Valve: “May we buy some RAM, good sir?”
RAM Companies: “Sure. How much you willing to pay?”
Valve: “$30?”
RAM Companies: laugh “Get the fuck outta here, loser!”
Keep in mind, many of these same DRAM makers were once caught up in one of the largest illegal business cartels ever discovered by the U.S. government over 25 years ago. Just a fun fact to store in your brain.
😡
None of the fines for these things are enough. It should be, like, the company is nationalized. The leadership is sentenced to years of community service and barred from working in the industry for life.
Oh wow, reading the wiki you linked, looks like that one exec really learned their lesson \s
On 5 April 2006, Sun Woo Lee, Senior Manager of DRAM at Samsung Electronics, entered into a plea bargain with the US Government for his involvement in the price fixing conspiracy.[5] Following the plea agreement he was sentenced to 8 months in prison and fined US$250,000.[6] Lee was subsequently promoted to President of Samsung Germany in 2009, and then President of Samsung Europe in 2014
edit/update: Oh, wow so Sun Woo Lee actually really lucked out as Korea focused more on making an example of the Samsung heir apparent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Jae-yong
8 months in prison sucks, I totally concede that. Yet literally the deal they made looks like they were asked “Would you take the fall and go to prison for 8 months and then get paid millions per year afterward?”
Going to jail as a poor person means you lose your job
Going to jail as a rich person apparently gets you a promotion
Interesting
That means that he managed to keep the fine small enough that Samsung made significantly more money off the price fixing than they ever lost from the fine. Hasn’t changed
https://www.axios.com/google-facebook-fines-profits--134d3567-1052-4d9d-aa70-dc7c25ed4ebf.html
Cost of doing business really
“They gave their freedom for this company!” - Some corrupt executive somewhere
Doesn’t the mob and other syndicates do something like that as well? Gotta do some time and not snitch to move up in the ranks.
It’s related to the AI bubble. The AI companies are trying to make it as difficult as possible to get a good PC, because they know they’re cooked if the general public has access to systems that can run AI models locally, so they’re buying everything up as fast as they can in the name of data centers that will never be built.
As soon as the first one fails, it’s all over. Prices will tumble and memory makers will come crawling back to Valve (and other hardware makers) begging them to buy.
Yep. Just like how nobody uses Windows since Linux is easily accessible.
Wait
What are you talking about?
Having an option vs not having an option
Also Linux and Windows are pretty different in use cases and capabilities. Meanwhile, local AI models have a very similar user experience. If hardware was cheaper and people could run better LLMs locally, they wouldn’t pay monthly for it.
Let’s not forget that almost all memory is made by a cartel of 3 companies known for price fixing. They’re all being as slow as possible about increasing production capacity.
Is that not for good reason though? Only for them really, but if they did ramp up production and then the bubble pops… I wish they would ramp up production, it’s just easy to understand why they won’t.
If there is a demand for ram, which there is in the consumer market, then it shouldn’t be a risk. If DCs get cancelled, then they should have contracts in place for at least a minimum buy, which should offset cost risk. If they don’t have that, then that’s just shitty business. Even still, they can just as easily slow down production if needed. If the bubble pops, either they’ll have inventory that the world will buy and they can throttle back prod, or they don’t have inventory and they will have to throttle prod anyway since demand for DCs as a whole has to be more than just the consumer market.
Idk, it’s probably just the cynic in me, but I think it’s likely this is just manipulation of the prices, especially given the history of these companies doing just that.
So maybe try to remember that after the AI bubble burst, and there is more RAM than customers, and it’s the customer that sets the price.
I’m starting to think more and more that the only way to pop the bubble is the Luigi Style.
This is crazy… But it’s true.
RE: Memory Procurement Quote
Did I stutter?
RAM Don (he/him)
Memory Racket LLC
