The Memory Guy

A possible answer as to why this is happening. https://thememoryguy.com/some-clarity-on-2025s-ddr4-price-surge/

The layers largely aren't different. The end result is a vertical string of (theoretically identical) NAND memory cells filling the holes that were etched through the stack, with contacts at the top and bottom. At the edge of the stack, at the end of the fabrication process, they etch a staircase to expose one contact with each layer. See https://thememoryguy.com/3d-nand-how-do-you-access-the-control-gates/

What's interesting is that these devices don't need 321+ litho steps; the vertical layers are all defined with deposition. Lithography step count isn't layer dependent it seems. https://youtu.be/ANHzVOiUwGI https://thememoryguy.com/3d-nands-impact-on-the-equipment-market/

As another example, NAND is manufactured on 40nm and for the foreseeable future it'll be. https://thememoryguy.com/why-3d-nand-is-stuck-at-40nm/

> The only way to make CPUs viable again is by colocating them with DRAM and eliminating the memory bus. Wasn't this an idea that Micron was working on about 10 years ago? Yeah, here it is, the Automata: https://thememoryguy.com/micron-announces-processor-in-memory/ Wonder whatever happened to that?

DRAM hit a scaling wall about a decade ago. Capacity per dollar has not been improving significantly, certainly not at the exponential rate it had been for the prior 50 years or so. https://thememoryguy.com/dram-prices-hit-historic-low/ As to why, search for words like "dram scaling challenge". I'm no expert but I believe capacitor (lack of) scaling is the biggest problem. While transistors and interconnections continued shrinking, capacitors suitable for use in DRAM circuits ran out of steam around 2xnm.

I said cost not price. You manage to pick the highest margin product with the biggest variation of pricing inside a commodity market to compare using two data point within a short period. https://thememoryguy.com/dram-prices-hit-historic-low/

That chart is from https://thememoryguy.com/dram-prices-hit-historic-low/ and has some good commentary and other time scales.

Everyone knows that DRAM prices have been in a collapse since early this year, but last week DRAM prices hit a historic low point on the spot market. Based on data the Memory Guy collected from spot-price source InSpectrum, the lowest spot price per gigabyte for branded DRAM reached $2.59 last week. https://thememoryguy.com/dram-prices-hit-historic-low/ You've selected out the low points on the graph: 2012, 2016, and 2019, most of the time DRAM has not been available at these prices. Now is definitely the time to load up on RAM.

Also, DRAM hasn't gotten that much cheaper in 10 years. In 2008 you could already get reasonably priced commodity x86 servers with 128 GB RAM, so for most DB applications you could keep all your working set cached and only worry about writes on your storage layer. https://blogs-images.forbes.com/jimhandy/files/2011/12/DRAM-GB-Price.j… http://thememoryguy.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/2016-05-06-Blog-Pic… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Dell_PowerEdge_Servers#Generatio…

Not that it's likely to matter for these systems but there has been some recent work on using ECC to recover from errors caused by refreshing less often. This would use less power so I suspect we'll see someone try it in phones or laptops soon. http://thememoryguy.com/using-ecc-to-reduce-power/

V-nand is probably not a solution to scaling flash , according to memory experts : http://thememoryguy.com/comparing-samsung-v-nand-to-micron-16nm-planar…

"OMEC" (Organization of Memory Exporting Countries) NAND production quotas lowered by ~10%? https://x.com/jukanlosreve/status/1988505115339436423 Samsung Electronics has lowered its target for NAND wafer output this year to around 4.72 million sheets, about 7% down from the previous year's 5.07 million. Kioxia also adjusted its output from 4.80 million last year to 4.69 million this year.. SK hynix and Micron are likewise keeping output conservatively constrained in a bid to benefit from higher prices. SK hynix's NAND output fell about 10%, from 2.01 million sheets last year to around 1.80 million this year. Micron's situation is similar: it is maintaining production at Fab 7 in Singapore—its largest NAND production base—in the low 300,000-sheet range, keeping a conservative supply posture. China's YMTC and CXMT are increasing production capacity, but their product mix depends on non-market inputs, https://thememoryguy.com/some-clarity-on-2025s-ddr4-price-surge The Chinese government directed CXMT to convert production from DDR4 to DDR5 as soon as the company was able. The order was said to have been given in the 4th quarter of 2024, and the price transition changed from a decrease to an increase in the middle of March 2025.. A wholesale conversion from DDR4 to DDR5 would probably be very expensive to perform, and would thus be unusual for a company that was focused on profitability. As a government-owned company, CXMT does not need to consistently turn a profit,…

Adjusted for inflation, the last time prices (/GB) were this high was May 2011; the tail end of the 2009/2010 shortage. Aside from a brief glut in 2008, it wasn't really cheaper before (than it is now) though. Of course RAM is much faster these days, but also in 2011 most people had no more than 4 GB of system memory and 512 MB VRAM. https://web.archive.org/web/20240805053759/https://jcmit.net/memorypri… https://thememoryguy.com/dram-prices-hit-historic-low/ Inflation applied manually; https://www.bls.gov/cpi/ https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/983036-latest-steam-hardware-softwa… Steam hardware survey GPU history: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHTdnIviZTE