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Tom’s Hardware
Tom’s Hardware
Technology
Jowi Morales

Scientist says RAM pricing has risen to normalized 2007 levels, AI shortage undid 20 years of progress in a matter of months — memory prices had been falling exponentially for decades

Crucial DDR5 Pro memory.

Software performance expert, scientist, and GitHub developer Daniel Lemire compared historical computer memory prices and showed that decades of falling prices were undone in just a matter of months because of the massive demand for HBM. According to his X post, this event is a historical anomaly, and he cannot think of an instance where technology hardware prices reverted to levels from decades before.

“RAM on a per unit basis is about as expensive as it was in 2007,” Lemire said. He also added, “I do not think anyone can predict what will happen, but I am guessing that we either find a way to build AI systems without so much memory, or we find really clever ways to make much more memory much faster.”

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