Blackwell · Nvidia · xAI · AMD · Samsung · Engadget
RAM sits between the two, pulling files from storage and holding them ready for the CPU to do its job
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The more RAM you have, the more data can sit, coiled like a spring ready to leap into action.
Key facts
- The price for a pair of 16GB DDR5-4800 sticks went from under $100 at the start of 2025 to more than $400 today
- If you'll forgive the inexact but telling comparison, that amount of RAM is equivalent to the RAM in 14,000,625 iPhones 17 or 9,333,750 Galaxy S26s
- If they use the rule of thumb that around 450,000 GPUs shake out to around 1GW of capacity then this project alone could use up to 194,400,000 GB of RAM (or about 24.3 million iPhone 17 units)
- But hey, it's working for them: In June, Micron posted a quarterly income of $28.86 billion and a gross margin of 84.9 percent
Summary
In the last 18 months, the price of RAM has skyrocketed, and is expected to continue rising for the rest of the year. RAM, or Random Access Memory, is a crucial component of every computer, enabling it to read and execute data effectively. RAM sits between the two, pulling files from storage and holding them ready for the CPU to do its job. There are three companies making most the world's RAM: Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron. But there's another type of RAM called HBM (High Bandwidth Memory), which is designed for high end computing environments. It's worth understanding that while DRAM and HBM aren't interchangeable, they are made from the same components. In 2024, Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra told investors that each unit of HBM "consumes approximately three times the wafer supply" as consumer-level DDR5 RAM.