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I'd see Chinese RAM manufacturers like CXMT filling the void left in the market for consumer-grade RAM modules, I appreciate they face challenges (like lack of

I'd see Chinese RAM manufacturers like CXMT filling the void left in the market for consumer-grade RAM modules, I appreciate they face challenges (like lack of access to cutting edge EUV machines), but the RAM just needs to be fast enough and affordable enough for the average user for these companies to make significant inroads into the market that Micron, Samsung and SK Hynix are abandoning to chase the AI server market.

realusername 9mo ago
That's probably what is going to happen, it's a strategic opportunity for the Chinese government here, there's a big market demand that can fuel their domestic production capabilities that nobody wants to take.
- giantrobot 9mo ago
  It would be a strategic opportunity for Intel, if they weren't run by imbeciles. DDR4 doesn't require the latest and greatest nodes. It's boring old technology. Even DDR5 is pretty boring. Intel could clean up fabbing DRAM (like they used to). But alas no. They're part of the semiconductor cartel and uninterested in the supply of DRAM increasing. Prices would drop and the fabs would only make stupid margins instead of disgusting margins.
  - zozbot234 9mo ago
    Intel would be in the very same bind as every other DRAM producer who's trying to expand production today, only far worse because they have practically no experience fabbing DRAM compared to logic. (You can fab eDRAM on logic processes, but you'd only do that out of sheer desperation since the cost per bit is much higher.) What they could do very easily in this market is bring back frickin Optane and hook it up to a modern PCIe bus with modern PCIe performance.
    - jiggawatts 9mo ago
      A recent development is High Bandwidth Flash (HBF) which works the same as HBM but uses less power and has far higher density. If Intel made an equivalent high bandwidth Optane product, they’d immediately corner the GPU memory market.
dist-epoch 9mo ago
China also needs RAM for AIs, especially since they have plenty of electrical power and building speed to pump out data-centers.
- actionfromafar 9mo ago
  Turns out their wind "opercapacity" maybe isn't. Maybe they are trading chip efficiency for raw power.
  - bee_rider 9mo ago
    Something I’ve been sort of wondering about—LLM training seems like it ought to be the most dispatchable possible workload (easy to pause the thing when you don’t have enough wind power, say). But, when I’ve brought this up before people have pointed out that, basically, top-tier GPU time is just so valuable that they always want to be training full speed ahead. But, hypothetically if they had a ton of previous gen GPUs (so, less efficient) and a ton of intermittent energy (from solar or wind) maybe it could be a good tradeoff to run them intermittently? Ultimately a workload that can profitably consumer “free” watts (and therefore flops) from renewable overprovisioning would be good for society I guess.
    - actionfromafar 9mo ago
      I think as such intermittent power comes on the grid in the coming decades, people will find creative uses for it.
    - zozbot234 9mo ago
      > top-tier GPU time is just so valuable that they always want to be training full speed ahead. I don't think this makes much sense because the "waste" of hardware infrastructure by going from 99.999% duty cycle to 99% is still only ~1%. It's linear in the fraction of forgone capacity, while the fraction of power costs you save from simply shaving off the costliest peaks and shifting that demand to the lows is superlinear.
    - WJW 9mo ago
alecco 9mo ago
They will first fill the local demand for all their electronics manufacturing. Then their massive computer infra and AI. And if any is left, it will be bundled to local PC exporters like Lenovo.
- nerdsniper 9mo ago
  It’s fine if it’s just filling Chinese manufacturing. Low-cost VPS hosts are going to be using brands like Supermicro anyways. It still gets exported. Except for RAM from YMTC, which the USA gave a near-death sentence to by placing it on the Dept. of Commerce “Entity List” so no USA-associated business can do business with YMTC now.
  - neelc 9mo ago
    This is true. We use ASRock Rack servers, mainly because the only option for our industry are OEMs like Supermicro and ASRock. Dell and HPE are non-starters, except for our "storage" offering. Back in 2019, HPE was a good midrange option. Then came ASRock Rack who obliterated HPE with the X470D4U, relegating HPE to high-end enterprise servers. But also made Ryzen-based VPS hosts including yours truly, BuyVM, et al.
  - nagisa 9mo ago
    Doesn't YMTC focus on NAND (i.e. flash storage) rather than DRAM? Regardless, point stands.
neelc 9mo ago
I am very hopeful of CXMT. But then then it could take a while for them to ramp up production. Maybe by then, the AI bubble would've burst. One problem with US sanctions is it could hurt US companies too, like in the case of cutting-edge EUV and CXMT. This is when China is actually a hero and not a villain.
- phatfish 9mo ago
  We can certainly do with less plastic junk and fast fashion. But on the high end it hard to argue that cheaper Chinese products are ever a bad thing. If corporations in western (aligned) countries stopped feeding sovereign wealth funds and private equity with profits and actually invested something maybe they could compete with China more closely, even with whatever shenanigans the CPC get up to with state support.
filloooo 9mo ago
Their scale is simply too small to affect the market outside China, majority of their chips will be eaten up by HBM3 production with yet unknown yield rate. They are forbidden to buy foreign equipment beyond their current process node, which is already obsolete, die size is 40% bigger than Samsung, not to mention lithography, the big 3 are using EUV while they are stuck with lobotomized DUV. They can start making some decent money now, but vastly expanding capacity as is means enormous losses if the cycle went downward a few years later, that's how all previous makers went bankrupt. They can squeeze out a bit more performance if they are ready to go beyond their current node using only domestic equipment and be blacklisted by the US government. But the cap is there, unless they can make a working EUV machine in 5 years, they are doomed to be a minor player, if the current cycle even lasts that long.
- zozbot234 9mo ago
  Obsolete process node hardly matters when the rest of the market is bottlenecked on production capacity; small overall scale still might. Expanding capacity may or may not make sense; it depends on your prediction of the way the market will go.
- direwolf20 9mo ago
  They will grow exponentially and catch the western market unawares in 10-15 years with a sudden flood of cheap, effective chips. Just like everything else China makes. Electric vehicles for example.
  - filloooo 9mo ago
    Sure, if they've got production grade EUV, but right now they don't even have production grade DUV. I'm also sure they can go as far as 5nm like SMIC if they really wanted to, since it's strategic for China, but the cost would only be justified if the current cycle lasts long enough.
    - direwolf20 9mo ago
      I was corrected elsewhere when I thought RAM was more expensive 10 years ago. RAM was actually cheaper 10 years ago, when it was DDR3/DDR4 too. If any company can replicate the 10 year old SOTA, they can bring prices down.
anonym29 9mo ago
>market that Micron, Samsung and SK Hynix are abandoning to chase the AI server market These three have collectively committed what, approaching $50B towards construction of new facilities and fabs in response to the demand? The memory industry has traditionally projected demand several years out and proactively scheduled construction and manufacturing to be able to meet the projected demand. The last time they did that, in the crypto boom, the boom quickly turned into a bust and the memory makers got burned with a bad case of oversupply for years. With that context, can you blame them for wanting to go a bit more slowly with this boom? Sure, the new fabs won't be up and at volume production until late 2027 / early 2028, but committing tens of billions of dollars to new production facilities, including to facilities dedicated to DRAM rather than NAND or HBM, is hardly 'abandoning'. They're pivoting to higher profit margin segments - rational behavior for a for-profit corporation - but thanks to the invisible hand of the (not quite as free as it should be) market, this is, partially, a self-solving issue, as DRAM margins soar while HBM margins compress, and we're already seeing industry response to that dynamic, too: https://www.guru3d.com/story/samsung-reallocates-of-hbm3-capacity-to-produce-ddr5-lpddr6-and-gddr-chips/ https://www.guru3d.com/story/samsung-reallocates-of-hbm3-cap...
- ZenoArrow 9mo ago
  > Sure, the new fabs won't be up and at volume production until late 2027 / early 2028, but committing tens of billions of dollars to new production facilities, including to facilities dedicated to DRAM rather than NAND or HBM, is hardly 'abandoning'. Look at what happened to Crucial. Why would Micron axe it's whole consumer RAM division if it was just experiencing a temporary drop in DRAM supplies until new fabs were brought online? Samsung and SK Hynix may have changes in priorities in the coming years, and in the case of Samsung I'm sure they'll still make sure to supply sufficient DRAM chips for the devices it manufactures (phones, TVs, etc...) but Micron has made it's current intentions fairly clear. They'll probably work with OEMs, but they're unlikely to return to selling to the general public any time soon.
  - direwolf20 9mo ago
    What makes you think it won't start selling it as Micron brand or even Crucial brand once the bubble pops?
Imustaskforhelp 9mo ago
I truly wish Chinese Ram manufacturers luck to fulfill this market. Seriously, the amount of ram and its downstream effects can be hardly understated imo. it really just starts impacting everything.

realusername 9mo ago

That's probably what is going to happen, it's a strategic opportunity for the Chinese government here, there's a big market demand that can fuel their domestic production capabilities that nobody wants to take.

giantrobot 9mo ago
It would be a strategic opportunity for Intel, if they weren't run by imbeciles. DDR4 doesn't require the latest and greatest nodes. It's boring old technology. Even DDR5 is pretty boring. Intel could clean up fabbing DRAM (like they used to). But alas no. They're part of the semiconductor cartel and uninterested in the supply of DRAM increasing. Prices would drop and the fabs would only make stupid margins instead of disgusting margins.
- zozbot234 9mo ago
  Intel would be in the very same bind as every other DRAM producer who's trying to expand production today, only far worse because they have practically no experience fabbing DRAM compared to logic. (You can fab eDRAM on logic processes, but you'd only do that out of sheer desperation since the cost per bit is much higher.) What they could do very easily in this market is bring back frickin Optane and hook it up to a modern PCIe bus with modern PCIe performance.
  - jiggawatts 9mo ago
    A recent development is High Bandwidth Flash (HBF) which works the same as HBM but uses less power and has far higher density. If Intel made an equivalent high bandwidth Optane product, they’d immediately corner the GPU memory market.

dist-epoch 9mo ago

China also needs RAM for AIs, especially since they have plenty of electrical power and building speed to pump out data-centers.

actionfromafar 9mo ago
Turns out their wind "opercapacity" maybe isn't. Maybe they are trading chip efficiency for raw power.
- bee_rider 9mo ago
  Something I’ve been sort of wondering about—LLM training seems like it ought to be the most dispatchable possible workload (easy to pause the thing when you don’t have enough wind power, say). But, when I’ve brought this up before people have pointed out that, basically, top-tier GPU time is just so valuable that they always want to be training full speed ahead. But, hypothetically if they had a ton of previous gen GPUs (so, less efficient) and a ton of intermittent energy (from solar or wind) maybe it could be a good tradeoff to run them intermittently? Ultimately a workload that can profitably consumer “free” watts (and therefore flops) from renewable overprovisioning would be good for society I guess.
  - actionfromafar 9mo ago
    I think as such intermittent power comes on the grid in the coming decades, people will find creative uses for it.
  - zozbot234 9mo ago
    > top-tier GPU time is just so valuable that they always want to be training full speed ahead. I don't think this makes much sense because the "waste" of hardware infrastructure by going from 99.999% duty cycle to 99% is still only ~1%. It's linear in the fraction of forgone capacity, while the fraction of power costs you save from simply shaving off the costliest peaks and shifting that demand to the lows is superlinear.
  - WJW 9mo ago

alecco 9mo ago

They will first fill the local demand for all their electronics manufacturing. Then their massive computer infra and AI. And if any is left, it will be bundled to local PC exporters like Lenovo.

nerdsniper 9mo ago
It’s fine if it’s just filling Chinese manufacturing. Low-cost VPS hosts are going to be using brands like Supermicro anyways. It still gets exported. Except for RAM from YMTC, which the USA gave a near-death sentence to by placing it on the Dept. of Commerce “Entity List” so no USA-associated business can do business with YMTC now.
- neelc 9mo ago
  This is true. We use ASRock Rack servers, mainly because the only option for our industry are OEMs like Supermicro and ASRock. Dell and HPE are non-starters, except for our "storage" offering. Back in 2019, HPE was a good midrange option. Then came ASRock Rack who obliterated HPE with the X470D4U, relegating HPE to high-end enterprise servers. But also made Ryzen-based VPS hosts including yours truly, BuyVM, et al.
- nagisa 9mo ago
  Doesn't YMTC focus on NAND (i.e. flash storage) rather than DRAM? Regardless, point stands.

neelc 9mo ago

I am very hopeful of CXMT. But then then it could take a while for them to ramp up production. Maybe by then, the AI bubble would've burst. One problem with US sanctions is it could hurt US companies too, like in the case of cutting-edge EUV and CXMT. This is when China is actually a hero and not a villain.

phatfish 9mo ago
We can certainly do with less plastic junk and fast fashion. But on the high end it hard to argue that cheaper Chinese products are ever a bad thing. If corporations in western (aligned) countries stopped feeding sovereign wealth funds and private equity with profits and actually invested something maybe they could compete with China more closely, even with whatever shenanigans the CPC get up to with state support.

filloooo 9mo ago

Their scale is simply too small to affect the market outside China, majority of their chips will be eaten up by HBM3 production with yet unknown yield rate. They are forbidden to buy foreign equipment beyond their current process node, which is already obsolete, die size is 40% bigger than Samsung, not to mention lithography, the big 3 are using EUV while they are stuck with lobotomized DUV. They can start making some decent money now, but vastly expanding capacity as is means enormous losses if the cycle went downward a few years later, that's how all previous makers went bankrupt. They can squeeze out a bit more performance if they are ready to go beyond their current node using only domestic equipment and be blacklisted by the US government. But the cap is there, unless they can make a working EUV machine in 5 years, they are doomed to be a minor player, if the current cycle even lasts that long.

zozbot234 9mo ago
Obsolete process node hardly matters when the rest of the market is bottlenecked on production capacity; small overall scale still might. Expanding capacity may or may not make sense; it depends on your prediction of the way the market will go.
direwolf20 9mo ago
They will grow exponentially and catch the western market unawares in 10-15 years with a sudden flood of cheap, effective chips. Just like everything else China makes. Electric vehicles for example.
- filloooo 9mo ago
  Sure, if they've got production grade EUV, but right now they don't even have production grade DUV. I'm also sure they can go as far as 5nm like SMIC if they really wanted to, since it's strategic for China, but the cost would only be justified if the current cycle lasts long enough.
  - direwolf20 9mo ago
    I was corrected elsewhere when I thought RAM was more expensive 10 years ago. RAM was actually cheaper 10 years ago, when it was DDR3/DDR4 too. If any company can replicate the 10 year old SOTA, they can bring prices down.

anonym29 9mo ago

>market that Micron, Samsung and SK Hynix are abandoning to chase the AI server market These three have collectively committed what, approaching $50B towards construction of new facilities and fabs in response to the demand? The memory industry has traditionally projected demand several years out and proactively scheduled construction and manufacturing to be able to meet the projected demand. The last time they did that, in the crypto boom, the boom quickly turned into a bust and the memory makers got burned with a bad case of oversupply for years. With that context, can you blame them for wanting to go a bit more slowly with this boom? Sure, the new fabs won't be up and at volume production until late 2027 / early 2028, but committing tens of billions of dollars to new production facilities, including to facilities dedicated to DRAM rather than NAND or HBM, is hardly 'abandoning'. They're pivoting to higher profit margin segments - rational behavior for a for-profit corporation - but thanks to the invisible hand of the (not quite as free as it should be) market, this is, partially, a self-solving issue, as DRAM margins soar while HBM margins compress, and we're already seeing industry response to that dynamic, too: https://www.guru3d.com/story/samsung-reallocates-of-hbm3-capacity-to-produce-ddr5-lpddr6-and-gddr-chips/ https://www.guru3d.com/story/samsung-reallocates-of-hbm3-cap...

ZenoArrow 9mo ago
> Sure, the new fabs won't be up and at volume production until late 2027 / early 2028, but committing tens of billions of dollars to new production facilities, including to facilities dedicated to DRAM rather than NAND or HBM, is hardly 'abandoning'. Look at what happened to Crucial. Why would Micron axe it's whole consumer RAM division if it was just experiencing a temporary drop in DRAM supplies until new fabs were brought online? Samsung and SK Hynix may have changes in priorities in the coming years, and in the case of Samsung I'm sure they'll still make sure to supply sufficient DRAM chips for the devices it manufactures (phones, TVs, etc...) but Micron has made it's current intentions fairly clear. They'll probably work with OEMs, but they're unlikely to return to selling to the general public any time soon.
- direwolf20 9mo ago
  What makes you think it won't start selling it as Micron brand or even Crucial brand once the bubble pops?

Imustaskforhelp 9mo ago

I truly wish Chinese Ram manufacturers luck to fulfill this market. Seriously, the amount of ram and its downstream effects can be hardly understated imo. it really just starts impacting everything.