in datacenters that haven’t been built powered by infrastructure that may never exist to meet a demand that doesn’t exist at all to make profit margins that mathematically can’t exist while economists talk about this thing they call the “rational markets hypothesis”.
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For the dram unfortunately won’t be possible to use it in the consumer space, at least not in the current form. Hbm is really server stuff, and as is, you cannot repurpose it. As for the GPUs, maybe they can be used for the consumer space but I am not entirely sure the specs would be wise to use it at home, since they need some very serious cooling capabilities, as well electricity consumption. Biggest winners of this pop in my opinion would be anyone who need cheap server rack stuff.
The RAM for 2026-2031 hasn’t been produced. It’s the production capacity that’s been bought out.
If the AI bubble bursts, the manufacturing can be reassigned.
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Just not gonna buy any new games then.
Get caught up on that game queue.
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The only problem is the current most used AAA game engine Unreal Engine 5. It is not very good for low end hardware, as the system and developers struggle to optimize it. Even the best devs struggle. But they can’t afford to require high end or just mid PCs. Handhelds become quite popular now. Devs want to make games run on Switch 2, which is beneficial as whole because it has to run under constraints of the system and environment.
Given that RAM prices may stay this expensive, my prediction is that developers absolutely have to make their games run on less powerful hardware (and on 16gb). I wonder how the Steam Machine (PC from Valve) will impact developers focus on Steam Deck.
It would be great if devs just target the steam deck and then let you improve graphics for better hardware.
Like, turn up ray tracing and other effects on the steam machine. Let my steamdeck be a potato.
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It would be great if devs just target the steam deck and then let you improve graphics for better hardware.
Like, turn up ray tracing and other effects on the steam machine. Let my steamdeck be a potato.
Unfortunately the reality is, that developers don’t have all time of the world. They have deadlines to meet and focus on the thing that is in their mind the most important at the moment. For AAA it often means high quality textures and advanced tech like RayTracing, while they have less time to optimize it for weak hardware. On the other side some devs optimize for low hardware and then they don’t get the attention in the media they want to have, by having the greatest and biggest graphics. So they start optimizing later if the game is not too buggy and it is a success, so they get the greenlight to do more work on it.
Off course I simplify and it depends on the teams and publishers and so on. The point I am making is, that its not as easy a decision as we think or hope it would be. Especially because publishers force some decisions, regardless of what the developers or gamers want to have or need.
