Luke James is a freelance writer and journalist.\u00a0 Although his background is in legal, he has a personal interest in all things tech, especially hardware and microelectronics, and anything regulatory.\u00a0 ","collapsible":{"enabled":true,"maxHeight":250,"readMoreText":"Read more","readLessText":"Read less"}}), "https://slice.vanilla.futurecdn.net/13-4-24/js/authorBio.js"); } else { console.error('%c FTE ','background: #9306F9; color: #ffffff','no lazy slice hydration function available'); } Luke James Social Links Navigation Contributor Luke James is a freelance writer and journalist. Although his background is in legal, he has a personal interest in all things tech, especially hardware and microelectronics, and anything regulatory.
hotaru251 i mean this wont go anywhere. Did they likely price fix? maybe? (when one shifts they could have a silent agreement they all do but proving it if no actual proof is impossible) Did they cut consumer ram in favor of HBM? obviously? Does it suck? ofc. Is it illegal? no its business 101 to focus on what is making more profit. (which is true for ANY business with public trading does as its what investors want) Now you "could" say they are in bad if they dont show any fab expanding to combat the issue (if they say they would have/will) but even that isn't technically illegal as the boom will end and then they'd be left w/ fabs they have no use for again. Reply
boosted1g So lawyers make a longshot attempt to collect a big payday on case with little to no proof of collaboration. Sounds about right. Of course the dram (and storage and GPU) price hikes suck for us consumers . But it is no conspiracy that 3 publicly traded companies would shift production to the product that has both the highest demand and highest margins. I would think that unless they can find emails, or some recorded conversation then this lawsuit is going nowhere. Granted, it wasn't too many years ago that Apple was able to sue Samsung in California courts for the "financial loss" they imposed because Samsung phones had similar finger gestures. So I guess the win with no real evidence is not impossible Reply
cyrusfox It’s easy enough to say build more capacity now and accuse the current players of artificially capping the market at a high Margin rate rather than just being conservative on costly buildouts, but these memory makers have survived many crazy expansion cycles and they have also felt the pain of the crash. Micron’s 1996 Utah expansion is a good example of how building right before a collapse can be foolish(Buildings remain shells for over a decade before being utilized). DRAM is a vicious business. A lot of players have been consolidated out or exited over time, including Intel, NEC, Hitachi, Elpida, Mitsubishi, Siemens, Infineon, Qimonda, Toshiba, Texas Instruments, Mostek, Mosel Vitelic, ProMOS, Inotera, and others. That is basically the history of the industry. At this point there are really only three major players left, Samsung, SK hynix, and Micron, plus CXMT in China, but they still have a meaningful efficiency and process gap, and in a market this capital intensive that gap matters a lot. By the time many of these new facilities come online, if AI does pop/correct, we will have so much excess memory that it will be a long time until we get back to a normal market cycle of consumption, so it makes sense they do not go any faster than they find prudent. I am betting prices will remain elevated for at least another 18 months. Micron stock shows most of the market agrees (insanity right there). Reply
Kindaian It is not just a question of capital intensity. It is also the time it takes to make a new factory and source the logistics to it. That is why most factories for Dram3 and 4 don't exist anymore. They have been retooled for dram5 / hbm. Reply
TechieTwo Unless the lawyers can prove collusion, this will go no where. The sad reality is everything is becoming a commodity in society where inflated profit margins are justified because some company jacks it's prices when supply can't meet demand. When it all collapses then the mem makers will plead for gov'ment subsidies. 😡 Reply
Newbiespam They've already been busted for price fixing before…. And they aren't going to stop, because they will at most get a slap on the wrist. Just like nobody is seeing that they're pulling more crap now than ever before and nobody will do anything about it. They're charging consumers for their storage costs, while choking consumer supply, and they're all being reckless because who is going to pay for the fallout when this bubble bursts, the same people they're charging while it's growing. They're going to ruin the economy and screw us all out of our retirement and decades of money. Nobody will ever do a damn thing about it in any sort of scale that matters. Even investors are running circles around the tech companies as their revenue circle rotates from one focus to the next, being lead by the nose, and at the center of it all is the conductor…. Jensen Huang. They are all getting rich while taking a wrecking ball to the economy without a care I'm the world other than to see just how far they can go. Reply
toyo boosted1g said: So lawyers make a longshot attempt to collect a big payday on case with little to no proof of collaboration. Sounds about right. Of course the dram (and storage and GPU) price hikes suck for us consumers . But it is no conspiracy that 3 publicly traded companies would shift production to the product that has both the highest demand and highest margins. I would think that unless they can find emails, or some recorded conversation then this lawsuit is going nowhere. Granted, it wasn't too many years ago that Apple was able to sue Samsung in California courts for the "financial loss" they imposed because Samsung phones had similar finger gestures. So I guess the win with no real evidence is not impossible Maybe we should consider having states force corporations to compromise between profit and common good. Reply
Albert.Thomas The complaint argues that the three companies used a coordinated shift toward high-bandwidth memory (HBM), the stacked DRAM that feeds AI accelerators, as a cover to curtail production of older DDR3 and DDR4 modules. Um, say what? Can someone please explain to me how shifting production away from barely-used DDR3 , last used in processors released 13 years ago , is in any way damning? That is simply logical sense. Reply
Jack Carage Ofcourse they have agreed this. Then Micron is selling all their HBM memory to fixed high price most likely to nVidia, because who else need them, and preferably having them all to keep GPU's high pricing active? Its all about market manipulation. You can ask this from AI to have it confirmed. Will they get sanctions? These times allow corporate mafia to roll, so they will get nothing, real problems starts when other companies notify this, that officers are weak to protect their nations. Reply
Jack Carage toyo said: Maybe we should consider having states force corporations to compromise between profit and common good. Market will fix this also, in year or two. AMD has a problem, computer sellers has a problem, people are not downgrading their computers to 1/10 RAM vs current systems, so processors are not selling. Some buyers just cant have larger budget for this. Some buyers can rise their budget but not all from this group are willing to do it. For example me, I wont downgrade my current 128 GB to 16 GB RAM, next computer I have it doubled like I always have. I could afford for 10x RAM, but I am not going to do that because to trillions valuated companies just want more. So AMD has problem, they need more RAM to market to get their business flow. You have that factory up and running in 6 months if you want, call to Elon if you dont know that delays are just there because of manipulations. And if you want, you get. The one(s) making this will get boosts to their stocks and will kick down the bubble. Reply
Key considerations
- Investor positioning can change fast
- Volatility remains possible near catalysts
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Reference reading
- https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/SPONSORED_LINK_URL
- https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/samsung-sk-hynix-and-micron-sued-over-alleged-dram-price-fixing-amid-record-memory-costs#main
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Informational only. No financial advice. Do your own research.