Store Riding The Memory Boom And Trying To Avoid The Bust The bust cycles in the memory market are horrible, but the booms are a thing to behold, and with GenAI voraciously consuming all the DRAM, HBM, and flash memory it can get allocated through the hyperscalers, cloud builders, and model builder… …
… The hyperscalers, cloud builders, and model builders that are now driving the GenAI boom are these days probably wishing that they had time machines because demand for DRAM and flash memory is now far outstripping supply, and prices are once again going through the roof and up into the clouds. …
… Maybe it is a good thing that HPE didn’t do a lot of AI/HPC system sales in the quarter because it would have hurt profits, particularly with DRAM and flash memory prices skyrocketing. …
… The other is to hot swap the models themselves, bringing them in from DRAM to HBM to SRAM as needed and caching then out to HBM or DRAM as needed as the model flow changes. …
… TPM: Is HBM a better business than normal DRAM? …
… DRAM main memory and flash memory prices are going nuts as the hyperscalers, cloud builders, and AI model builders are trying to get hefty configurations to drive the performance of their expensive GPUs and XPUs. …
… Those operating margins took a bit of a hit thanks to DRAM and flash memory shortages, which are driving up prices. …
… That is not a very dramatic business story, so as I said at the top of this story, you can see why Dell was so eager to have $8.95 billion in AI server sales, up by a factor of 4.5X over the year ago period. …
… And these days, you can load up a server with a few terabytes of main memory and run the whole thing TPC-C benchmark inside of DRAM. …
… Hence the rise in purchase commitments at Arista, which we presume customers are prepaying with deferred revenues, also double compared to this time last year, to help cover those costs and lock in prices now as best can be done. …