alt Hacker NewsSupply will not meet demand. What incentive do the handful of dram manufacturers have to end the party? This is what happens when legal monopolies finally win control. Dont't worry. The patents will expire in a few decades. Our grandkids will see DDR5 get cheap again. The system functions as intended.
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fitblipper • today at 7:24 PM
I have fairly simplistic view of the economics involved here. Could you explain why the ability to sell more chips wouldn't be sufficient enough incentive to increase supply?
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Patents is not the issue here. Not even close.
The up-front investment of a memory fab is measured in billions, and takes years to construct and get running. The margin on the chips themselves is terrible, so without scale its not worth even trying. DDR5 is a industry standard that takes some effort to conform to, but the licence fees is a drop in the bucket to the cost of creating a fab.
The fabricators were cautious about increasing production, and slow to start planning. It takes further time to build up capacity, and if the demand drops down, they may end up producing dram at a loss when the market flips over to oversupply. The demand whiplash could kill any company that dared betting on increasing production. See the "bullwhip effect" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullwhip_effect which has killed semiconductor fabricators before.
There is a discussion to be had about how to maintain national semiconductor production in Europe and US as a strategic industry, but historic attempts have all failed.