Historical memory prices 1960-2026
Points and comments are a snapshot, not live.
A dataset tracks DRAM, NAND, and HBM prices per GB from 1960 to 2026.
The site, by David Shim at Stanford DAM, updates the classic McCallum memory-price dataset. It tracks cheapest retail $/GB for DRAM (by generation from SDRAM to DDR5) and NAND flash (consumer NVMe SSDs). It also includes Epoch AI estimates of accelerator cost breakdowns (HBM, logic, packaging) and sparse analyst estimates for HBM prices by generation. Data comes from McCallum, Keepa, TrendForce, and SemiAnalysis. $/GB is nominal USD, not inflation-adjusted; retail lags contract pricing. DRAM and NAND refresh monthly; HBM updates quarterly.
What commenters are saying
Commenters note that adjusting for inflation would flatten the log-scale graph only slightly. Several recall early large-memory systems: the Cray-2 (2 GB RAM in 1985) and a 1970s IBM 370 upgrade with a megabyte. There is skepticism about labeling vacuum-tube and core memory as DRAM; one commenter argues core memory is more like SRAM since it only needs refresh after reads. Another calculates memory cost relative to total system cost: a Cray-2 was $16M total with $2M for 2 GB memory, while a modern GPU server costs ~$500k with $25k for 1.5 TB memory, making memory relatively cheaper now.