The first thing to do is look at the raw memory data that has been placed on a separate page for easy reading. The data is broken down into half yearly intervals and records the best price found for each RAM size. I have not made any attempt to classify the pricing by RAM type. Over the last 14 years there have been several type of RAM that have dominated the market including 72 pin SIMMs, EDO, and 168 pin SIMMs.
I have made a FAQ for people that have questions about my methodology.
Annual Improvement In Bang Per Buck
This is calculated by looking at the drive with the best $ per Meg figure in each first half of the year and comparing it with the next years figure.
There are 3 obvious anomalies. The first two are in 93 and 94 where prices actually went backwards and the 3rd is in 97 where there was a whopping 450% improvement in the space of 12 months.
The 14 Year trend shows an average improvement of 75% per annum. When comparing this figure with the same trend in hard disks, which is 105%, it is easy to see that RAM has fallen far behind in relative cost for capacity. My personal experience indicates this to be true. When I started work in 1990 the “high end” configuration for new machines at work was 8MB of RAM and 80MB of hard disk. A 10 fold difference. Today a “high end” machine at a similar organization might have a Gig of RAM and a 200GB hard disk.
To get a more accurate idea of what the short term future holds I looked at the trend for the last 7 years, 99 to 05 inclusive. This gave and average annual improvement of 51% more RAM per dollar. We are also seem on track to achieve this figure again by March 2006 looking at todays RAM prices. If the 50% annual improvement trend continues then we can expect to pay only $1 for a Gigabyte of RAM by 2017.
Ideas welcome
I'm looking for corrections, comments, alternate analysis of the results or even ideas of new ways to look at the data. If you have any of these then please send me a mail to matt21811@yahoo.com.au with your contribution. Thanks!