alt Hacker NewsTbf, this current era of capitalism really is a lot where absolutely no one wants to enter the market and take advantage of a clear overpricing of memory for consumers but simply wants to charge the same amount as everyone else. So much for "efficient markets."
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Could you please expand on this?
Aren’t prices sky rocketing precisely because of excess demand? And they’d collapse in turn if demand disappeared.
My understanding of economics is entry level so please forgive my ignorance. I’m just curious what you mean.
Nobody's stopping you from taking advantage of that shortage :) Just don't forget to turn your garage EUV machine on and off if it starts glitching.
You don't want to build a huge factory if you believe the market might deflate suddently.
A lot of industries got bitten by greed and the sudden deflation of demand and huge unsold inventory post COVID. The reality is the market was overly and abnormaly inflated and consumers who bought the stuff during COVID period were equipped for the next ~10 years in stuff like sporting goods and had no reason to buy new items in the subsequent years.
I do believe we will always need more RAM even if there is a market correction or AI bubble burst whatever you want to call it. It will not destroy AI completely, just cleanup the market. But how much will we need? I guess the chip makers makes their own guesses but don't want to make their company in peril either.
Looks pretty darn efficient to me:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/historical-cost-of-comput...
This is Capitalism working exactly as intended - resources (RAM) are allocated to those which can use them most productively (AI data-centers)
And the AI data-centers are using the RAM so productively, that they are willing to buy them at any price whatsoever.
Everyone always wants to charge as much as they possibly can, and if SK Hynix would be the only manufacturer prices would be 10x of what they are today. Especially new incumbents will not ruin the market prices as they have the highest upfront cost and their calculation of entering the market is probably based on the high prices that can be achieved. In the long run, more competition is still good as everyone ramps up production to profit more from the high prices and at some point supply will outpace demand and prices will fall (assuming no cartel / price fixing is involved).