DDR3/DDR2 price crossover reached

Guest Blogger: Marc Greenberg, Director, Technical Marketing

The day is finally here - DRAMExchange.com quoted that the session average price of 1Gbit DDR3-800 parts on April 2nd was $3.03 while 1Gbit DDR2-800 was $3.04.

Only DDR2 memory manufacturers will be celebrating... you should realize that this point has been reached because of rising prices on DDR2 to meet the DDR3 prices, not because of falling DDR3 prices. DDR3 has been holding relatively steady in the $2.50 to $3.00 per gigabit range over the last year, while DDR2 prices for 1Gbit have risen from around $1.00 a year ago to over $3.00 today.

Denali were originally projecting that the DDR2/DDR3 price crossover would happen sometime in 2009 and here it is in the second quarter of 2010. We have a pesky recession to blame for the delay - in the depths of the recession, some 512MBit DDR2 parts were sold for $0.35 and the DDR2 price remained depressed for longer than predicted. Thanks to the recovery, people are buying PCs again, and many are still using DDR2.

What does this mean for you?

Well, I should start by saying that this is the *first* price crossover. Prices tend to cross over 2-3 times during the lifetime of the product. As new DDR3 capacity comes on-line, DDR3 prices may drop. As new DDR3 products come on-line, prices may rise. As old DDR2 capacity is turned off, DDR2 prices may rise. As old DDR2 products are retired, DDR2 prices may drop.

For the near-term, if you are designing a product where the performance of DDR2 is sufficient, you should plan on supporting both DDR2 and DDR3 in your product to allow you to take advantage of whichever part is cheapest at the time of manufacture.