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RAM Prices Expected To Skyrocket This Week
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Always draw your curves, then plot your reading.
Always draw your curves, then plot your reading.
Re:RAM compression? (Score:1)
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so use a shop-crawler (Score:1)
Re:In Early 1995 (Score:2)
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OT: .10 really *is* a lot of money... (Score:2)
Ten cents is a huge amount of money. Geeze, doesn't anyone remember the tortured screams last time gasoline prices went up
Re:Slightly off topic but! (Score:1)
I Just Don't Believe It (Score:4)
Then, about a month later, some interesting articles appeared. Just a few. (This was pre-web-journalism, for the most part, so I can't find anything to link to.) The reports were that the amount of plastic that was in warehouses was unbelievable. There was enough for years of RAM, more than enough time to rebuild the factory and replenish the stocks. Further, this other factory in the world was fully capable of producing enough plastic to satisfy the world's demand. (If anybody has a more accurate recollection of this than I, please correct my errors.)
Yet, still, the industry continued to insist that the price would go up, which it did. Smacked of price-fixing to me, like oil from the mid-east.
It's kinda sneaky everytime something like this happens. When Coca-Cola demand goes up, the price doesn't increase. When carpet demand goes up, the price doesn't increase. Yet somehow we're to believe that the RAM industry is so grossly incompetent as to be unable to adequate predict the demand for their sole product more than a month in advance?
Call me a conspiracy theorist, but it seems weird to me.
-Waldo
Re: (Score:1)
Re:Who loses? (Score:1)
Also, you often see DIMMs with 16 chips instead of 8. (So 16 * 32 Mbit for 64 MByte.) And I'm guessing that 32 Mbit module cost less per Mb than 64 Mbit.
Not to mention, Micron probably buys higher quality memory that costs more than the stuff that goes into the bargain RAM on PriceWatch. I've never had a problem with the bargain RAM.
Flamebait comment; sorry, but the moderation of the parent story annoyed me enough to have to do this: *Sigh* I wish more moderators would moderate down stuff that's obviously mis-moderated way up. It's mis-information like this that makes
No wonder... (Score:1)
Is anyone familiar with something known as the Slashdot Effect®? Imagine that applying to RAM prices...
Even if the C|Net article is full of horse feathers, the above statement alone, from Slashdot, is perfectly capable of raising RAM prices all by itself.
--
"Give him head?"
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft Ad
Re:More than .10 (Score:1)
please do not begrudge the chip manufacturers their losses or the OEMs & retailers their profits, they need their BMs or they wither & die from being unable to bathe in the glow of their own obvious greatness.
EDO (Score:2)
Just be thankful you have SDRAM and not an old machine with EDO (or fast page). The prices are double, and they go in machines that are worthless. Oh, the irony.
Re:Who loses? (Score:1)
Take your 64MByte DIMM out of its slot. Count the chips. It will either be single sided and have 8x64Mbit or be double sided and have 16x32Mbit.
Your point about the relative price increase is still correct.
But this really does illustrate the way there is no satisfactory way to abbreviate quantities of bits and bytes. People use MB and Mb interchangeably for both, even if they shouldn't. It happens when I buy bandwidth, it happens when I but flash ROM, I'm sick of always checking with an email: "is that bits or bytes"
Remember that the overall trend in RAM markets is 1% price reduction per week. Even two months of static prices are a skyrocket.
()
Re:$0.10 more a stick? Try $0.10 more a chip. (Score:1)
How can twice as many chips give you four times the capacity?
Re:Only up by 1 dime / 64 MB (Score:1)
Exp(i*x) = Cos(x) + i*Sin(x)
Thus, Exp(i*pi) = Cos(pi) + i*Sin(pi)
Cos(pi) = -1, Sin(pi) = 0, leaving you with
Exp(i*pi) = -1
Also, Exp(i*2*pi) = 1, cool eh?
I could have told you this a week ago... (Score:1)
It's also a good way to watch and see when prices are going to go back down...
Re:RAM compression? (Score:1)
Re:Who loses? (Score:2)
Just in time... (Score:1)
Have they also told that (Score:1)
Re:I Just Don't Believe It (Score:3)
They don't call it "supply and demand" for nothing.
In the case of Coke and Carpets there is an ample supply of both, so both are cheap regardless of demand. If demand goes up it's easy to increase production by hiring more workers and buying more raw materials.
With RAM chips the supply is (supposedly) not ample. Demand fluctuates. Increasing production to meet demand requires building or converting a fab. Ramping up production to meet demand takes a while, during which time prices are high.
Disclaimer: IANAE (I am not an economist).
Re:Somewhere, deep in a bunker of M$ Hate (Score:1)
Re:Nothing makes prices skyrocket like panic buyin (Score:1)
Re:OT: .10 really *is* a lot of money... (Score:1)
What about us muscle car owners?
Re:I Just Don't Believe It (Score:1)
In the case of Coke and Carpets there is an ample supply of both, so both are cheap regardless of demand. If demand goes up it's easy to increase production by hiring more workers and buying more raw materials.
With RAM chips the supply is (supposedly) not ample. Demand fluctuates. Increasing production to meet demand requires building or converting a fab. Ramping up production to meet demand takes a while, during which time prices are high.
You're absolutely right -- demand should increase the price if there's not enough supply. The question is this: Why isn't there enough supply? It's not exactly a dead-end industry. It's probably one of the more expansive industries out there with, as we've learned doing the math in this story, one hell of a markup.
But I do think that your last point is interesting: Ramping up production to meet demand takes a while, during which time prices are high. Logical, and something that I've heard quite a bit, but I wonder how much truth there is to it. Does anybody know (somebody -- unlike Admiral Burrito and I -- who *is* an economist) of other industries that has this 'ramping-up' problem so often?
-Waldo
Results are in - it's #6! (Score:1)
Science: Proving General Relativity with Crystal Balls
Re:Only up by 1 dime / 64 MB (Score:1)
Re:Nothing makes prices skyrocket like panic buyin (Score:1)
Re:Only up by 1 dime / 64 MB (Score:1)
Exp() is the function such that for any complex number x, Exp(x) equals the limit as n tends to infinity of the sum of x raised to the i'th power divided by the factorial of i, for all whole numbers i less than or equal to n.
If strictly necessary I can define the terms "function", "complex number", "equal", "limit as n tends to infinity", "sum", "raised to the i'th power", "divided by", "factorial", "whole number", and "less than".
For the sake of brevity I must assume you have knowledge of such words as "is", "the", "such", "that", "for", "any", "of", "by", "all" and "to".
Bah (Score:1)
Re:Obligatory prediction poll (Score:1)
Pricewatch and vendor price strategies (Score:1)
Statements such as "on-line orders only" and "must mention pricewatch" are great, but most of them don't give you a place on the order form to mention pricewatch. So, you must call, and half the time the customer service rep will say something like "that price is for online orders only, but I'll honor that price THIS time. Next time, please order online at www.excessmicro.com, etc....
As far as Slashdot posting stories such as this--I have no problem with it, even if young Emmett DOES sell memory on the side to suppliment his Andover.net income!
anyways, just wanted to vent here--
Interested in the Colorado Lottery?
Check out colotto.com [colotto.com]
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Interested in the Colorado Lottery?
More than .10 (Score:1)
--Remove SPAM from my address to mail me
High SDRAM prices are bad for Rambus (Score:5)
A year or two ago, the big carrot that Rambus had to offer to manufacturers was a potentially profitable product. SDRAM prices were in the dumps, so nobody was making any money no matter how much they could churn out. Fast forward to present day, and just about every fab is guaranteed a nice fat profit, just for producing a commodity chip. The only way to justify the risk and cost of switching production from SDRAM to RDRAM is if RDRAM fetches a huge margin. Hence low supplies and sky-high prices for Rambus.
Intel has been pushing manufacturers [theregister.co.uk] to "voluntarily" cut their margins and drop prices on RDRAM. For once, though, it seems the memory makers have the upper hand, and there have been no takers so far.
ram prices increased? start coding better! (Score:2)
As price of memory decreases, the motivation to do implement good memory management decreases, thus quality of code decreases.
just my 2c.
Re:Up a dime is quite a bit. (Score:2)
The article said 64 MB chip; I am sure they meant a 64 Mb chip, of which it takes 8 to make a 64 MB DIMM.
Re:High demand fueled by these rumors (Score:1)
Re:Somewhere, deep in a bunker of M$ Hate (Score:1)
This may or may not come as a surprise, but not everyone is the same. We've all different interests and needs, and Windows certainly does fill a need (perhaps several) for people. And though it may not suit your needs, and you may disagree with the practices of its manufacturer, it's still a product that people use for work, education, entertainment, and several other meaningful human activities.
It seems that having prices go up for RAM, enough so that Windows users can't afford a computer, can only hurt average people. People that want a computer for their child to do homework, people that want a computer for entertainment, and people that own small businesses that want a computer to help them keep track of finances, or for their employees to work on. In short, people that can benefit from the "standard" that Windows offers them.
I find it a bit cruel to wish a small business owner, educator, or parent ill, simply because they'd use what worked for them.
But I imagine you were only joking, so perhaps this post is a bit irrelevant. I apologize for wasting your time, if it was.
Re:Only up by 1 dime / 64 MB (Score:1)
Profit mongers are everywhere. (Score:1)
Re:OT: .10 really *is* a lot of money... (Score:2)
Give me a break. Gas prices are DOUBLE what they were a year ago, and it hurst, not only at the pump, but when the home heating bill comes in, too, or when you see that fuel surcharge on the electric bill.
how would we afford our Ford Expeditions and GM Yukons
I have no sympathy for land yacht owners, of which I am not one.
A few coments on this one... (Score:2)
Anyway, I think this story is patent bullshit. RAM prices do not increase over time, except for brief spikes. In general, given a time T, at T+6 months, RAM will cost less. Maybe not always, but pretty often.
Every time there's a glut, even a brief one, more people decide to play. There are plenty of companies that can make chips; if prices start getting high, more of them come in.
Might RAM prices go up for a little while? Sure. I don't expect them to stay up, and I don't think people should worry much. They're still going to be cheap compared to a while back...
Not according to the CNET article (Score:1)
MB=MEGABYTE
Mb=MEGABIT
CNET quoted it as $6 for 64 MEGABYTE chip. If you have a qualm with it, don't bitch at some slashdot user, tell CNET to correct their article.
Linux doesn't require much RAM to run (Score:1)
Since
Re:Yelling "fire" in a crowded theater. (Score:1)
It's a bit like seeing someone in a crowded room cough, and start yelling "That man has an air-born infectious disease!"
Perhaps the biggest difference, though, is Slashdot isn't going to get trampled by a horde of people running for the exit. =)
Re:$0.10 more a stick? Try $0.10 more a chip. (Score:2)
Re:Wow do you need to learn how to shop! (Score:2)
Pricewatch may be a decent price searching site, but you should never trust the lowest price (or any price within the first page, for that matter). Oddly enough, all of those really low prices come from Back-Of-The-Truck Enterprises, Inc., based in scenic Crown Heights, NY.
Decent RAM might not be $126/64MB, but don't believe every price you see.
Re:Not according to the CNET article (Score:1)
Re:Correction (Score:1)
High demand fueled by these rumors (Score:5)
Somebody at C|Net must want their memory stock to improve in value.
Re:OT: .10 really *is* a lot of money... (Score:1)
Today's investment tip (Score:2)
Re:I Just Don't Believe It (Score:2)
costs, so overcapacity is very expensive. I would have thought that
memory prices were pretty elastic though: most peoples approach to
buying computers seems to be `memory's so cheap so I may as well have
a 128MB machine, even though I don't really need it'. People will
just buy the 64MB machines and wait 'til they need it to buy the
upgrade.
Oh my god! (Score:5)
Re:Nothing makes prices skyrocket like panic buyin (Score:1)
CNet did not 'buy' any story about skyrocketting prices or panic buying. The words panic and skyrocket do not occur in the referenced story; those were inferred here on /. CNet's story simply says Micron is, "expected to boost memory prices," which is pretty calm language, I think.
Here's a critical thinking exercise for you; who is the intended audience of CNet's story? It isn't, "the hobbyist market," nor, "the big OEMs," as you seem to believe. A hint from the article:
"Demand has been pretty good all spring, and we expect business to pick up for them in the summer," said Josephthal & Co. analyst Larry Borgman, who rates the stock a "buy."
If you produce a commodity product like DRAM, a 10 cent price increase on a $6 product is a big deal to your profitability, and that matters greatly to the investing public.
phew! (Score:2)
i knew it would come in handy sooner or later.
What a supprise. (Score:1)
Only up by 1 dime / 64 MB (Score:3)
Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't a dime only a few cents? So this isn't like the doubling in price which happened last September.
Just like Gasoline (Score:1)
Re:High demand fueled by these rumors (Score:1)
.10? (Score:1)
Re:OT: .10 really *is* a lot of money... (Score:1)
I'm paying about $1.40 per gallon.
Or maybe where you live gas was like $.70 last year? Cool!
Re:Nothing makes prices skyrocket like panic buyin (Score:1)
As for the effect of a 10cent increase it will increase revenues 1.7% -- hardly anything to write home about. Of course, costs will probably have a negligible increase, so the effect on profits will be multiplied.
But even so, I doubt this will have any lasting effect on Micron stock. But it's good for a kick up on Tuesday. To the dubious extent that these things are subject to any quantative evaluation, sales growth seems to be the key metric. And this hardly counts.
Re:Only up by 1 dime / 64 MB (Score:1)
- Oliver
"exp(i*Pi)+1=0" - Euler
Relax, don't do it, when you wanna go to it (Score:2)
From the article:
Contract prices for the standard 64-MB chip, now at $6, will rise about a dime, Thomas Weisel Partners analyst Eric Ross said. Micron's inventory has been halved to two to three weeks worth from six to seven weeks in March, he said.
This is hardly a panic in the market and will only serve as a window to other lower cost fabs to grab some share from Micron.
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And this is news? (Score:1)
I heard about the rise in RAM prices months ago. And, it's only a few percent increase, not "skyrocketing".
Think yourselves lucky ..... (Score:1)
[disclaimer: just ignore this, it's my first post and I had to get it out of my system]
Up a dime is quite a bit. (Score:1)
If the contract price for a stick of 64M PC100 SDRAM is $6, and at any local retail we pay around $1 per meg for this ram ($64).
If this logic is correct... then we are paying a 1066% mark up.
If the contract cost goes up, then the cost for retail stores will go up. Retail stores will increase prices to maintain the same profit on each unit...
-S
Scott Ruttencutter
The Yo-yo of memory prices.... (Score:1)
Re:Only up by 1 dime / 64 MB (Score:2)
I can see how this would make for a lot of diffrent futures symbols, but not that it is an impossable obsticle. Of corse I would pay a diffrent ammount for PC133 64MBit 7-1-1-1 Jan2001 options then i would for DDR PC200 128Mbit 12-1-1-1 Jan2001 options. And of corse I probbably wouldn't pay much at all for any 2004 options as I think we'll be off to a new technology. but I think the diffrences are easally quantifyed, and most of the boilerplate (delevered to X, loose parts/finished sticks, acceptable defect rate, transaction rules) can remian the same. After all a share of WCOM now is vastly diffrent from a share of WCOM four years ago, yet it is traded on CBOE. A share of UUNT is no longer available, but it was once traded on the CBOE. There is a chance that AWE shares will be swollowd back into T shares, yet they trade on the CBOE.
I'm with you on the other oddamints. I hadn't thought of them. Well with the possable execption of large consumers. I would think this would help them even more. Then again it would also help the small consumers a whole lot, which the large ones might not like. I think most of all that like wheat futures, DRAM futures would help DRAM producers.
Re:what the hell? (Score:1)
Re:Only up by 1 dime / 64 MB (Score:2)
Yep, next weeks price increse is only ten cents a 1.6% price hike.
The article seems to think the demand will continue (or rise), and that Micron has additonal idle production capacity, but pretty much nobody else does (they could switch back to DRAM from FLASH, if DRAM becomes more profitable then FLASH again, incresing hte price of FLASH of corse).
If it is right then we are in for more price hikes. How many or how much is, of corse, pretyt much unknown. If anyone could tell for sure they could make a huge amount of money from buying and selling futures on RAM. Hmmm, I can't find DRAM futures at CBOE [cboe.com] (which has other futures and options), anyone know where they might be?
In other words this is the begining. Possably the begining of nothing. Possably the begining of a huge increse. Probbably merely something in between.
In Early 1995 (Score:1)
Re:I Just Don't Believe It (Score:1)
ps. Does having an econ degree make one an economist?
pps. When you refered to "demand should increase", what you really meant was "quantity demanded should increase"- the demand curve presumably doesn't shift with supply curve shifts.
Amdahl's 2nd Law predicts large memory demand (Score:1)
Traditionally memory manufacturers have keep
a little ahead of the curev- a new 4x generation every three years. But still demand will be insatiable.
How does the price go from $6 to nearly $100? (Score:1)
Re:what the hell? (Score:1)
Re:Not again (Score:1)
Re:Only up by 1 dime / 64 MB (Score:1)
Slashdot Mad Libs (Score:1)
still waiting for DDR (Score:1)
I remember buying a lot of EDO dram one day, only to find it essentially useless in newer sytems where you wanted decent performance.
With a significant increase in speed the coming soon, my money is staying in the bank for now.
------------------------------------------------ Rambus is an evil intel plot! DDR SDRAM anyday now! For a fascinating story on intel and rambus, read http://www.32bitsonline.com/article.php3?file=issu es/200004/rambusb&page=1
Yeah! Buy your ram now! (Score:2)
Or you could be patient and wait things out.
Re:EDO (Score:1)
$0.10 more a stick? Try $0.10 more a chip. (Score:4)
So, if there's a price hike from $6 to $6.10, the cost of the 256MB module is now $97.60. Up $1.60. Not too big of a deal until you consider markups, profit margins, and hype-stories like the one on c|net. If people see that story, they're bound to believe it, and rest assured, the good resellers are going to be reading articles that concern them (like this one).
And, of course, you need to add to the price of the RAM chips assembly of the actual DIMM, the circuit board that the chips are put on, testing of the board, distribution, further markups in retail, and so on. All together, that maks a 256MB module about $200-$270, depending where you buy.
May I suggest the RAM price index: (Score:4)
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
Re:DEC Alpha RAM (Score:2)
Moore's Law? (Score:2)
Does anyone know why the fabs for the higher density modules (i.e. 256 and 512 Mb) are taking so long to come online? I can get 256 MB modules at a price premium, but they seem to be taking their time getting to market. I have yet to see a consumer box ship with a single 256 MB chip, as opposed to two 128's which I see all the time.
Doesn't Moore's Law apply to memory fabrication as well as processor fabs? When the graphics chipset makers like nVidia are able to cut the product cycles time to 6-12 months, instead of 12-18, as Moore predicted so famously, why is there such a holdup in the memory market? Is it because memory isn't quite as glamorous and, dare I say, sexy as graphics or CPUs?
Anyway, what would be ideal would be to see a few high density fabs come online and start pushing out the 256 and 512 MB modules. Otherwise, we're going to keep getting whiplash trying to track the prices of 128 MB SDRAM.
Why this hasn't happened (Taiwan earthquake? Poor market analysis?) yet is beyond me.
Uh - "skyrocket" you say? (Score:2)
Ok, I don't know anything about the downstream effects this is going to have, and it does sound like the start of something bigger that will eventually result in much higher prices, but it is definitely yet another of the horde of indicators showing that
Re:Only up by 1 dime / 64 MB (Score:2)
Contract = a contract (I would guess, probably, to buy RAM, though goats may or may not be involved)
Price = the actually monetary payment in exchange for the RAM (in the modern world, we use "money" to trade for goods and services, such as RAM).
So, if a big company (like say Dell), buys a huge block of RAM from a memory company (like say Micron) then they will have a contract and thus pay the "contract price" for said large quantity of RAM.
</condescending tone>
Who loses? (Score:4)
Your standard 64MB Chip costs $6.00 from Micron. That price is going up about 10 cents. The consumer purchases a 64MB chip for about $126.00. (Based on Simple 64MB EDO 168-pin DIMM)
Now, $6.00 goes into $126.00 21 times. Take $.10 and multiply it by 21, and you get $2.10.
So in a worst-case scenario (being the company charges you DOUBLE the increase in price) the price of a 64MB DIMM from Simple Technology goes from $126.00 to $130.20. I'd hardly call that skyrocketing. Even if you pay QUADRUPLE the price increase, it's still under $10 more.
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
Stacker didn't slow your machine down (Score:2)
Well, not if it was a typical 386SX or better. The time it took to do the decompression was typically less than the time it saved by not having to read as much from the disk. This was true for hard disks, but particularly true for floppies. I only stopped using the floppy "stacker anywhere" compression when I switched to Linux.
BTW I have known of memory compression being used to get round physical limits. E.g. ymight want to keep more than 2G of data in memory w/o swapping, on a system that supports only 2G physical memory.
Emmetts definition of 'Skyrocket' (Score:2)
Later, that same afternoon, while cruising in his AMC pacer with Britney pounding through the sub woofers, our beloved Emmett rolled through the drive through for a super size number 6 with an extra order of fries and noticed that the price had gone up from 6 to 6.10, Emmett was heard to say, "These prices are Skyrocketing!"
___
Obligatory prediction poll (Score:3)
What is the most likely Slashdot article to appear next?
Nothing makes prices skyrocket like panic buying (Score:5)
C'mon
They've also got lots of chips in inventories to meet sales. A plant fire when demand is tight is one thing, but a planned shutdown when demand is slack is quite another.
But starting a buying panic is very much in their interest. CNet bought the story, hook-line&sinker. Now you. Fortunately, the hobbyist market is fairly small, and I doubt can move prices. The big OEMs (Dell, Compaq, HP, IBM) are smarter than to fall for this.
RAM compression? (Score:3)
When software was just beginning to get bloated (I remember being shocked that CorelDraw required a massive 20Mbyte), it became expensive to get a large enough hard disk (80Mbyte or so). Disk prices, at least at first, didn't drop enough for consumers to keep up with the increased demand for disk space. This led to a brief period of disk compression programs such as Stacker, which slowed down your machine a little but let you fit about 60% more stuff on your disk (typically). Eventually {Double,Drive}Space was included as a standard feature of MS-DOS (and then Win95). But now that disks are so cheap, I doubt if anyone bothers with it on a new system.
Similarly, a couple of years later, starting just before the launch of Win95, it started getting expensive to fit a system with the amount of RAM needed to run modern bloated applications. Products such as RAM Doubler appeared for the PC and Mac. (The PC version of one such program turned out to be a total fraud - it didn't compress things at all - but the others did actually do something.) In common with the disk compressors, the 'Double' in the name is misleading; you don't get anywhere near the same performance as a system with twice the RAM.
The way these RAM compressors (or at least Quarterdeck's offering) work is to set aside an area of memory, say 25% of physical RAM, for compressed pages. When the remaining memory gets full, pages are compressed and stored in the buffer instead of being paged to disk. When the buffer gets full you do have to go to disk, but you can write compressed pages and several of them at once, so disk activity is less. Compressing the pages takes CPU time, but most PCs have fast CPU relative to disk speed so the speed burden isn't too great.
Having said that, I didn't notice any wonderful speedup from Quarterdeck's RAM booster (can't remember the name) on a 16Mbyte machine, and it made Windows less stable. But done right, it might work.
Could you do something similar for Linux? One tactic might be to create a RAM disk with some of your memory, and use something like the crusty old DoUbLe (or however it's spelt) code to make it a 'compressed partition'. Then get Linux to swap to that before going to disk.
However you wouldn't get the benefit of pages being compressed when they go to disk, nor of compressed pages being simply moved from the RAM-swap to the swap partition. AFAIK you can tell Linux to use one swap device in preference to another, but you can't ask for a tiered swap scheme where pages from one device spill onto the next. (Please correct me if I am wrong.)
Another problem is that with DoUbLe, the size of the device varies according to how well things have compressed so far, and swapping requires a fixed-size device. So none of this would probably work at all.
But there are plenty of ultra-fast compression algorithms out there (LZO is fast and GPLed) which you might stick in the kernel. Then get the kernel to compress pages and dump them in a big pile somewhere, and to swap them out only when there is no alternative (or when the system is idle).
I have no idea whether such a scheme would make a significant difference; I'd guess that many of the most bloated programs do have highly compressible data areas though. If it did work, then Linux would be able to survive a memory shortage better than other OSes. It might also help ultra-cheapskate manufacturers making thin clients or mobile devices.
Does any of that make sense?
Re:Obligatory prediction poll (Score:4)
9. carefully constructed parody of slashdot appears and gets moderated up, ostensibly making fun of slashdot but clearly mired in it, simultaneously complaining about yet adding to the noise.
slashdot would be better if we ditched all the emotion. Emotion is stuff that does not matter.
Re:Why?? (Score:2)
That said, I have one reason to use over 128 megs of ram -AfterEffects. I use AfterEffects daily, and it uses a 'ram preview' function that stores as much of your video comp in a ram buffer as possible, then lets you view it playing back smoothly with sound - This is such an important tool to me at work, my G3 there has 768 megs. (this also lets me be lazy about running multiple apps at the same time).
-
Question (Score:2)
I think it's the former, but I'm not sure.
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Re:Only up by 1 dime / 64 MB (Score:2)
I know that open futures and options markets in DRAM have been contemplated on several occasions, but I don't believe there are any "real" ones, yet. Part of the reason is technological; a troy ounce of gold is, was, and forever shall be the same thing; same goes for a bushel of wheat or most other commodities. But memory technology is changing very fast; a 1 meg SIMM might have looked like a really good benchmark at one time, but certainly not now. In that sense, RAM is a very strange commodity, and an exceedingly risky one; RAMBUS memory futures, anyone?
Other oddities include the facts that RAM markets have a relatively large proportion of foreign corporatoins involved, and that they have proven to be really easily manipulated in the past.
But one of the biggest factors behind a lack of RAM-based securities might be the simple point that large consumers of RAM, unlike large consumers in many other industries, can and do make huge contracts directly with producers (which can be themselves!), and this might reduce the need for then to do hedging in the markets.
Re:High demand fueled by these rumors (Score:4)
Re:Why?? (Score:2)
On a related note, whose fucking bright idea was it to put only 3 RAM slots in my damn motherboard instead of 4 like it should? I would *love* to put some of the RAM from my ALpha into my P2 and actually put it to use.
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