$20 is incredibly imbecilic, but as far as "reading" goes, there's no mention of cost in this article. And it'd be kind of crazy for anyone to divulge that information.
They also have to engineer what will be a complex, low volume part. That adds to the cost. To be honest I didn't find $3999 to be that bad considering the costs of other enterprise parts.
I'm not sure it can be considered a low volume part, sure - few customers will be buying these, but those that will? They'll order hundreds, or even thousands at a time.
A 8 Gb die is trading at ~$9.75 (daily high) right now (and that's a slower speed -- 2133/2400). I don't know what the margins are, but they're not terribly high considering ram is a commodity. We'll just ignore that since it's an unknown and we can only go off market value.
The packages use 4 dies, and if we assume Micron's magic and can make those without any additional production cost, that's $39 per package. There are 36 packages, or 144 dies on this DIMM.
That comes out to $1404 for the dies/packages themselves. The PCB, passives, and that other die aren't very expensive, probably < $10.
And as I pointed out, that price is based off a slower speed. That's going to add a lot to the cost (50%? double?). On top of that, you have retail markup (let's say, 30%?), testing, assembly, marketing, distribution costs.
That's a pretty good analysis. I would have guessed 300% margins but you are right in that it's probably closer to 200% considering the octal stacking and complexity of producing a stick reliably (a lot of binning and verification)
Good analysis indeed, thought looking at the target market, the verification, quality, testing & binning will take a big chunk of the margin, so the actual margin is lower also.. not to say the margins are low as server market is one of the biggest margins out there, but these tests are more serious than even the regular server grade modules.
The R&D that goes into making this kind of product will definitely increase the price. And because it's a niche the only way to justify the investment is if you increase the price.
But think about it: a 64GB one costs ~$900 on regular distribution channels. The 128GB probably costs triple to manufacture (given the arguments above) so I expect it to cost in the $5000 zone.
And I also expect someone to say they can buy 8 faster 16GB sticks so why would anyone buy this one. Plus no OC. Plus no RGB lighting. Not even a cool heatspreader. Because this is what AT community became recently.
I can buy a gross of pencils, a case of paper, and two sharpeners (back ups are important) for less then $50. In 8,000 years, I will have saved nearly $4000.
So this is how the NRA justifies requiring all gun registration in certain states be via paper records? Damn thanks sir, you've provided me with enlightenment.
If I need that much memory and would spend that much money on memory, why would I skimp on the CPU with Epyc. I would go with real stuff and get top of line Intel CPU.
Faster? With how percentage? 11% theoretically 2666 vs 2400, but with this big big latency CL22 vs CL17 i don't think so. This pleasure of ~9-10% for doubled price...
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28 Comments
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milkod2001 - Saturday, December 2, 2017 - link
Wonder what's the production cost per stick , like 20 bucks?T1beriu - Saturday, December 2, 2017 - link
Reading is hard.III-V - Saturday, December 2, 2017 - link
$20 is incredibly imbecilic, but as far as "reading" goes, there's no mention of cost in this article. And it'd be kind of crazy for anyone to divulge that information.mjeffer - Saturday, December 2, 2017 - link
They also have to engineer what will be a complex, low volume part. That adds to the cost. To be honest I didn't find $3999 to be that bad considering the costs of other enterprise parts.Barilla - Sunday, December 3, 2017 - link
I'm not sure it can be considered a low volume part, sure - few customers will be buying these, but those that will? They'll order hundreds, or even thousands at a time.menting - Sunday, December 3, 2017 - link
hundreds and thousands of these modules are still considered low volume in the world of DRAM modules.evanrich - Saturday, December 2, 2017 - link
there are more than 20$ worth of parts on that stick as is, let alone mfg costs.yuhong - Saturday, December 2, 2017 - link
Main cost is producing the 4H TSV chips used. I think Samsung has been producing them for a while now.III-V - Saturday, December 2, 2017 - link
A 8 Gb die is trading at ~$9.75 (daily high) right now (and that's a slower speed -- 2133/2400). I don't know what the margins are, but they're not terribly high considering ram is a commodity. We'll just ignore that since it's an unknown and we can only go off market value.The packages use 4 dies, and if we assume Micron's magic and can make those without any additional production cost, that's $39 per package. There are 36 packages, or 144 dies on this DIMM.
That comes out to $1404 for the dies/packages themselves. The PCB, passives, and that other die aren't very expensive, probably < $10.
And as I pointed out, that price is based off a slower speed. That's going to add a lot to the cost (50%? double?). On top of that, you have retail markup (let's say, 30%?), testing, assembly, marketing, distribution costs.
Samus - Sunday, December 3, 2017 - link
That's a pretty good analysis. I would have guessed 300% margins but you are right in that it's probably closer to 200% considering the octal stacking and complexity of producing a stick reliably (a lot of binning and verification)Xajel - Sunday, December 3, 2017 - link
Good analysis indeed, thought looking at the target market, the verification, quality, testing & binning will take a big chunk of the margin, so the actual margin is lower also.. not to say the margins are low as server market is one of the biggest margins out there, but these tests are more serious than even the regular server grade modules.ddrіver - Sunday, December 3, 2017 - link
The R&D that goes into making this kind of product will definitely increase the price. And because it's a niche the only way to justify the investment is if you increase the price.But think about it: a 64GB one costs ~$900 on regular distribution channels. The 128GB probably costs triple to manufacture (given the arguments above) so I expect it to cost in the $5000 zone.
And I also expect someone to say they can buy 8 faster 16GB sticks so why would anyone buy this one. Plus no OC. Plus no RGB lighting. Not even a cool heatspreader. Because this is what AT community became recently.
PreacherEddie - Sunday, December 3, 2017 - link
I can buy a gross of pencils, a case of paper, and two sharpeners (back ups are important) for less then $50. In 8,000 years, I will have saved nearly $4000.lmcd - Sunday, December 3, 2017 - link
So this is how the NRA justifies requiring all gun registration in certain states be via paper records? Damn thanks sir, you've provided me with enlightenment.Lord of the Bored - Sunday, December 3, 2017 - link
$13.37, actually.ddrіver - Sunday, December 3, 2017 - link
Ah, was waiting for you. I mean you can't stay away from things you can't understand (https://www.anandtech.com/comments/12105/cherry-la...lmcd - Sunday, December 3, 2017 - link
I heard they stored the coordinates to your future residency in hell on an Optane hard drive.lmcd - Sunday, December 3, 2017 - link
Naturally, the goal was to get you there quicker.menting - Sunday, December 3, 2017 - link
spend 20 seconds on DRAMeXchange to look at spot prices instead of typing up what you posted and you might learn something.RaistlinZ - Saturday, December 2, 2017 - link
What...no RGB?versesuvius - Sunday, December 3, 2017 - link
Providing RGB would put that beyond the reach of even the most enterprising of enterprises.msroadkill612 - Sunday, December 3, 2017 - link
So the take away is a big win for epyc - 16x dimm sockets vs 12x for intel.Epyc is less inclined to push users into expensive larger modules.
HStewart - Sunday, December 3, 2017 - link
If I need that much memory and would spend that much money on memory, why would I skimp on the CPU with Epyc. I would go with real stuff and get top of line Intel CPU.brucethemoose - Sunday, December 3, 2017 - link
Intel also has 4P servers if you really, really need as much memory in 1 spot as possible. That's 48 DIMMs vs 32 for Epyc.Pork@III - Sunday, December 3, 2017 - link
Samsung ship 128GB 2400MT/s DDR4 modules from the beginning of Y2016M386AAK40B40-CUC Samsung 128GB PC4-19200 DDR4-2400MHz ECC Registered CL17 288-Pin Load Reduced DIMM 1.2V Octal Rank Memory Module
Mfg Part No: M386AAK40B40-CUC
$1,947.58 after 25% Cyber Week Discount Availability:In Stock
Guspaz - Monday, December 4, 2017 - link
It’s almost like you’re comparing the street price during a sale of a slower product to the MSRP of a newer and faster product.Pork@III - Tuesday, December 5, 2017 - link
Faster? With how percentage? 11% theoretically 2666 vs 2400, but with this big big latency CL22 vs CL17 i don't think so. This pleasure of ~9-10% for doubled price...