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The RAMpocalypse strategy

Latest reports indicate that the cost of DDR5 ram has risen by over 500 percent during the past year.

That's a gob-smacking amount and anyone "in the know" could have made a huge fortune within a very short period of time if they'd put all of their spare cash in to RAM sticks just six months ago. Indeed, it makes crypto gains look like little more than noise.

We're told that the reason for these RAMpaging price rises is the massively increased demand from AI datacentres. This demand has seen RAMufacturers allocate almost all their present and future production to datacentre customers rather than gamers or regular consumer supply chains.

The effect of this reallocation is why we're seeing the huge price spike at a retail level.

But is this simply a side-effect of the changes or is it the actual goal?

Call me a cynic but I'm starting to wonder whether there's a plan out there to make personal computing unaffordable with skyrocketing GPU and RAM prices the tools being used to achieve this.

We now live in an era where every manufacturer and supplier has twigged to the fact that there's a lot more money and financial stability to be had by selling a subscription rather than something physical.

We've saw it first with software such as Adobe's and Microsoft's offerings. Now just about every software company is trying to transition fom selling an actual product to selling subscriptions simply to use that product.

It's not just software where this is happening either.

So many other essentials are also being converted a purchase to a subscription-based access proposition.

Look at the car market for instance.

Today, when you buy some brands and models of vehicles, they come with lots of functionality that is installed but not activated or which works for a few months for free but then costs an added subscription. This can be heated seats, top-end self-drive capabilities or even the amount of horsepower the drivetrain produces.

Yes, you've bought and paid for everything but after a short time, some of those functions and features that you've learned to love are suddenly hidden away behind a subscription paywall. Unless you're prepared to stump up with a monthly or annual stipend, those things are no longer available to you.

If we go back to the computer-space for a moment, it has become obvious that the last generation of CPUs and GPUs have provided all the processing power anyone will ever need for a very long time. Hell, I'm happy using a 12 year old computer for some tasks because it's more than fast enough to do the simple tasks I perform on it. Many other people feel the same so the "need" to upgrade hardware on a regular basis has declined steeply and that means declining sales for hardware vendors.

What do you do when nobody needs this year's new and only slightly better product?

Simple... you come up with that "need" (AI in this case) and then you price your hardware such that very few can actually afford to buy the new systems they need to deliver that need.

Now users will have no option but to use a subscription-based service (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini or whatever) because the cost of building a system that can deliver the necessary performance is prohibitive. Sure, six months ago anyone could have thrown together a decent AI-capable desktop system with 128GB of RAM and a powerful GPU for a few grand but now it's a $20K+ investment -- versus a mere $30 a month if you use a subscription-based service.

You will own nothing and be happy?

Yes, I'm drawing a long bow on this one and perhaps it's not so much the plan as the consequence but how convenient is it?

The only losers will be the PC retailers and system integrators who've already found that their market is drying up very quickly. Some parts are exceedingly hard to get ahold of and even when they can get RAM and GPUs, there are far fewer customers due to the outrageous prices being charged.

Meanwhile, the manufacturers of RAM and GPUs are laughing all the way to the bank, as are those companies who've embraced the opportunity to switch from shipping product to selling subscriptions.

Carpe Diem folks!

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