I thought the title missed the year (in parenthesis)
theandrewbailey · 2026-06-29 15:26:19 UTC
It's been happening once every decade or so. I'm not surprised that they are being sued again.
jauntywundrkind · 2026-06-29 17:48:26 UTC
Total fines of about half a billion. Thats not nothing but it also does not seem like a real disincentive.
Samsung is about to hand out ~$26B in bonuses. SK Hynix something similar-ish.
tyre · 2026-06-29 17:59:26 UTC
Yes, but for context Samsung is a massive chaebol. You need to compare it to the business unit in question.
It’s different to, say, Google’s vertical monopoly in advertising where that’s most of their revenue.
stymaar · 2026-06-29 19:25:01 UTC
This! Samsung is one of the world's biggest ship maker for instance.
SideQuark · 2026-06-30 00:45:59 UTC
True. From that page RAM companies have been sued and found innocent before:
“ The district court ruled in favor of Samsung, Hynix, and Micron and dismissed the lawsuit. This dismissal was affirmed on appeal by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which ruled in March 2022 that the plaintiffs did not offer sufficient plausible evidence for their allegations to make a case under the Sherman Antitrust Act and that the district court properly dismissed the lawsuit.”
0xy · 2026-06-29 13:29:29 UTC
I think it's incredibly unlikely to be deliberate price fixing this time. Demand is too high.
Cthulhu_ · 2026-06-29 13:53:10 UTC
Two things can be true; they could theoretically make agreements to limit supply, like the OPEC does to exert control over international oil prices. But the OPEC is all above board and there's plenty of international competition on the oil market.
But the challenge is in proving it.
ksec · 2026-06-29 15:19:00 UTC
It isn't like OPEC and oil where you can turn on and off bumping out from the ground.
The most expensive foundry / fab isn't the leading edge, it is the "empty" ones. You can't have a fab sitting idle.
mDyJzDPmBdG · 2026-06-29 14:19:44 UTC
There is no reason for there not to be a price fixing. But the OpenAI's announcement from 2025-10-01 about buying 40% of supply, removes any need for collusion. It was a public signal for everyone to rise prices, one that each company could figure on their own. And it will be very hard to prove otherwise.
jackb4040 · 2026-06-29 15:37:31 UTC
Prices skyrocketing create a perfect opportunity to slip in a little artificial bump and hope everyone blames the market. See also: egg prices in 2024.
russli1993 · 2026-06-29 15:47:08 UTC
if demand is too high, the market will adjust by adding supply. If Apple can't take the price of memory, why don't they make memory themselves. Oh no, the technical and manufacturing know-how is a barrier to entry and there is no talent available to make it. That is memory or semi companies' competitive advantages and their pricing power. It also takes Phd degrees to work at hardware companies. You can't have people doing leetcode for 2 months and todo apps and getting into the field and make 300k a year and hardware engineers wih Phds making 100k before this boom. It is long overdue for a rebalance of pricing power between hardware and software companies
Danox · 2026-06-29 19:50:23 UTC
Between TSMC, Intel and Apple memory can be designed, engineered and made, and that doesn’t even include the Chinese who will probably use this to take over a large part of the memory market worldwide?, the three-headed memory cartel is unsustainable, they have two to four years maximum and that’s it.
The arguments made by the Plaintiff are thoroughly convincing to me. The fact that those 8 points are not enough to convict indicate the industry is fucked. Of course the defendants didn't leave a paper trail - they've already been convicted of collusion before.
It's the people and country that suffer when our government fails to ensure markets are free and fair.
Stitch4223 · 2026-06-29 17:44:12 UTC
If there is no agreement, then the magic term is "tacit collusion."
Why not ask the same ridiculous amount of money your competitors do? People seem to be paying for it. Their fault. If suppliers have sufficiently different products, they can make some more expensive, others cheaper; on average, everybody pays more. A high barrier to entry might help such practices.
That doesn't mean I'm saying this is what is happening. Sometimes things just suck, and somebody bought the world's supply of RAM wafers to use as frisbees.
We have to decide what part is damaging to society: the actual physical agreement, or the effects of the agreement?
If it's the actual physical agreement that's the problem - the system is working as intended.
But if we are looking to prevent the negative outcomes associated with price fixing and collusion, our system is failing us.
They are never going to find proof of conspiracy. The people involved covered their tracks, and doing so is trivial. So the best we can do is punish the appearance of collusion. And if the goal is to actually prevent harm to customers, that's a better solution anyway, since it encourages leaders of companies to behave in a manner that's the opposite of collusion.
Stitch4223 · 2026-06-29 18:37:36 UTC
You'll have to create a case that harm is taking place. Harm does not mean a PlayStation 5 is now $200 more expensive or that inflation exists.
I would look at questions regarding what harm is created: Is it discriminatory? Are parts of society shutting down, and is that unreasonable? Are groups of people now unable to afford a living? Does it move the poverty line? Is that permanent? And how do you prove this is exclusively due to the price increase of tech components, and RAM specifically?
It needs to be unfuzzy in some way in order to make sense, but that's just my opinion.
I do agree prices are insane and wish for them to come down today. I liked the ubiquitous amounts of RAM any system could have. In those days, forums were also filled with how insanely expensive 32 gigabytes of RAM was, about $100 :)
AnthonyMouse · 2026-06-29 20:08:12 UTC
> You'll have to create a case that harm is taking place. Harm does not mean a PlayStation 5 is now $200 more expensive or that inflation exists.
"Things cost more because of collusion" is always a harm. It doesn't matter if the product is maize or gold-plated haute couture, competitors are supposed to compete.
The question is, what's the best way to tell the difference between tacit collusion and just normal supply and demand?
It's not that easy, but here's a decent test: It's tacit conclusion if 1) net margins have been high for e.g. 3 years and 2) no new companies have entered the market in that period of time, or were acquired by an incumbent if they did.
Notice that this works for everything. Even if you're making luxury goods, the price may be high, but so are production costs, and there is a lower volume to amortize fixed costs over, so long-term net margins should be the same as they are anywhere else or you should see new entrants. If you don't, it's reasonable to infer collusion and leave it on the companies to prove otherwise.
Stitch4223 · 2026-06-29 21:40:30 UTC
I see the logic in your reply, thanks :)
gruez · 2026-06-29 23:51:55 UTC
>1) net margins have been high for e.g. 3 years
That breaks down for industries with long investment cycles. It takes years to build a fab, so the fact that DRAM prices have been high for 1-2 years isn't too suspicious, considering they've been burned by boom and bust cycles before.
>Notice that this works for everything. Even if you're making luxury goods, the price may be high, but so are production costs, and there is a lower volume to amortize fixed costs over, so long-term net margins should be the same as they are anywhere else or you should see new entrants. If you don't, it's reasonable to infer collusion and leave it on the companies to prove otherwise.
I can't tell you don't buy luxury goods ;)
People don't pay $10k+ for a Hermes bag because they want something that carries stuff 100% (or even 1%) better than a normal bag. They're buying it for the brand image/history. That's not something that can be replicated by a new entrant with some money to splash out on R&D or even marketing.
AnthonyMouse · 2026-06-30 10:46:40 UTC
> That breaks down for industries with long investment cycles. It takes years to build a fab, so the fact that DRAM prices have been high for 1-2 years isn't too suspicious, considering they've been burned by boom and bust cycles before.
Indeed, it takes around 3 years to build a fab, which is why it's not weird to see this at 1-2 years. And meanwhile not only are the incumbents building more fabs, so are the challengers. CXMT and Nanya are both building fabs too. Because that's what's expected to happen when prices go up in the absence of collusion, you get more supply and new entrants.
> People don't pay $10k+ for a Hermes bag because they want something that carries stuff 100% (or even 1%) better than a normal bag. They're buying it for the brand image/history.
You're talking about Veblen goods in particular, not luxury goods in general. Veblen goods are bonkers, but they also don't fail the test, because then there will be plenty of other companies offering similar products at lower margins without the brand name, and then you don't have an industry you suspect of collusion over everyone having suspiciously high margins because many of them don't.
fennecbutt · 2026-06-29 20:16:49 UTC
>Harm does not mean a PlayStation 5 is now $200 more expensive or that inflation exists.
Yes it does lmao. If consumers can't get access to devices then they cannot be used for work or education. It's counterproductive.
How many "attention is all you need" papers aren't being written because as soon as there's a sniff of money the rabid suit and tie MBA fucks leap onto any opportunity like a dog in heat and fuck it to death.
windexh8er · 2026-06-30 00:06:47 UTC
They've done this in the past. Between 1998 and 2002, DRAM manufacturers conspired to fix prices and were sued by the DoJ. The companies included Samsung, Hynix, Infineon, Micron, and others. They coordinated through phone calls and meetings to set prices and limit supply and that directly caused harm to consumers [0]. Curious what we get out of the lawsuit discovery, but now we only have 4 players so hopefully it will be obvious if they're playing the same game. Price fixing seems seems like the easy button when you look at the margins per product over the last couple of years.
Gamers Nexus has done a lot of reporting on it as of late [1][2].
Not directly addressing your points, but I fail to see how this whole situation can be viewed as cartel price fixing. There is no oversupply. The strange thing is that we are at the mercy of 3 corps.
eddythompson80 · 2026-06-29 23:09:09 UTC
> The strange thing is that we are at the mercy of 3 corps.
Wait until you discover TSMC, ASML, Carl Zeiss, Intel and AMD, or even Nvidia.
AnthonyMouse · 2026-06-29 19:41:41 UTC
> Why not ask the same ridiculous amount of money your competitors do? People seem to be paying for it. Their fault.
That's not how commodity markets work. This stuff is essentially sold at auction with the price set by supply and demand. The way they would fix the price is by constraining supply so that people have to outbid each other on a smaller amount of inventory.
But that's not that hard to measure -- are they producing less than they were before prices went up? The answer is actually that they're producing more. The reason prices went up anyway is the huge increase in demand.
You would then have to make the case that it's not just that they're reducing supply but that they're not increasing it fast enough. That's theoretically possible but it's also very plausible that building new fabs just takes time, so if someone's theory is that they're colluding then they need to present some evidence.
thewebguyd · 2026-06-29 19:51:14 UTC
> but that they're not increasing it fast enough
That also isn't illegal. A business can choose to artificially restrict supply if they want, there's no mandate that they must meet demand.
It only crosses into illegal territory if multiple companies get together and secretly agree to cap production to keep prices high. Then it becomes collusion. It also becomes illegal if there's a monopoly power that is intentionally constricting supply to specifically stop a smaller competitor or lock them out of the market.
The hard part is how do you prove Samsung, SK Hynix, Micron are acting as a unified cartel when there obviously isn't going to be a paper trail for secret meetings.
AnthonyMouse · 2026-06-29 20:27:52 UTC
> A business can choose to artificially restrict supply if they want, there's no mandate that they must meet demand.
There is, however, no incentive to do this when prices are high unless you expect competitors to do likewise, since otherwise you're just handing the business to the others when they increase production. Which strongly implies that if that's what everybody is doing, they're colluding.
> The hard part is how do you prove Samsung, SK Hynix, Micron are acting as a unified cartel when there obviously isn't going to be a paper trail for secret meetings.
Which is the problem when that's what's happening, and why we should maybe change the law to infer the collusion from the outcome in cases where prices are high yet nobody is responding by increasing their market share.
brookst · 2026-06-29 20:43:19 UTC
> There is, however, no incentive to do this when prices are high unless you expect competitors to do likewise
This imagines a world where water production can be dialed up and down instantly, at no cost, with no risk.
It doesn’t work that way though. Hiring people, scaling up factories, converting to 24/7 all have costs and risks.
Just google (or Claude, or whatever) memory companies that went backrupt overbuilding to meet a spike in demand. There are many. You probably don’t even know their names. Because Micron/etc stood pat and survived.
AnthonyMouse · 2026-06-29 21:22:58 UTC
> This imagines a world where water production can be dialed up and down instantly, at no cost, with no risk.
It only images a world in which the profit-maximizing amount of wafer production is higher when demand is higher, which is a completely reasonable premise to take as the default.
> Just google (or Claude, or whatever) memory companies that went backrupt overbuilding to meet a spike in demand. There are many. You probably don’t even know their names. Because Micron/etc stood pat and survived.
Those long forgotten companies like Intel, Toshiba, Texas Instruments, IBM, etc. that are all now bankrupt and no longer exist. Except that they still do exist, they just sold their DRAM divisions to the current incumbents. Even the divisions that went bankrupt -- for Qimonda (Infineon) it was the 2008 housing crash that did them in.
Predicting events like that isn't reasonably possible. What Micron actually did to survive it was keep a large reserve of cash to survive the lean years, not refuse to build fabs. The South Korean companies did the equivalent by being subsidiares of giant conglomerates.
to11mtm · 2026-06-29 23:10:40 UTC
There's also the factor that AFAIK a cost optimal DRAM fab is a bit different than a General purpose IC fab, Again naive level of knowledge here but NAND fabs I think are the closest, but that's also in very high demand.
brookst · 2026-06-30 07:53:42 UTC
Wafer production is almost entirely fixed cost. Running a factory at 30% utilization costs about 80% of running at full capacity (source: former Intel).
> Which is the problem when that's what's happening, and why we should maybe change the law to infer the collusion from the outcome in cases where prices are high yet nobody is responding by increasing their market share.
No one has a crystal ball. Soviet planners figured that out eventually. You cannot punish people for lack of crystal ball outcome foresight.
Are we going to punish Micron for not planning a new fab 3 year ago when they had no margin and Apple was squeezing them to the bone? Do we co-indict Tim Apple?
Or wait, they were already trying to build one in Upstate NY that is stuck in NIMBY red tape. Do we co-indict Kathy Hochul?
observationist · 2026-06-29 21:49:37 UTC
I mean, if they're dumb enough to try to game the system blatantly - and there are plenty of execs that are - they're dumb enough to write down their super secret criminal collusion plans in a group text, or a lengthy email chain. That level of stupidity among white collar criminals is shockingly common.
If there's no evidence to be found, that might be a good indicator that either A.) nothing illegal occured
or
B.) the senior leadership involved are competent, intelligent, and discrete
Given the number of companies involved, all it takes is one idiot, so if it's collusion, I expect we'll see evidence. If not, number go up.
freefaler · 2026-06-30 04:17:13 UTC
It's strange how people search for cartels where the basic laws of supply and demand are at work.
It seems to me, that such a simple concept should be better understood, especially in any market economy, where most of the people has sold something online and priced it somehow.
But alas, that's not what's happening, is this because of the discourse of "if I don't like something it's because of some evil corporation tries to squeeze me"? (many examples of those, but not all markets are Apple Iphones)
brookst · 2026-06-29 20:39:39 UTC
Yeah your qualifier is important. If I have zyngots and suddenly the price goes through the roof, it is not collusion or illegal for me to raise my prices.
Tacit collusion requires at least signaling. There has to be some intent. Like in the US rental market where Realpage coordinates tacit collusion.
But if there is legitimately demand for far more memory than can be produced, it seems silly to claim collusion to raise prices.
omgwtfbyobbq · 2026-06-30 01:26:38 UTC
Does conscious parallelism require signaling?
But yeah, if there's demand a limited supply, price increases from that are legit.
laughing_man · 2026-06-29 21:29:36 UTC
Isn't it difficult to win on tacit collusion if you can't find some kind of document or email to show they were deliberately taking advantage?
xiphias2 · 2026-06-29 13:30:17 UTC
,,The plaintiffs claimed the three companies reduced D-RAM supply under the pretext of transitioning to high-bandwidth memory (HBM). "The D-RAM oligopoly companies systematically coordinated the shift to HBM and the discontinuation of DDR3 and DDR4," they said. They added that Apple's recent sweeping product price increases were the trigger for the lawsuit.''
How can they do price fixing and discontinuing a product at the same time?
It just looks like some companies are angry that AI / VC industry is outpricing them.
sysguest · 2026-06-29 14:49:28 UTC
hmm maybe the plaintiff should sue nvidia?
dcrazy · 2026-06-29 15:16:59 UTC
> An agreement to restrict production, sales, or output is just as illegal as direct price fixing, because reducing the supply of a product or service drives up its price. For example, the FTC challenged an agreement among competing oil importers to restrict the supply of lubricants by refusing to import or sell those products in Puerto Rico. The competitors were seeking to pressure the legislature to repeal an environmental deposit fee on lubricants, and warned of lubricant shortages and higher prices.
But Micron didn't restrict the output: it stopped producing DDR2-3-4 completely, so it's not profiting from DDR customers at all.
dcrazy · 2026-06-29 19:17:47 UTC
So they restricted it to zero?
Not saying I agree with the plaintiffs.
Danox · 2026-06-29 19:58:05 UTC
People have a tendency to get upset when someone waves a future IOU intent order from another buyer in front of you, one that isn’t taking delivery anytime soon and then proceeds to tell you you must pay more…
glimshe · 2026-06-29 13:32:47 UTC
Everybody in our industry loves fat margins. But god forbid if someone else captures the margins and squeeze them out of easy profits.
gruez · 2026-06-29 14:19:30 UTC
>But god forbid if someone else captures the margins and squeeze them out of easy profits.
Yeah that's how law works. Everyone likes money, but that doesn't mean it's fine to steal money. Yes, even from maligned entities like "big tech" or "private equity"
lenerdenator · 2026-06-29 14:27:56 UTC
There's "fat margins" and then there's the kind of margins that tech industry shareholders expect.
OpenAI's original corporate agreements capped its returns at 100x, which is seen as too paltry for its current holders, so they scrapped those to prepare for an IPO [0]
A fat margin is fine. What’s not fine is saying you don’t have any and you don’t plan to make any more.
Neywiny · 2026-06-29 13:34:42 UTC
HBM is also DRAM. I also think it's kind of a weak argument to say that them discontinuing ddr3 (which while in use still today in industrial/embedded was on the way out for consumers 10 years ago) and ddr4 which last had consumer CPUs for it 3 years ago is meaningful. What we need now is ddr5. Turning off the old fabs and moving those resources including people to ddr5 is a good thing. That's not price fixing. It's possible price fixing is in play, but discontinuing products people objectively don't use as much anymore isn't it.
cosmic_cheese · 2026-06-29 13:50:07 UTC
Switching off DDR3 manufacturing I can understand, but DDR4 machines are still quite relevant and usable… Ryzen 5000 series boxes for example don’t feel meaningfully weaker than they did when new. My 5950X tower certainly doesn’t, and it’d really be nice to be able to upgrade its RAM should I need to because it will continue to be useful for quite some time.
AMD just re-released their 5800X3D for AM4 board users who wish to upgrade which is further evidence that shutting off DDR4 production is premature.
zarzavat · 2026-06-29 16:30:02 UTC
They're running a business not a charity. Their job is to manufacture what the market as a whole demands. If they can make more money making HBM than DDR4 then they have to make HBM. Why would a business go out of its way to make less money?
cosmic_cheese · 2026-06-29 16:35:16 UTC
1. The AI bubble is an insane distortion and the gravy train isn’t going to last forever. Betting the farm on everlasting datacenter demand is myopic.
2. In a healthy, competitive market there would be smaller manufacturers that’d be happy to take up the big guys’ discarded business.
iwontberude · 2026-06-29 16:42:14 UTC
Deleted
dktbs · 2026-06-29 17:34:23 UTC
Not sure I understand this statement. Apple is affected by DRAM price fixing the same as any other PC manufacturer.
iwontberude · 2026-06-29 18:18:34 UTC
Ahh you are right, not sure where I got that from…
doodlesdev · 2026-06-29 18:33:54 UTC
That's incorrect. Apple purchases RAM from all of these providers to produce their unified memory. They also rely on TSMC fabs for all of the chips their memory relies on. If they haven't doubled the prices of their machines, that just goes to show how fat of a profit margin they take on everyone that buys from them...
iwontberude · 2026-06-29 18:40:23 UTC
I stand corrected, thank you!
doodlesdev · 2026-06-29 18:54:54 UTC
You're most welcome! I'll admit I did search before answering because you said Apple produced their memories so confidently LOL
I guess they would love to produce it themselves, but for the average scenario the production reserves they have with Samsung already work well enough and prevent them from having to get into such a complicated industry.
dabinat · 2026-06-29 18:36:23 UTC
Apple just increased their prices a few days ago, citing high memory costs.
iwontberude · 2026-06-29 18:41:54 UTC
I am an idiot, sorry for wasting your time with confident bullshit.
Chyzwar · 2026-06-29 18:09:40 UTC
1. But it might last for at least few more years, see Nvidia 1 trillion backlog.
2. Semiconductor manufacturing is the most complex industrial process in the world. You need billions of capex and decades of experience. Even existing semi players like intel cannot switch production to memory.
China CXMT is gaing traction in DDR market. New fabs from all players wil come online in the next two years.
fennecbutt · 2026-06-29 20:19:00 UTC
>the gravy train isn’t going to last forever.
Have you seen how the modern stock markets works lmao? It hasn't been based on reality in a long time.
Hell just look at Trump, should've run outta money from all his bad deals ages ago but the grift continues.
cosmic_cheese · 2026-06-29 20:24:23 UTC
It's true that markets have no need to be rational, but everything has an end and it's usually sooner than anybody ever expects.
mschuster91 · 2026-06-30 00:11:13 UTC
People have been saying AI is a bubble for at least a year now and, unfortunately, it still hasn't collapsed.
Neywiny · 2026-06-29 19:50:39 UTC
Not to be a bootlicker but AMD releasing a product doesn't mean another company should make more DDR4. That's not price fixing. In the embedded space it's sadly very common for a part to be compatible with a very low number of options (shout out to cellular/admux RAM on the STM32H745 nucleo). That's just the way the cookie crumbles.
thewebguyd · 2026-06-29 19:56:49 UTC
> My 5950X tower certainly doesn’t
That's what I have in my gaming tower, and yeah I feel zero pressing need to upgrade. I did manage to put 64GB of DDR4 in it just before prices went totally bonkers, thankfully. Where I'm falling behind is my GPU I'm still on an nvidia 1660 super, but I just can't justify paying what they cost right now.
I would gain pretty much nothing moving to a newer board w/ DDR5.
cosmic_cheese · 2026-06-29 20:23:26 UTC
Exactly what I'm feeling. The CPU is great for what I'm using it for and I have a killer motherboard. Have a nice GPU capable of current gen games, too. The equivalent current gen board and CPU cost a small fortune for marginal readily visible gain.
Unfortunately, I opted for only 32GB of RAM because at that point more felt like overkill, which as a decision has aged poorly. I should've gotten more while it was still cheap.
toast0 · 2026-06-29 20:27:39 UTC
DDR4 machines are relevant and usable, but it's pretty unusual that new systems on older ram are still big sellers. The 5800x3d was originally released in 2022, AM5 processors were also originally released in 2022. We'll probably see Zen6 soon, the third generation on AM5... I don't think AMD released new AM3 processors after the introduction of AM4, certainly not when Zen3 was coming soon.
When making long term plans in 2022, I don't think anyone expected DDR4 to need significant production in 2026. Since ram makers can pretty much sell whatever they make in today's marketplace, it makes sense (for those fabs that can) to stop making DDR4 and repurpose those fabs to make newer generation ram.
pdimitar · 2026-06-29 14:33:48 UTC
Dropping DDR-4 is anything but meaningful. It'll easily last 10 more years, machines from this gen are still much more affordable and quite powerful. In fact for most dev and gaming workflows the difference between the DDR-4 and DDR-5 generation of hardware is more or less negligible. I am exaggerating a bit -- but really, not too much.
Of course it might be a ploy to sheep-herd consumers and companies towards the expensive DDR-5. I would not put that below the ring of RAM producers.
gruez · 2026-06-29 14:37:04 UTC
>Dropping DDR-4 is anything but meaningful. It'll easily last 10 more years, machines from this gen are still much more affordable and quite powerful. In fact for most dev and gaming workflows the difference between the DDR-4 and DDR-5 generation of hardware is more or less negligible. I am exaggerating a bit -- but really, not too much.
How much % of the DRAM market do you think is made from computer enthusiasts upgrading their Zen 1/2 CPUs to Zen 3? Note intel and AMD both switched to DDR5 well before the exit from DDR3/DDR4 ("2024-2025", according to the complaint).
pdimitar · 2026-06-29 14:40:00 UTC
The mere "enthusiast" word in your question suggests the percent is not too big. But I am not sure I get your point -- elaborate, please?
gruez · 2026-06-29 14:54:50 UTC
The point is that just because there's a handful of people (relatively speaking) looking to buy more RAM to upgrade their last gen systems, doesn't mean there's robust demand for DRAM manufacturers to keep DDR4 manufacturing lines going. It's like arguing Sony shouldn't have exited the CRT business because there's retro enthusiasts on youtube scouring the earth for CRT monitors.
cosmic_cheese · 2026-06-29 15:10:00 UTC
I’m not sure that comparison makes much sense. By the time CRTs were phased out, demand was down to almost nothing and what little existed was confined to the extreme budget market. While I don’t have industry insights or anything I don’t think demand for DDR4 is anywhere near the bottom yet, and the remaining demand is centered on premium product (nobody running cheap DDR4 is upgrading). In a more normal market would be more than enough to justify continued production for several more years.
DDR4 production is likely still quite profitable, just not drowning-in-money AI-bubble profitable. If smaller foundries existed they’d be happy to take up the business.
Maybe really what needs to happen is some busting up of the giants…
ksec · 2026-06-29 15:15:53 UTC
There is a minimum amount of production volume for it to fit the price equation. If the market doesn't have that demand, it is fundamentally no different to CRT.
Otherwise they could continue to make DDR4 at a higher cost and sold at a higher price to which people will complain price fixing again.
pdimitar · 2026-06-29 17:07:25 UTC
For the reasons stated above -- that DDR5-gen hardware is expensive right now -- I'd think the DDR4-gen market will remain alive for quite a big longer. Though that's likely much more on the second-hand market side of things.
While I wouldn't necessarily agree with "a handful of people", the fact is that neither of us can prove their lean -- so no point pursuing that argument thread.
So you might be right that it's a pure numbers/statistics decision. Or I might be right that they want to herd people into the more expensive hardware while forcing them to do so by phasing out production of the cheaper hardware.
No way to truly know IMO. We are exchanging hypotheses.
cosmic_cheese · 2026-06-29 14:50:21 UTC
Note though that for Intel, the first gen of DDR5 CPUs also supported DDR4, and many buyers bought the DDR4 versions of their boards because at that point DDR5 RAM was much more expensive for gains that were marginal at best, which effectively makes Intel’s following generation of DDR5 CPUs the actual transition point.
bogwog · 2026-06-29 15:57:59 UTC
It's easy to see why your argument is wrong with a simple hypothetical: what if they were still making DDR4 today? Would people still buy it?
The answer is an obvious "fuck yeah", even if you ignore the DDR5 price gouging. People will buy it because people still have DDR4 hardware, and that hardware is still extremely relevant.
So if there's a market for it, but none of the suppliers are trying to sell to it... Wtf is happening? Basic capitalism logic says any rational supplier would sell DDR4 for easy profits, meeting an unmet demand. That it isn't happen points to some kind of collusion, IMO.
dcrazy · 2026-06-29 16:05:51 UTC
> People will buy it because people still have DDR4 hardware
The question is whether there’s enough meaningful demand for aftermarket DDR4 upgrades to make it worthwhile to a manufacturer to keep producing DDR4 instead of switching to HBM and DDR5.
Micron claimed retail is a rounding error, a market not worth serving. So you’d presumably need to find industrial buyers who would be willing to buy DDR4.
revolvingthrow · 2026-06-29 16:12:17 UTC
Because the market pays less for DDR4 than for HBM (or DDR5), and since HBM is heavily modified, vertically stacked DRAM, it competes for the same raw inputs and fab space than DDR4 used.
If I can produce DDR4 for modest profit or HBM for a lot more profit I will obviously produce HBM. And given physical realities producing HBM takes from existing DDR4 production capacity. Worse still, it takes roughly 3GB of ram to produce 1GB of hbm iirc.
microgpt · 2026-06-29 16:22:04 UTC
Basic capitalism logic is that if you think it's stupid, you put your money where your mouth is, set up a DRAM fab, and get rich.
cassianoleal · 2026-06-29 18:23:49 UTC
I'll do it. Will you give me the seed money?
microgpt · 2026-06-29 18:36:07 UTC
No, basic capitalism logic is that you already have enough money because barriers to competition are low.
cassianoleal · 2026-06-29 19:20:10 UTC
lol :D
15155 · 2026-06-29 18:38:13 UTC
> objectively don't use as much anymore
Consumers use these every single day in embedded devices without knowing it.
I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest if the embedded DDR3/DDR4 market greatly exceeds the number of consumer desktop computing devices in terms of "devices with memory" (not in sheer IC count or nominal size though.)
The level of design effort and PCB expense to go from DDR3 to DDR5 is enormous.
nubinetwork · 2026-06-29 19:14:29 UTC
I was hoping it was a typo, and they actually meant 4 and 5... I didn't even know people made products that still use ddr3.
Neywiny · 2026-06-29 19:37:44 UTC
Especially industrially, ddr3l is just fine. At a certain point you don't need the speed of newer generations, and buying new idk lpddr5x/t controllers for 30 year old process nodes just isn't worth it. Until ddr3/l to EOL from everybody. The big 3 aren't the only memory fabs.
cududa · 2026-06-30 01:53:07 UTC
Embedded devices absolutely need DDR3 and DDR4
WarmWash · 2026-06-29 13:37:53 UTC
Just a reminder that anyone can file a lawsuit over anything, and the initial complaint is written by lawyers and reads with tabloid levels of sensationalism and allegation. The goal being to maximize the appearance of harm as much as possible so the suit has the greatest chance of sticking.
It is not in any way, shape, or form a ruling much less even a piece of well researched work. It's "my side of the story that makes me look perfect, with lawyers turning the heat up to 11"
Comments
Samsung is about to hand out ~$26B in bonuses. SK Hynix something similar-ish.
It’s different to, say, Google’s vertical monopoly in advertising where that’s most of their revenue.
“ The district court ruled in favor of Samsung, Hynix, and Micron and dismissed the lawsuit. This dismissal was affirmed on appeal by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which ruled in March 2022 that the plaintiffs did not offer sufficient plausible evidence for their allegations to make a case under the Sherman Antitrust Act and that the district court properly dismissed the lawsuit.”
But the challenge is in proving it.
The most expensive foundry / fab isn't the leading edge, it is the "empty" ones. You can't have a fab sitting idle.
It's the people and country that suffer when our government fails to ensure markets are free and fair.
Why not ask the same ridiculous amount of money your competitors do? People seem to be paying for it. Their fault. If suppliers have sufficiently different products, they can make some more expensive, others cheaper; on average, everybody pays more. A high barrier to entry might help such practices.
That doesn't mean I'm saying this is what is happening. Sometimes things just suck, and somebody bought the world's supply of RAM wafers to use as frisbees.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacit_collusion
If it's the actual physical agreement that's the problem - the system is working as intended.
But if we are looking to prevent the negative outcomes associated with price fixing and collusion, our system is failing us.
They are never going to find proof of conspiracy. The people involved covered their tracks, and doing so is trivial. So the best we can do is punish the appearance of collusion. And if the goal is to actually prevent harm to customers, that's a better solution anyway, since it encourages leaders of companies to behave in a manner that's the opposite of collusion.
I would look at questions regarding what harm is created: Is it discriminatory? Are parts of society shutting down, and is that unreasonable? Are groups of people now unable to afford a living? Does it move the poverty line? Is that permanent? And how do you prove this is exclusively due to the price increase of tech components, and RAM specifically?
It needs to be unfuzzy in some way in order to make sense, but that's just my opinion.
I do agree prices are insane and wish for them to come down today. I liked the ubiquitous amounts of RAM any system could have. In those days, forums were also filled with how insanely expensive 32 gigabytes of RAM was, about $100 :)
"Things cost more because of collusion" is always a harm. It doesn't matter if the product is maize or gold-plated haute couture, competitors are supposed to compete.
The question is, what's the best way to tell the difference between tacit collusion and just normal supply and demand?
It's not that easy, but here's a decent test: It's tacit conclusion if 1) net margins have been high for e.g. 3 years and 2) no new companies have entered the market in that period of time, or were acquired by an incumbent if they did.
Notice that this works for everything. Even if you're making luxury goods, the price may be high, but so are production costs, and there is a lower volume to amortize fixed costs over, so long-term net margins should be the same as they are anywhere else or you should see new entrants. If you don't, it's reasonable to infer collusion and leave it on the companies to prove otherwise.
That breaks down for industries with long investment cycles. It takes years to build a fab, so the fact that DRAM prices have been high for 1-2 years isn't too suspicious, considering they've been burned by boom and bust cycles before.
>Notice that this works for everything. Even if you're making luxury goods, the price may be high, but so are production costs, and there is a lower volume to amortize fixed costs over, so long-term net margins should be the same as they are anywhere else or you should see new entrants. If you don't, it's reasonable to infer collusion and leave it on the companies to prove otherwise.
I can't tell you don't buy luxury goods ;)
People don't pay $10k+ for a Hermes bag because they want something that carries stuff 100% (or even 1%) better than a normal bag. They're buying it for the brand image/history. That's not something that can be replicated by a new entrant with some money to splash out on R&D or even marketing.
Indeed, it takes around 3 years to build a fab, which is why it's not weird to see this at 1-2 years. And meanwhile not only are the incumbents building more fabs, so are the challengers. CXMT and Nanya are both building fabs too. Because that's what's expected to happen when prices go up in the absence of collusion, you get more supply and new entrants.
> People don't pay $10k+ for a Hermes bag because they want something that carries stuff 100% (or even 1%) better than a normal bag. They're buying it for the brand image/history.
You're talking about Veblen goods in particular, not luxury goods in general. Veblen goods are bonkers, but they also don't fail the test, because then there will be plenty of other companies offering similar products at lower margins without the brand name, and then you don't have an industry you suspect of collusion over everyone having suspiciously high margins because many of them don't.
Yes it does lmao. If consumers can't get access to devices then they cannot be used for work or education. It's counterproductive.
How many "attention is all you need" papers aren't being written because as soon as there's a sniff of money the rabid suit and tie MBA fucks leap onto any opportunity like a dog in heat and fuck it to death.
Gamers Nexus has done a lot of reporting on it as of late [1][2].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRAM_price_fixing_scandal [1] https://youtu.be/R1jsbfouRQY?is=PZnyIjUjSK5UuGpL [2] https://youtu.be/jVzeHTlWIDY?is=PZOHQaaqb49hcBs9
Wait until you discover TSMC, ASML, Carl Zeiss, Intel and AMD, or even Nvidia.
That's not how commodity markets work. This stuff is essentially sold at auction with the price set by supply and demand. The way they would fix the price is by constraining supply so that people have to outbid each other on a smaller amount of inventory.
But that's not that hard to measure -- are they producing less than they were before prices went up? The answer is actually that they're producing more. The reason prices went up anyway is the huge increase in demand.
You would then have to make the case that it's not just that they're reducing supply but that they're not increasing it fast enough. That's theoretically possible but it's also very plausible that building new fabs just takes time, so if someone's theory is that they're colluding then they need to present some evidence.
That also isn't illegal. A business can choose to artificially restrict supply if they want, there's no mandate that they must meet demand.
It only crosses into illegal territory if multiple companies get together and secretly agree to cap production to keep prices high. Then it becomes collusion. It also becomes illegal if there's a monopoly power that is intentionally constricting supply to specifically stop a smaller competitor or lock them out of the market.
The hard part is how do you prove Samsung, SK Hynix, Micron are acting as a unified cartel when there obviously isn't going to be a paper trail for secret meetings.
There is, however, no incentive to do this when prices are high unless you expect competitors to do likewise, since otherwise you're just handing the business to the others when they increase production. Which strongly implies that if that's what everybody is doing, they're colluding.
> The hard part is how do you prove Samsung, SK Hynix, Micron are acting as a unified cartel when there obviously isn't going to be a paper trail for secret meetings.
Which is the problem when that's what's happening, and why we should maybe change the law to infer the collusion from the outcome in cases where prices are high yet nobody is responding by increasing their market share.
This imagines a world where water production can be dialed up and down instantly, at no cost, with no risk.
It doesn’t work that way though. Hiring people, scaling up factories, converting to 24/7 all have costs and risks.
Just google (or Claude, or whatever) memory companies that went backrupt overbuilding to meet a spike in demand. There are many. You probably don’t even know their names. Because Micron/etc stood pat and survived.
It only images a world in which the profit-maximizing amount of wafer production is higher when demand is higher, which is a completely reasonable premise to take as the default.
> Just google (or Claude, or whatever) memory companies that went backrupt overbuilding to meet a spike in demand. There are many. You probably don’t even know their names. Because Micron/etc stood pat and survived.
Those long forgotten companies like Intel, Toshiba, Texas Instruments, IBM, etc. that are all now bankrupt and no longer exist. Except that they still do exist, they just sold their DRAM divisions to the current incumbents. Even the divisions that went bankrupt -- for Qimonda (Infineon) it was the 2008 housing crash that did them in.
Predicting events like that isn't reasonably possible. What Micron actually did to survive it was keep a large reserve of cash to survive the lean years, not refuse to build fabs. The South Korean companies did the equivalent by being subsidiares of giant conglomerates.
And let’s not forget Elpida.
Here’s a good article on the economics of the industry and why huge swings in margins make capital investment risky: https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/McKinsey/Industries/Semicon...
No one has a crystal ball. Soviet planners figured that out eventually. You cannot punish people for lack of crystal ball outcome foresight.
Are we going to punish Micron for not planning a new fab 3 year ago when they had no margin and Apple was squeezing them to the bone? Do we co-indict Tim Apple?
Or wait, they were already trying to build one in Upstate NY that is stuck in NIMBY red tape. Do we co-indict Kathy Hochul?
If there's no evidence to be found, that might be a good indicator that either A.) nothing illegal occured or B.) the senior leadership involved are competent, intelligent, and discrete
Given the number of companies involved, all it takes is one idiot, so if it's collusion, I expect we'll see evidence. If not, number go up.
Tacit collusion requires at least signaling. There has to be some intent. Like in the US rental market where Realpage coordinates tacit collusion.
But if there is legitimately demand for far more memory than can be produced, it seems silly to claim collusion to raise prices.
But yeah, if there's demand a limited supply, price increases from that are legit.
How can they do price fixing and discontinuing a product at the same time? It just looks like some companies are angry that AI / VC industry is outpricing them.
https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-guidance/gui...
Not saying I agree with the plaintiffs.
Yeah that's how law works. Everyone likes money, but that doesn't mean it's fine to steal money. Yes, even from maligned entities like "big tech" or "private equity"
OpenAI's original corporate agreements capped its returns at 100x, which is seen as too paltry for its current holders, so they scrapped those to prepare for an IPO [0]
That is, in a word, insane.
[0] https://abhs.in/blog/openai-for-profit-conversion-ipo-develo...
AMD just re-released their 5800X3D for AM4 board users who wish to upgrade which is further evidence that shutting off DDR4 production is premature.
2. In a healthy, competitive market there would be smaller manufacturers that’d be happy to take up the big guys’ discarded business.
I guess they would love to produce it themselves, but for the average scenario the production reserves they have with Samsung already work well enough and prevent them from having to get into such a complicated industry.
2. Semiconductor manufacturing is the most complex industrial process in the world. You need billions of capex and decades of experience. Even existing semi players like intel cannot switch production to memory.
China CXMT is gaing traction in DDR market. New fabs from all players wil come online in the next two years.
Have you seen how the modern stock markets works lmao? It hasn't been based on reality in a long time.
Hell just look at Trump, should've run outta money from all his bad deals ages ago but the grift continues.
That's what I have in my gaming tower, and yeah I feel zero pressing need to upgrade. I did manage to put 64GB of DDR4 in it just before prices went totally bonkers, thankfully. Where I'm falling behind is my GPU I'm still on an nvidia 1660 super, but I just can't justify paying what they cost right now.
I would gain pretty much nothing moving to a newer board w/ DDR5.
Unfortunately, I opted for only 32GB of RAM because at that point more felt like overkill, which as a decision has aged poorly. I should've gotten more while it was still cheap.
When making long term plans in 2022, I don't think anyone expected DDR4 to need significant production in 2026. Since ram makers can pretty much sell whatever they make in today's marketplace, it makes sense (for those fabs that can) to stop making DDR4 and repurpose those fabs to make newer generation ram.
Of course it might be a ploy to sheep-herd consumers and companies towards the expensive DDR-5. I would not put that below the ring of RAM producers.
How much % of the DRAM market do you think is made from computer enthusiasts upgrading their Zen 1/2 CPUs to Zen 3? Note intel and AMD both switched to DDR5 well before the exit from DDR3/DDR4 ("2024-2025", according to the complaint).
DDR4 production is likely still quite profitable, just not drowning-in-money AI-bubble profitable. If smaller foundries existed they’d be happy to take up the business.
Maybe really what needs to happen is some busting up of the giants…
Otherwise they could continue to make DDR4 at a higher cost and sold at a higher price to which people will complain price fixing again.
While I wouldn't necessarily agree with "a handful of people", the fact is that neither of us can prove their lean -- so no point pursuing that argument thread.
So you might be right that it's a pure numbers/statistics decision. Or I might be right that they want to herd people into the more expensive hardware while forcing them to do so by phasing out production of the cheaper hardware.
No way to truly know IMO. We are exchanging hypotheses.
The answer is an obvious "fuck yeah", even if you ignore the DDR5 price gouging. People will buy it because people still have DDR4 hardware, and that hardware is still extremely relevant.
So if there's a market for it, but none of the suppliers are trying to sell to it... Wtf is happening? Basic capitalism logic says any rational supplier would sell DDR4 for easy profits, meeting an unmet demand. That it isn't happen points to some kind of collusion, IMO.
The question is whether there’s enough meaningful demand for aftermarket DDR4 upgrades to make it worthwhile to a manufacturer to keep producing DDR4 instead of switching to HBM and DDR5.
Micron claimed retail is a rounding error, a market not worth serving. So you’d presumably need to find industrial buyers who would be willing to buy DDR4.
If I can produce DDR4 for modest profit or HBM for a lot more profit I will obviously produce HBM. And given physical realities producing HBM takes from existing DDR4 production capacity. Worse still, it takes roughly 3GB of ram to produce 1GB of hbm iirc.
Consumers use these every single day in embedded devices without knowing it.
I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest if the embedded DDR3/DDR4 market greatly exceeds the number of consumer desktop computing devices in terms of "devices with memory" (not in sheer IC count or nominal size though.)
The level of design effort and PCB expense to go from DDR3 to DDR5 is enormous.
It is not in any way, shape, or form a ruling much less even a piece of well researched work. It's "my side of the story that makes me look perfect, with lawyers turning the heat up to 11"