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125 sats \ 6 replies \ @freetx 6 Jan \ parent \ on: Memory Chip Giants Spark Global Semiconductor Rally Shortages Stoke Price Hikes AI Stacker_Stocks

I've been following ram prices, its truly getting crazy. Mundane things like "32GB DDR4 sticks" are up 2x YoY

The projections for this year are even crazier....could double again.

At a certain point this will affect everything at consumer level: Phones, laptops, etc. All those software apps (ie. Electron-based) that loads a 1GB glorified web browser are going to feel the pinch soon....

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100 sats \ 4 replies \ @Bell_curve 7 Jan

is this related to a silver shortage?

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111 sats \ 3 replies \ @Cje95 OP 7 Jan

silver is used in a lot of the stuff for data centers so maybe.... not sure what parts use the silver though.

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21 sats \ 2 replies \ @optimism 7 Jan

Parts per million precious metals observed in DIMMs back in 2016:

  • Gold: 1022
  • Palladium: 70
  • Silver: 1616
  • Copper: 200

source

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132 sats \ 1 reply \ @freetx 7 Jan

I've heard 2 logical explanations:

  • The silver in datacenters is found mainly in the power network. Particularly in contacts of high energy power components (ie. actual electrical switches) which use silver for low resistance, high reliability of contact points.
  • Samsung’s Ag‑C solid‑state design (silver-carbon solid state battery).
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10 sats \ 0 replies \ @optimism 7 Jan

Interesting!

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31 sats \ 0 replies \ @optimism 6 Jan

I think the biggest issue for the manufacturers is the risk of implosion of bigger=better which would set them up with idle fabs at some point.

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