Cyalume wrote:
Why does the value of RAM go up, but not the value of chips? Do you think everything will be going up soon as well?
I doubt the prices of chips will go up much in part because there is not much in most of them. Most of the chips that you can easily take off a board a low value chips... your DIP's (the chips with two rows of legs), low lead count quads, and thick quad chips. They have a very low yield rate... on the order of ~0.25g of Au per pound. Ag, Pt, Pd are sometimes used in brazing on the silicon dies that attach the bonding wires but in quantities so small that it amounts to about 1/10th the value of the gold.
bottom line is that there is such a small amount of value in the chips that it would take a VERY large increase in the price of gold to justify a raise in price. I believe that back when gold was near $2,000/Toz., they were still only paying $6.00 per pound.
**sorry, my explanations tend to be long winded**