The RAM shortage comes for us all
97 comments
·December 4, 2025radicality
Think the article should also mention how OpenAI is likely responsible for it. Good article I found from another thread here yesterday: https://www.mooreslawisdead.com/post/sam-altman-s-dirty-dram...
diabllicseagull
yes. on the moore's law is dead podcast they were talking about rumors where some 'AI enterprise company's representatives' were trying to buy memory in bulk from brick and mortar stores. in some cases openai was mentioned. crazy if true. also interesting considering none of those would be ECC certified like what you would opt for for a commercial server.
Loic
I think the OpenAI deal to lock wafers was a wonderful coup. OpenAI is more and more losing ground against the regularity[0] of the improvements coming from Anthropic, Google and even the open weights models. By creating a chock point at the hardware level, OpenAI can prevent the competition from increasing their reach because of the lack of hardware.
[0]: For me this is really an important part of working with Claude, the model improves with the time but stay consistent, its "personality" or whatever you want to call it, has been really stable over the past versions, this allows a very smooth transition from version N to N+1.
hnuser123456
Sure, but if the price is being inflated by inflated demand, then the suppliers will just build more factories until they hit a new, higher optimal production level, and prices will come back down, and eventually process improvements will lead to price-per-GB resuming its overall downtrend.
nutjob2
Memory fabs take billions of dollars and years to build, also the memory business is a tough one where losses are common, so no such relief in sight.
With a bit of luck OpenAI collapses under its own weight sooner than later, otherwise we're screwed for several years.
malfist
Micron has said they're not scaling up production. Presumably they're afraid of being left holding the bag when the bubble does pop
mholm
Chip factories need years of lead time, and manufacturers might be hesitant to take on new debt in a massive bubble that might pop before they ever see any returns.
hodgehog11
I don't see this working for Google though, since they make their own custom hardware in the form of the TPUs. Unless those designs include components that are also susceptible?
bri3d
Still susceptible, TPUs need DRAM dies just as much as anything else that needs to process data. I think they use some form of HBM, so they basically have to compete alongside the DDR supply chain.
frankchn
TPUs use HBM, which are impacted.
Grosvenor
Could this generate pressure to produce less memory hungry models?
codybontecou
This became very clear with the outrage, rather than excitement, of forcing users to upgrade to ChatGPT-5 over 4o.
jl6
Can someone explain why OpenAI is buying DDR5 RAM specifically? I thought LLMs typically ran on GPUs with specialised VRAM, not on main system memory. Have they figured out how to scale using regular RAM?
AceJohnny2
> And those companies all realized they can make billions more dollars making RAM just for AI datacenter products, and neglect the rest of the market.
I wouldn't ascribe that much intent. More simply, datacenter builders have bought up the entire supply (and likely future production for some time), hence the supply shortfall.
This is a very simple supply-and-demand situation, nothing nefarious about it.
nish__
Anyone want to start a fab with me? We can buy an ASML machine and figure out the rest as we go. Toronto area btw
Reason077
A dozen or so well-resourced tech titans in China are no doubt asking themselves this same question right now.
Of course, it takes quite some time for a fab to go from an idea to mass production. Even in China. Expect prices to drop 2-3 years from now when all the new capacity comes online?
dylan604
At that point, it'll be the opposite problem as more capacity than demand will be available. These new fabs won't be able to pay for themselves. Every tic receives a tok.
umanwizard
[delayed]
GeekFortyTwo
As someone with no skills in the space, no money, and lives near Ottawa: I'd love to help start a fab in Ontario.
jacquesm
I hope you have very deep pockets. But I'm cheering you on from the sidelines.
nish__
Just need a half billion in upfront investment. And thank you for the support :)
dylan604
So, playing the Mega Powerball are you?
tmaly
that is an understatement
deuplonicus
Sure, we can work on brining in TinyTapeout to modern fab
SchwKatze
I just gathered enough money to build my new PC. I'll even go to another country to pay less taxes, and this spike hit me hard. I'll buy anyway because I don't believe it will slow down so soon. But yeah, for me is a lot of money
zoobab
"dig into that pile of old projects you never finished instead of buying something new this year."
You don't need a new PC. Just use the old one.
kevin_thibedeau
I just bought some 30pin SIMMs to rehab an old computer. That market is fine.
fullstop
I have a bag of SIMMs that I saved, no idea why, because I clearly wrote BAD on the mylar bag.
At time time I was messing around with the "badram" patch for Linux.
comeonbro
This is ultimately the first stage of human economic obsolescence and extinction.
This https://cdna.pcpartpicker.com/static/forever/images/trends/2... will happen to every class of thing (especially once it hits energy, because everything is downstream of that).
benlivengood
If your argument is that value produced per-cpu will increase so significantly that the value produced by AGI/ASI per unit cost exceeds what humans can produce for their upkeep in food and shelter, then yes that seems to be one of the significant risks long term if governments don't intervene.
If the argument is that prices will skyrocket simply because of long-term AI demand, I think that ignores the fact that manufacturing vastly more products will stabilize prices up to the point that raw materials start to become significantly more expensive, and is strongly incentivized over the ~10-year timeframe for IC manufacturers.
captainkrtek
I'm no economist, but if (when?) the AI bubble bursts and demand collapses at the price point memory and other related components are at, wouldn't price recover?
not trying to argue, just curious.
kalterdev
Why should we believe in another apocalypse prediction?
gooseus
Because the collapse of complex societies is real - https://github.com/danielmkarlsson/library/blob/master/Josep...
Unbounded increases in complexity lead to diminishing returns on energy investment and increased system fragility which both contribute to an increased likelihood of collapse as solutions to old problems generate new problems faster than new solutions can be created since energy that should be dedicated to new solutions is needed to maintain the layers of complexity generated by the layers of previous solutions.
IAmBroom
One of them has to be right, eventually!
mikelitoris
Companies are adamant about RAMming AI down our throats, it seems.
stevenjgarner
My understanding is that this is primarily hitting DDR5 RAM (or better). With prices so inflated, is there an argument to revert and downgrade systems to DDR4 RAM technology in many use cases (which is not so inflated)?
cptnapalm
DDR 4 shot up too. It was bad enough that instead of trying to put together a system with the AM4 m/b I already have, I just bought a Legion Go S.
geerlingguy
Linked in the article, DDR4 and LPDDR4 are also 2-4x more expensive now, forcing smaller manufactures to raise prices or cancel some products entirely.
tencentshill
It will be hit just as hard, they have stopped new DDR4 production to focus on DDR5 and HBM.
gizmo
No DDR4 is affected too. It's a simple question of production and demand, and the biggest memory manufacturers are all winding down their DDR4/DDR5 memory production for consumers (they still make some DDR5 for OEMS and servers).
segmondy
DDR4 prices have gone up 4x in the last 3 months.
Numerlor
DDR4 manufacturing is mostly shut down, so if any real demand picks starts there the prices will shoot up
JKCalhoun
> maybe it's a good time to dig into that pile of old projects you never finished instead of buying something new this year.
Always good advice.
This reminds me of the recent LaurieWired video presenting a hypothetical of, "what if we stopped making CPUs": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2OJFqs8bUk
Spoiler, but the answer is basically that old hardware rules the day because it lasts longer and is more reliable of timespans of decades.
DDR5 32GB is currently going for ~$330 on Amazon
DDR4 32GB is currently going for ~$130 on Amazon
DDR3 32GB is currently going for ~50 on Amazon (4x8GB)
For anyone where cost is a concern, using older hardware seems like a particularly easy choice, especially if a person is comfortable with a Linux environment, since the massive droves of recently retired Windows 10 incompatible hardware works great with your Linux distro of choice.