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Artificial intelligence (AI) has opened up a new can of worms for the tech industry, with memory prices increasing rapidly as demand grows. In response to these increased costs, manufacturers will be forced to raise prices on their products, making for more expensive smartphones, computers, and more.
It’s a bigger problem than you think. Because while AI means we need more server-side memory to drive all those generative AI (genAI) cloud services, it also means we need more AI in the devices to handle edge intelligence queries.
Making more from less
Apple has always been reluctant to insert too much memory into its devices. The company has regularly argued that it makes more sense to optimize hardware and software to deliver the best possible performance, rather than simply throwing vast quantities of memory at problems.
That’s why even as recently as 2023; iPhones shipped with just 4GB RAM inside. When AI truly hit the market last year, Apple doubled that to 8GB and now places 12GB memory in its highest end iPhones.
While those memory levels are still lower than the quantity of RAM installed in similar smartphones, Apple’s...