CR & Synapsid,
That's a good point. I do not buy 2M SDRAM chips/wk, so I don't have a good idea what people are paying for them in that quantity. Any number I throw out is pure speculation, however, I think it is fair to say that memory prices also depend on speed grading : 5.5ns (almost 200MHz) memory is going to be expensive, 7ns memory is soso, 10ns is cheap, and 12ns is dirt cheap.
A rough ballpark guess for sdram prices would be (us) $0.45 to $0.60 today, possibly more or less in a few months. If you know for sure that it's going to go up in price, buying up everyone's sdram supply for 2 months might be very profitable. Like oil, there were even cases where players in HK hoarded huge amounts of dram (FP?) to create artificial shortages a few yrs back, and they did make a killing. I don't know if anyone succeeded after that since the oversupply situation was really severe last yr and the yr before that..
Suppose CR and micron are correct : (today) $4.50 to $4.75 for 64Mbit (8MB), then that works out to 56c to 59c, again I don't know what volumes are for these prices. Perhaps buying 1M-2M pieces/wk allows a steep discount, I really don't know. Even at the top end of micron's estimate of us$5.25, that's only $0.66/MB, or a max of $21 for memory to get 32MB.
But, I didn't think of the 2Mx32 vs 4Mx16 issue, so again, I guess we're just speculating, since we don't know what ATY's costs for that memory really is.
CR,
While Micron is a key player in memory, I suspect the slower SDRAMs are more likely to come from samsung in korea since they are probably cheaper. As for whether the increased sdram prices is going to happen or whether it can be sustained, much of this depends on whether the previous glut will happen again. When there is profit to be made, the govts of many countries (including UK, singapore, [maybe]HK, korea, japan, taiwan[of course], malaysia, etc) like semiconductors and fabs a lot, and will throw in the kitchen sink to support these fabs that generated the oversupply problem in the first place. Memory is the easiest way to enter the semicon business, and it also chews up excess fab capacity. Too much fab capacity, not enough orders? Don't panic, just continue making RAM or sdram or flash-ram, while we wait for the market to correct itself.
(Speaking of flashram, anyone looked at SNDK and SSTI recently? :-) :-) )
This is why counting on a temporary FAB capacity shortage (UMC & TSMC) [the S3 good fortune] raising FAB profits to carry on indefinitely, or sdram prices rising on a sustained basis, is going to be unrealiable --- the only entry barrier is cash and good tax incentives, and most govts bend over backwards to get a fab in their country, some will even raise most of the capital or bring banks together to help you. |
