PC DRAM Capacity Levels Will Slow Down Starting 2012

The incredibly low prices that DRAM memory has reached over the past couple of quarters may have prompted standard memory capacities in PCs to go from 2 GB to 4 GB, but this situation will change in 2012, according to iSuppli.

Those keeping track of things on the memory market may be aware of the fact that DRAM chips have been going downhill as far as prices are concerned.

While alarming for makers of chips, this has opened up doors for consumers that would not otherwise afford that great a memory amount in their systems.

Unfortunately, the low prices are a testament to the continually weak demand, though the effect this had is going to expire next year (2011), according to iSuppli.

Basically, while the average DRAM amount did rise for each new PC by 38% in 2009 and 25% in 2010, 2011 will see a growth of another 30%, after which things will slow to quite a bit less than 35%.

"With DRAM content growth slowing, memory suppliers will have to look beyond the PC for a growth driver to areas such as the smartphone and tablet," said Mike Howard, principal analyst for DRAM and memory at IHS.

"While new devices will certainly add incremental demand, the industry's long-relied-upon growth from PCs will be sorely missed."

This might raise some exclamation marks, but one can also argue that it only makes sense for this to happen, considering that DRAM advanced substantially over the past year and current capacities should have no problem dealing with even the most demanding applications of the next few years.

One of the elements one should look at in this case is the way software has started to rely less on higher resources with each new release.

Microsoft's Windows OS, for instance, stopped raising the bar for hardware prowess when Windows 7 came out and required the same capabilities as Vista. What remains is to see if this remains true for Windows 8 as well.