From: johnson@spectra.com (boyd johnson)
Subject: Re: Memory prices going crazy
Organization: Spectragraphics Corporation
Date: Thu, 5 Nov 92 22:01:48 GMT

In article <1992Nov4.225723.10378@mksol.dseg.ti.com> mccall@mksol.dseg.ti.com (fred j mccall 575-3539) writes:
>In <Bx5CME.Bq3@apollo.hp.com> goykhman_a@apollo.hp.com (Alex Goykhman) writes:
>
>>In article <1992Nov3.000130.9512@mksol.dseg.ti.com> mccall@mksol.dseg.ti.com (fred j mccall 575-3539) writes:
>>>In <Bwsu3s.KE7@apollo.hp.com> goykhman_a@apollo.hp.com (Alex Goykhman) writes:
>>    The anti-dumping duties are NOT going to be levied against DRAMs 
>>    and SIMMs imported as a component of a computer system.  Another
>>    word, only computers (also workstations, laser printers, etc.) 
>>    assembled in the US are going to be taxed... 
>
>This sounds peculiar to me.  Has anyone seen the actual wording of the
>thing? 

I have the PC Week article that was mostly posted last week.
Here it is in its entirety: (PC Week Oct 26, 1992, page 3)

     Stiff import duties cause rise in DRAM prices
	 ---------------------------------------------

     The U.S. Department of Commerce last week made
     a preliminary decision to impose import duties
     of up to 87 percent on dynamic RAMs made by
     Korean manufacturers -- a move that caused a
     jump of 10 percent to 20 percent in DRAM prices
     in some markets.
 
     The ruling will not be final until March, and    
     the Commerce Department could adjust the duties
     or even reverse itself before then.  But Korean
	 companies now supply about one-quarter of the 
	 DRAMs used in the United Stated, and stiff tariffs
	 could eventually drive up the price of PCs, which
	 often need 2M to 6M bytes of DRAM to handle
	 memory-intensive applications.

	 As of late last week, the Korean firms had not yet 
	 indicated whether they wuold raise prices or disrupt
	 their DRAM shipments to the United States.
     But analysts said there is an abundance of       
     DRAM capacity in the industry, particularly
     from Japan.

Surprisingly I couldn't find any more articles in last weeks or this
weeks PC Week, Computerworld or Computer Reseller News about the
increase in DRAM prices.  When prices double overnight because of a
_preliminary_decision_ to raise import duties four months from now
and nobody writes about it something is definitely wrong.
______________________________________________________________________

I did see one other article that concerned me.  I think it was in the
Oct 26 Computerworld.  I photocopied the page and didn't get those 
details.  It was under the "MARKETPLACE" heading:

	 Offshore chips
	 --------------

	 Poor quality control in offshore facilities has
	 resulted in high failure rates in some low-priced
	 1M-byte by three-chip single in-line memory modules 
	 (SIMM).  These fail about two to three times more 
	 often than the nine-chip type.  You pay about $10 
	 less for the cheaper modules, but the question is 
	 whether your company can tolerate a higher downtime
	 potential.

	 The cheaper SIMMs also fail some tests at their 
	 rated access speed and will cause parity errors on
	 systems that rely on speed accuracy.

-- 
======== Boyd Johnson    nosc!spectra.com!johnson  San Diego, Ca. ========