Historical memory prices 1960-2026

A new interactive dataset tracking historical memory and storage prices from 1960 to 2026 shows the lowest retail $/GB for DRAM, NAND flash, and HBM, with breakdowns by generation and accelerator cost estimates from Epoch AI. The data, compiled by David Shim at Stanford, reveals price trends and component cost shares for AI accelerators from Nvidia, AMD, Google, and Amazon.

Historic and current memory and storage prices , collected in the spirit of John C. McCallum's classic memory-price dataset — interactive, with the raw data downloadable. Hover for details, click the legend to toggle series, drag or use the slider to zoom, and use the camera icon to export an image. Price per gigabyte over time Historical lowest $/GB on a log scale — one line per memory type: DRAM , NAND flash , and HBM . DRAM price by generation The DRAM line above, broken out by generation across the full history — Pre-DDR SDRAM/core , DDR, DDR2, DDR3, DDR4, DDR5. Generation is inferred from product descriptions, so older points are approximate. Accelerator cost breakdown Modeled estimates from Epoch AI : quarterly accelerator cost across the four largest AI-accelerator designers — Nvidia, AMD, Google TPU and Amazon Trainium — stacked by component HBM, logic die, packaging/CoWoS, auxiliary , a production-volume-weighted average . HBM price by generation By HBM generation HBM2e → HBM3 → HBM3e → HBM4 . HBM is sold only to accelerator makers on confidential contracts — there is no public spot market — so these are sparse industry-analyst estimates TrendForce / SemiAnalysis , not transaction prices. HBM4 is projected launches Q3 2026 . $/TBps is cost per unit of memory bandwidth stack price ÷ per-stack bandwidth . Methodology, sources and caveats Sources and method | Category | What we track | Source and method | Reliability | |---|---|---|---| | DRAM $/GB | cheapest retail $/GB, overall and by generation DDR3/DDR4/DDR5 | Deep history 1957–2024 : the McCallum memory-price dataset Mid-2024 onward: the cheapest new consumer DIMM each month from | Reference + live | | NAND $/GB | cheapest retail SSD $/GB, 2010–present | 2016 onward: the cheapest consumer NVMe SSD each month from 2010–2016: four approximate pre-NVMe anchor points no McCallum-equivalent flash dataset exists . | Live + approximate | | HBM spend and cost breakdown | quarterly HBM spend $B and each component's share % of the accelerator bill of materials HBM, logic, packaging, auxiliary | | TrendForce https://www.trendforce.com and SemiAnalysis https://www.semianalysis.com HBM has no public spot market ; bandwidth from JEDEC/Rambus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High Bandwidth Memory . HBM4 is projected. Caveats - $/GB is the cheapest retail price in nominal USD — not contract, average, or inflation-adjusted, and retail lags contract pricing. - The cheapest listing often tracks an end-of-life generation being cleared out , not the leading edge — the per-generation chart shows this. - These are cheapest listed prices over time via Keepa , not confirmed sales . For the SSD data, obvious posting errors are removed — any month a drive is listed more than 60% below its own typical price e.g. a $130 SSD shown at $4 is dropped. - The DRAM line splices two sources at mid-2024 McCallum → Keepa ; a small step there is expected, since Amazon's cheapest clearance can sit below McCallum's representative low. - HBM figures are modeled estimates cost share and spend , not measured prices. Updates DRAM and NAND $/GB refresh monthly from Keepa; HBM updates quarterly Epoch AI . The McCallum backbone and HBM estimates are fixed. The downloadable CSV /assets/memory-prices/memory-prices.csv lists every point with its source. About Compiled and maintained by David Shim, Stanford DAM project. Questions or corrections: hsshim@stanford.edu mailto:hsshim@stanford.edu .