Specialty DRAM in Tight Supply, Prices Likely to Climb

News
By Douglas Perry
published

It is a small breather for the DRAM industry.

Strong demand for consumer electronics such as TVs, smartphones, and tablets are squeezing 512 Mb DDR and 1 Gb DDR2 memory chips into tight supply. Production cutbacks that were encouraged by oversupply in recent quarters add to a scenario in which memory prices could be seeing an upward spike.

According to Digitimes, DRAM manufacturers were able to gradually compensate a decline in memory demand in the PC sector with increasing demand from consumer electronics.

The publication's sources stated that 512Mb DDR parts primarily used for TVs, set-top box and networking applications will especially be in short supply and that the shortage is likely to "persist through March," when production will have caught up with the market.

The 1 Gb DDR2 shortage is apparently related to manufacturing transitions as production is shifting and some major suppliers are no longer manufacturing this memory type. According to Digitimes, Hynix Semiconductor is the world's largest supplier of specialty DRAM memory.

Douglas Perry
18 Comments Comment from the forums
  • internetlad
    call 2005, it's got serious troubles ahead!
    Reply
  • pensivevulcan
    So why don't they just transition to newer more power-efficient DDR3 and maybe just slightly augment their prices to compensate? Worthy trade-off no?
    Using DDR in 2012 seems a tadd absurd to me, unless I am missing something...
    Reply
  • balister
    pensivevulcanSo why don't they just transition to newer more power-efficient DDR3 and maybe just slightly augment their prices to compensate? Worthy trade-off no?Using DDR in 2012 seems a tadd absurd to me, unless I am missing something...
    You are missing something. While consumers try to keep up, businesses and organizations like to use known trusted items before they move forward. As such, a lot of hardware for an organization typically lags behind what consumers are using because it known to be reliable where as newer hardware has not had that burn in time. Thus, older hardware is preferable to newer because it's been thoroughly tested.
    Reply
  • theuniquegamer
    After HDD crisis now its time for DRAM module The budget pc users are always affected by all of this
    Reply
  • fuxxnuts
    ***News Flash***

    This just in: DRAM manufacturers say that the price hike was the fault of one British employee
    Reply
  • __-_-_-__
    pensivevulcanSo why don't they just transition to newer more power-efficient DDR3 and maybe just slightly augment their prices to compensate? Worthy trade-off no?Using DDR in 2012 seems a tadd absurd to me, unless I am missing something...there's absolutely no need for such. it's not like you are going to play crisys on a set top box or that you need 16gb ddr3 on your fridge control panel.
    DDR memory is not just used in "pc's". It's used in thousands of appliances. from dvd players to vending machines to small lcd's etc. it's overkill to use DDR3.
    Reply
  • alyoshka
    Well, everything is connected... so I guess the prices of all the electronic goods was bound to come up, after all, companies manufacturing copper wires need HDDs too.... so as the cost of maintaining the business goes up, the cost of the end product is going to rise.
    Reply
  • azathoth
    Why do I have a feeling that DDR3 will join the price hike for no apparent reason?
    Reply
  • fb39ca4
    This is NOT DDR3, system builders should have nothing to be concerned about.
    Reply
  • CaedenV
    1GB of DDR3 is $8, while 1GB of DDR2 is $14. I realize that it is different when talking about electronics instead of PC hardware, but still, we are talking nearly half the price for the same amount of hardware, plus lower wattage, smaller chip size, and a decent speed increase. The real reason manufacturers don't move up (I mean really, DDR3 was released in 2007, that is a 5 year burn in period which is longer than most electronics products are kept, plus the tech is not exactly new moving from DDR1-2-3 is basically the same hardware with more parallelism) is because they don't want to pay someone to design new controllers and support chips for newer hardware. They will bleed the DDR2 tech dry until someone strikes a killer deal with a manufacturer that sets them with ddr3 at a flat price for x number of years. And then they will be stuck on that until DDR5-6 comes out... such is life in the industrial world.
    Reply