Comment by Yokolos

Even if AI stuff does really need DDR5, there must be lots of other applications that would ideally use DDR5 but can make do with DDR3/4 if there's a big difference in price

Congrats on engaging with the facetious part of my comment, but I think the question still stands: do you think the current level of AI-driven data center demand will continue indefinitely?

I feel like the question of how many computers are needed to steer a bunch of self-driving taxis probably has an answer, and I bet it's not anything even remotely close to what would justify a decade's worth of maximum investment in silicon for AI data centers, which is what we were talking about.

AI is needed to restart feudalism?

Conceptually, you can think of it as "RAID for memory".

A consumer DDR5 module has two 32-bit-wide buses, which are both for example implemented using 4 chips which each handle 8 bits operating in parallel - just like RAID 0.

An enterprise DDR5 module has a 40-bit-wide bus implemented using 5 chips. The memory controller uses those 8 additional bits to store the parity calculated over the 32 regular bits - so just like RAID 4 (or RAID 5, I haven't dug into the details too deeply). The whole magic happens inside the controller, the DRAM chip itself isn't even aware of it.

Given the way the industry works (some companies do DRAM chip production, it is sold as a commodity, and others buy a bunch of chips to turn them into RAM modules) the factory producing the chips does not even know if the chips they have just produced will be turned into ECC or non-ECC. The prices rise and fall as one because it is functionally a single market.

At the silicon level, it is the same.

Each memory DIMM/stick is made up of multiple DRAM chip. ECC DIMMs have an extra chip for storing the error correcting parity data.

The bottleneck is with the chips and not the DIMMs. Chip fabs are expensive and time consuming, while making PCBs and placing components down onto them is much easier to get into.

Does it matter that AI hardware has such a shorter shelf life/faster upgrade cycle? Meaning we may see the ram chips resold/thrown back into the used market quicker than before?

Is there still a difference? I have DDR5 registered ECC in my computer.

It seems more likely that someone else comes in and either colludes with the people who are screwing us to get a piece of the action or gets bought out by one of the big companies who started all this. Since the rare times companies get caught they only get weak slaps on the wrist where they only pay a fraction of what they made in profits (basically just the US demanding their cut) I don't have much faith things will improve any time soon.

Even China has no reason to reduce prices much for memory sold to the US when they know we have no choice but to buy at the prices already set by the cartel. I expect that if China does start making memory they'll sell it cheap within China and export it at much higher prices. Maybe we'll get a black market for cheap DRAM smuggled out of China though.

I thought that, too, but then the Nexperia shitstorm hit, and it was as if the industry had learned nothing at all from the COVID shortages.