I sold 7,2 Kg of DDR1/2/3 sticks two month ago, for gold recovery. As well as expansion cards, hdd PCBs and a few other things. Got about $600 from this.

Old gen logic barely exists, and won't convert. The tools are wrong so it wouldn't yield. And there isnt the expertise (on tool recipes and integration) to do it.

Historically, memory is a sawtooth business. But history isn't a great guide here: 10 years ago, a new plant added meaningful capacity, as it came with a shrink of about 30%. Today....it doesn't. So it take huge capital to add a very small amount of capacity.

You can dream that things like 3d dram and 4f cells will help, but they are unlikely to offer enough with demand.

And finally, everyone running a dram plant has lived through these capacity boom bust cycles and the consequently layoffs and pay cuts. I suspect they are happy to take money this time. I would be in their place.

I do hope we see a new dram or dram-like designs. And that there are more efficient dedicated ai processors. And that models themselves become more memory efficient. But I don't really believe any of these come soon.

If I was a memory company, I would try to bring DDR6 to the market as soon as possible. DDR6 allows high end CPU based server platforms to reach the memory bandwidth of an A100 or half a H100 without the costly HBM.

I am currently looking for some EDO sticks for a really well preserved IBM Aptiva I found on the side of the road. That stuff is expensive for a very different reason.

It really is that bad out there for small businesses trying to make consumer goods. At work we had to recycle prototypes to salvage memory for a production run

That is, unless the hyperscalers all drop dead overnight. Then we'll be swimming in more chips than anyone would care to buy