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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. Th
by filloooo 8mo 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 8mo agoObsolete 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 8mo agoThey 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 8mo agoSure, 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 8mo agoI 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.
- mikestorrent 8mo agoThis is what I expect to happen. 2016's ram was good enough for consumers then and probably still is for a huge class of consumers now. I'd rather 32GB of DDR3 than 8gb of DDR5.
- renewiltord 8mo agoYou can get like terabytes of DDR3 used. No one wants that shit. Too slow. Power hog.
- gunalx 8mo agoWell yes, but it isn't too cheap for how 8ld it is.
- renewiltord 8mo agoSome dude literally gave away a couple of terabytes on Reddit homelab subreddit the other day.
- nebula8804 8mo agoThis is where China's crazy solar advantage affects real day to day outcomes. When you have electric costs going into 6-8 cents per kwh then you can run older nodes that slurp more electricity. They aren't even done lowering the price. I've thought about this recently. If the dream of meterless electricity came to fruition then that terabytes of DDR3 could essentially be run until it literally burned out and then recycled back into its core components. The sun provides more power than the entirety of society could possibly currently use and so its a shame that the ram is being tossed instead of used.
- Imustaskforhelp 8mo agoThe problem is that the chances of the bursting of AI bubble seem far more likely than this happening first which you say about 10-15 years. plus, the ram manufacturer cycle moves and does this all the time. Atrioc does a really good job explaining these cycles[0] But the point is that AI demand peaked when the supply was at its lowest which is why we are caught up in this messed up timeline that we live in. And this has sort of happen in the past too and this industries notorious for it (again watch the video, definitely worth it imo) But still it feels like we are in this atleast for a year or two hard. Micron is iirc like suggesting what hundreds of billions of $ in factory investment right now and saying that the fastest might open in early 2027 Some estimates 2028 idk, I do feel like the chances of AI bubble popping around this time are likely too. But still for atleast 1-2 years, we either as consumers or as small vps providers (yes the people who create vps providers are same people like you and me) are absolutely f*ed and the question is around that imo. [0] The AI Tax Has Started: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nipeaKC3dWs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nipeaKC3dWs
- cogman10 8mo agoThe thing is, even if the market bursts, prices are already inflated. RAM manufacturers know that everything 5xed and they aren't likely going to rush out and drop the price levels to pre-expansion. Once the AI market bursts, you can expect slow and methodical decreases in price (if any). And that will ultimately buy China a lot of time to shove their ram into the market cutting ram manufacturers out of most non-US markets. I think the major memory manufacturers are simply banking on their ability to flood the market if worst comes to worse. That or I could see some standards trickery around DDR6 (or some new BS standard). It'd not shock me if they coordinated with AMD/Intel to keep the standard secret as long as possible simply give themselves a lead in production.
- soanvig 8mo agoGraphic cards prices normalized quite quickly after crypto boom. Before going nuts for AI training of course.
- 8mo ago
- RobotToaster 8mo agoThey're already producing 10nm DRAM with their current nodes, and they're working on producing 3d DRAM which may make node size somewhat moot.
- filloooo 8mo agoNot 10nm, they are producing with 18.5nm and 17nm now, which technically already is in breach of US restrictions, the US government can blacklist them if they feel like it. 3D DRAM is no magic, it will only give them maybe 2 generations' breathing room if they got the required etching equipment figured out. But others will be doing 3D DRAM with EUV by then.
- direwolf20 8mo agoIf the US government bans the import of RAM, it guarantees the immediate collapse of the US.
- filloooo 8mo agoI don't think so, Lutnick just made sure the US wouldn't need to import DRAM with his newest threats.
- direwolf20 8mo agoWow. They are 100% tariffing all RAM. RAM is not made in the USA. This destroys all the AI companies, and more.
- CamperBob2 8mo agoI don't understand why we don't just cut to the chase and elect the Joker in 2028. The same people will vote for him, and he won't be any worse for the country.
- defrost 8mo ago
- ErroneousBosh 8mo ago> 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. Which suits the rest of the world just fine. More for the rest of us, and if the single-digit-percent portion of their market that the US represents wants to lock itself out, no skin off anyone else's nose.
- matkoniecz 8mo ago> die size is 40% bigger than Samsung likely naive question: why it is a problem? I would be fine if RAM in my PC has 10 times larger physical size if it is overall cheaper. I guess that larger may have more power draw, but given costs of RAM and electricity and power draw of RAM it sounds unlikely to be a problem. At a high end it would run into real-estate prices - at some point using half of room for computer stops making economical sense, given costs of rent or buying flat space. But just doubling size of PC does not sound like a bad tradeoff if it would be say 20% cheaper. Or 50% cheaper. Is it about not fitting existing motherboards? Is there reason why they cannot just make memories physically larger? It is "only" 40%, not 40000%
- Orygin 8mo agoFor big PC towers it's not that big of a deal, but for smaller laptops, phones and SBC, having bigger chips may not be feasible due to size constraints
- direwolf20 8mo agoMost of a chip is the packaging. The die can be bigger.
- ZenoArrow 8mo 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 don't currently have the tech to compete on HBM3 production, but they can produce DDR5 memory, and they will undoubtedly be scaling up production on this.
- beAbU 8mo agoIs EUV and latest&greatest nodes a necessity to create RAM? Especially consumer grade RAM?
- lelanthran 8mo ago> 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. And? That's good enough. My daily driver desktop, which I use to do development, plus play a few games (FC5, Dirt Rally, etc) has 16GB DDR3. For 90% of computers in use today, including laptops, that RAM you call obsolete is fine. Users aren't going to complain that a document which takes 3s to open now takes 3.5s What you need as far as RAM goes, to make the computer perform acceptably is capacity. Users get a bigger performance boost by going from 8GB RAM to 16GB Ram and from 16GB Ram to 32 GB RAM than from DDR3 to DDR4 or from DDR4 to DDR5.