The memory cartel that no longer has to meet

The last time the American memory business produced an informant, it was Micron. The Idaho chipmaker had spent the turn of the century fixing the price of the DRAM inside every Dell and Compaq and Apple of the era, and then, doing the arithmetic that every cartel eventually forces on someone, it walked into the Justice Department's Antitrust Division, told the whole story, and collected immunity. The reckoning that followed fell on everyone else. Samsung Electronics, the Suwon giant that is South Korea's largest company, pleaded guilty and paid $300 million, then the second-largest criminal antitrust fine in American history. Hynix, now SK Hynix, paid $185 million. Infineon and Elpida paid too, and more than a dozen executives went to federal prison. Micron went home.

Two decades on, on June 25th, in the Northern District of California, Micron was named a defendant.