CNBC Says DRAM Prices Have Tripled in Past Few Months

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But they did not say why. Have manufacturers limited their production or are DRAM users showing their lack of confidence in DRAM makers to supply product in 2000?

Something else that has tripled in the past few months? My generic blood pressure medicine. After dropping in price consistently for 8 or 9 years, the generic form of Maxide (diuretic) suddenly costs more than the name-brand equivalent cost before the patent expired.

Finally, I spoke with Edward Kelley yesterday. He is a Federal Reserve Governor. Nothing earth shattering to report, except there is one trait I noticed. His main response to one of my issues was that it was old data (and he was correct) but he misrepresented the age of the data. Now I think the misrepresentation was just an innocent slip of the tongue and I really don't attribute any significance to it. What I do think could be significant is that in posting to this forum (under my regular pseudonym) whenever I post a particularly "scary" piece of information, it is often quickly responded to by a polly who proclaims "old news" or "nothing new there" etc.

As we've pondered many times, that fact that pollies are so neurotically attentive to this forum points either to their paid representation or their pathological mental state, and frankly, to me the pollies don't seem crazy. They seem goal oriented. And Governor Kelly's assertions sounded strangely like the pollies on the forum. (No, I'm not asserting that Kelly is Y2K Pro!)

There is little doubt in my mind at this point that this forum is the subject of some fairly intense professional intervention. I cannot write-off the pollies as a cadre of deranged individuals. That's giving them the benefit of a doubt with no evidence. I think it is proper to assume that their activities are purposeful unless there is proof to the contrary. They are here for a reason. I think some of them have been trained to sing the same tune that the Fed is singing.

-- Forum Regular (spam@spam.spam), September 03, 1999

Answers

Remember the power outage in Taiwan a couple months ago...?? Well, some of the factories that shut down where the main producers of memory chips. Other plants picked up the slack but we are still have a sortof shortage of memory chips.

Supply and demand... shortage... price goes up

At least thats what I read as reason for skyrocketing DRAM prices.

-- STFrancis (STFrancis@heaven.com), September 03, 1999.


Please...for a knuckle-head. What is DRAM?

-- Charon (thatplace@downbelow.com), September 03, 1999.

DRAM is dynamic RAM, what you commonly use in your PC or Mac. This is as opposed to Static RAM (SRAM) which is used in some laptops.

Prices at Data Memory Systems (www.datamem.com) are pretty much the same as 3 months ago. A little over a dollar a meg for most items.

-- (d@m.s), September 03, 1999.


Regular,

I think they have it wrong. You can still buy memory for approx. $1-$1.50 a meg at CompUSA....

-TECH32-

-- TECH32 (TECH32@NOMAIL.COM), September 03, 1999.


Oh! And for those who don't know just how CHEAP this is; in 1984 I paid $1,000 for ONE meg of RAM for my Apple IIE.

-TECH32-

-- TECH32 (TECH32@NOMAIL.COM), September 03, 1999.



DRAM - dynamic random access memory.

DRAM is the active memory of a computer system. It is "dynamic" because it requires electricity in order to hold data or information.

Historically, prices of this product has varied depending on demand and the number of companies competing for this lucrative, but narrow margin market. Recently quite a few companies have suspended production of these devices due to the narrow margins. When competition goes away, the price goes up. I work for a very large American semiconductor company and we haven't manufactured DRAM's in over ten years. They are just not profitable enough with the current cutthroat market. There are other areas of the computer that have much higher profit margins. The company I work for dabbles in those, and let the others fight over DRAM production.

cool???

gettin' a drink,

The Dog

-- Dog (Desert Dog@-sand.com), September 03, 1999.


Well, a month ago, I was paying wholesale about 58 cents a meg, and when Taiwan lost power they screwed up millions of dollars worth of chips. Also, August & September is normal stockpiling by the big boys in anticipation of the Christmas buying season, although I suspect you also have some stockpiling due to Y2K supply disruptions. Fortunately, I had a heads up on the price increases and stocked my company up. Last quote I got yesterday on PC100 chips had climed to $1.38 per meg, and they are supposed to go up again next week.

CompUsa, and companies like myself that stocked up[ahead of time and aren't pricing based on replacement cost, as opposed to actual cost, can still be fairly reasonable. Other components from Asia are also increasing in cost, largely do to computer companies that normally rely on just-in-time inventory to keep the bottom line down are hedging by building up key component reserves in case of disruptions.

Face it, Asia, South America, Africa, East Europe, and the Middle East are going to have major problems, if not outright toasted. Cheap computers are going to be hard to come by next year for a while anyway.

-- c (c@c.com), September 03, 1999.


Tech32, I'm not sure exactly what DRAM product CNBC was talking about, but they said the price had increased from a low of $4 per unit to the current price of about $11 per unit.

I thought they were talking about 64 meg. units, but I really did not hear the description. I did hear the price.

-- Regular (spam@spam.spam), September 03, 1999.


Tech32 -

You put a Meg of RAM in a IIE? I didn't know AppleDOS supported that much memory. I bet VisiCalc (and Castle Wolfenstein) kicked butt on that config! 8-}]

-- Mac (sneak@lurk.hid), September 03, 1999.


Mac,

You put a Meg of RAM in a IIE? I didn't know AppleDOS supported that much memory. I bet VisiCalc (and Castle Wolfenstein) kicked butt on that config! -}] Actually, most of went to a RAM disk for swapping (remember, back then a FIVE meg hard drive was about $600). I had a GREAT graphics program that let you type in dozens of different fonts, but with every character you typed, it did some swapping to floppy. The RAM disk really speeded things up. And yes, Visicalc did LOVE that memory... -TECH32-

-- TECH32 (TECH32@NOMAIL.COM), September 03, 1999.



There are plenty of indications that computer makers are stockpiling part from Asia in anticipation of y2k. There was an article about this recently in a major publication (NY Post?). The article indicated that Asian economies were doing better because of y2k stock piling.

-- Dave (dannco@hotmail.com), September 03, 1999.

A computer company I am intimately familiar with has a perpetual shortage of motherboards. No one there seems to know the cause.

My site: www.y2ksafeminnesota.com

-- MinnesotaSmith (y2ksafeminnesota@hotmail.com), September 04, 1999.


Jeez I was worried there, I thought whiskey had trebled in price... phew...

-- Andy (2000EOD@prodigy.net), September 05, 1999.

Minnesota...

Depends on what motherboard they use. We use almost exclusively Intel, and their primary board, the SE440BX went on allocation just a few days after the Taiwan power outage. Got lucky yesterday and was able to sbag abother hundred, but at least the price hasn't started to climb.

If they're using Taiwanese or other S.E. Asia boards, talked to a couple of my wholesalers for components that originate from there, problem is so much stockpiling going on, shipping containers are piling up, everything coming in, not much going back out. It's a bitch having to ship empty cargo containers...

Sort of an early supply-chain domino effect...

-- pcgeek (c@c.com), September 08, 1999.


Reviving to be read in connection with Taiwan quake.

-- Puddintame (achillesg@hotmail.com), September 21, 1999.


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