Although it was less than a decade-and-a-half ago, the year 2000 was ancient times in terms of RAM prices. Computer memory cost $1 per megabyte back then, but today that price has dropped to 0.4 cents per megabyte. As Microsoft noted in a white paper (PDF) last summer, a typical server that today costs $50,000 can boast enough processor cores (32) and enough RAM (1 terabyte) to comfortably fit and properly crunch entire databases.