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> The only way they will is if the hyperscalers and AI companies start to implode -- which will kill a huge portion of the US economy and lead to global recessi

by josephg 8mo ago

> The only way they will is if the hyperscalers and AI companies start to implode -- which will kill a huge portion of the US economy and lead to global recession, so, cheap RAM but nobody can afford it I disagree. Modern RAM is made in fabs, which are ridiculously expensive to manufacture. Modern EUV lithography machines cost around 500M each. They're manufactured by hand. Only one company in the world knows how to manufacture them right now. So we can't exactly increase global manufacturing capacity overnight. The way I see, there's 2 ways this goes: 1. AI is a fad. RAM and storage demand falls. Prices drop back to normal. 2. AI is not a fad. Over time, more and more fabs come online to meet the supply needs of the AI industry. The price comes down as manufacturing supply increases. Or some combination of the two. The high prices right now are because there's a demand shock. There's way more demand for RAM than anyone expected, so the RAM that is produced sells at a premium. High prices aren't because RAM costs more to manufacture than it did a couple years ago. There's just not enough to go around. In 5-10 years, manufacturing capacity will match demand and prices will drop. Just give it time.

chii 8mo ago
> In 5-10 years and waiting for 5-10 yrs for a lower price is a long wait for consumers. If food prices were high, would you say to the starving person to wait for 5-10yrs for food?
- josephg 8mo ago
  Thats a ridiculous metaphor. Ram isn't food. Nobody starved to death from insufficient RAM in their computer.
  - briansm 8mo ago
    Economies die from lack of produce though.
    - josephg 8mo ago
      When the internet boom happened, computers had a tiny fraction of the RAM they have today. Everything worked fine. Programmers had to make efficient programs. But we were fine with that. We just programmed in C and C++ and shipped small binaries, because what choice did we have? Nobody tried to build desktop software in javascript on top of electron. And nobody built web servers in python. If all consumer devices only shipped with 1gb of RAM maximum, we'd get over it remarkably quickly. Just about the only times large amounts of RAM is an actual requirement is AI, some data science / simulation, and editing video in 8k. And maybe 3d modelling. Lots of programs we run today are memory hogs for no good reason - like the rust compiler, cyberpunk 2077 and google chrome. But we could make those programs much more memory efficient if we really had to. Cyberpunk wouldn't look as pretty. But nobody would really care. The economy won't die due to expensive RAM. Programmers will just adapt, like we've always done.
      - chii 8mo ago
        > But nobody would really care. no, you should say that you personally wouldn't care, but that does not generalize. People do care, just like people prefer eating better food than just bread and milk. And after having had a taste of the good stuff, people do not want to revert - loss aversion is real. So if consumer devices regressed back to only having 1gb of ram, they will feel the loss, and they will complain if nothing else. The world of lean, efficient software that require little ram will not return. Programmers (read:companies selling products) will not adapt, but instead, the requirements for computing will become more exclusionary to those with the means.
        snovv_crash 8mo ago
        Software that uses less RAM isn't necessarily worse, often RAM is wasted purely due to carelessness and because it didn't matter. Your assertion that a world of lean software won't return is backwards looking; that was all driven by hardware being cheaper than developer effort. If we now enter a world of AI-enhanced developer effort being cheaper than hardware, perhaps we can have lean efficient software again.
orthoxerox 8mo ago
> Only one company in the world knows how to manufacture them right now. And that company is in Europe, isn't it? The EU has a great opportunity to enter the market: it's a high-tech manufacturing job, not something that requires lots of cheap labor.
- deepsun 8mo ago
  Yes, but it's not that important. Any complex high-tech product requires suppliers from all over the world. For example, I bet the EU company depends on a lot of China companies critically. Just like any airliner is produced by pretty much the whole world.
- joe_mamba 8mo ago
  > The EU has a great opportunity to enter the market: You can't just get into RAM manufacturing overnight whenever you feel like it, like you're building washing machines. You need a lot more than just ASML machines, you need the supply chain, the IP, the experienced professionals with know-how, the education system, the energy, the right regulations, etc. The EU exited the RAM manufacturing business a long time ago when RAM prices sunk, see Qimonda, meaning it would be a long, expensive uphill battle to get back in, and currently EU has no major semiconductor manufacturing ambitions, or ambitions in commodity hardware manufacturing of any kind, so that's not gonna happen. Of course, RAM is no longer a commodity right now, but nobody can guarantee it won't be again when the AI bubble burst and RAM prices crash, so spinning up the know-how, manufacturing facilities and supply chains from the ground up just for RAM is insanely expensive and risky and might leave you holding the bag. > it's a high-tech manufacturing job, not something that requires lots of cheap labor. Except semiconductor manufacturing DOES require cheap labor relative to the high degrees of skills and specialization needed at that cutting edge. Unlike in Taiwan, skilled STEM grads in the EU (and even more in the US) who invest that time and effort in education and specialization, will go to better paying careers with better WLB like software or pharma, than in hardware and semi manufacturing that pays peanuts by comparison and works you to death in deadlines. Also, profitable semi manufacturing requires cheap energy and lax environmental regulations, which EU lacks. So even more compounding reasons why you won't see too many new semi fabs opening here.
joe_mamba 8mo ago
>Modern RAM is made in fabs, which are ridiculously expensive to manufacture. Modern EUV lithography machines cost around 500M each. They're manufactured by hand. Only one company in the world knows how to manufacture them right now. You're wrong here. You don't need the most cutting edge ASML EUV machines to make RAM. Most RAM fabs still use standard DUV.
- Animats 8mo ago
  > You're wrong here. You don't need the most cutting edge ASML EUV machines to make RAM. Most RAM fabs still use standard DUV. Ah. Please check that. Which types of DRAM can be made in a DUV fab? Obviously the older ones, but are those obsolete for new computers. This really matters.
  - joe_mamba 8mo ago
    DDR4 and basic HBM is still in high demand right now and that was made before the first EUV fabs came online.
  - amluto 8mo ago
    CXMT’s entire portfolio is made without EUV, and CXMT claims to have acceptable yield and performance comparable to other producers. Keep in mind that the high bandwidths of modern RAM modules aren’t really a property of the RAM cells so much as a property of the read and write circuitry and the DDR or HBM transceivers, and those are a large part of the IP but a small part of the die. There is no such thing as “double data rate” or “high bandwidth” DRAM cells. Even DRAM cells from the 1990s could be read in microseconds. Reading and streaming your fancy AI model weights is an embarrassingly parallel problem and even 1 TB/sec does not even come close to stressing the ability of the raw cells to be read. This in contrast to, say, modern tensor processors where the actual ALUs set a hard cap on throughput and everyone works hard to come closer to the cap. Take a look at what makes a modern computer with good RAM performance work: it’s the interconnect between the RAM and processor.
  - sehansen 8mo ago
    From Micron, everything up to their 1-beta node is DUV. Their 1-gamma node they debuted last year is the only EUV node they have. If you bought a Micron-based DDR5 RAM stick a year ago it would have been DUV and you could get those up to DDR5-8000. 1-gamma increases that to DDR5-9200, so if you can live with ~15% less performance DUV is good enough.
m4rtink 8mo ago
Do you really need EUV for RAM manufacture already ? IIRC RAM and NAND still DUV & EUV is really only used for the most cutting edge GPU & CPU stuff.

by josephg 8mo ago

chii 8mo ago

> In 5-10 years and waiting for 5-10 yrs for a lower price is a long wait for consumers. If food prices were high, would you say to the starving person to wait for 5-10yrs for food?

josephg 8mo ago
Thats a ridiculous metaphor. Ram isn't food. Nobody starved to death from insufficient RAM in their computer.
- briansm 8mo ago
  Economies die from lack of produce though.
  - josephg 8mo ago
    When the internet boom happened, computers had a tiny fraction of the RAM they have today. Everything worked fine. Programmers had to make efficient programs. But we were fine with that. We just programmed in C and C++ and shipped small binaries, because what choice did we have? Nobody tried to build desktop software in javascript on top of electron. And nobody built web servers in python. If all consumer devices only shipped with 1gb of RAM maximum, we'd get over it remarkably quickly. Just about the only times large amounts of RAM is an actual requirement is AI, some data science / simulation, and editing video in 8k. And maybe 3d modelling. Lots of programs we run today are memory hogs for no good reason - like the rust compiler, cyberpunk 2077 and google chrome. But we could make those programs much more memory efficient if we really had to. Cyberpunk wouldn't look as pretty. But nobody would really care. The economy won't die due to expensive RAM. Programmers will just adapt, like we've always done.
    - chii 8mo ago
      > But nobody would really care. no, you should say that you personally wouldn't care, but that does not generalize. People do care, just like people prefer eating better food than just bread and milk. And after having had a taste of the good stuff, people do not want to revert - loss aversion is real. So if consumer devices regressed back to only having 1gb of ram, they will feel the loss, and they will complain if nothing else. The world of lean, efficient software that require little ram will not return. Programmers (read:companies selling products) will not adapt, but instead, the requirements for computing will become more exclusionary to those with the means.
      - snovv_crash 8mo ago
        Software that uses less RAM isn't necessarily worse, often RAM is wasted purely due to carelessness and because it didn't matter. Your assertion that a world of lean software won't return is backwards looking; that was all driven by hardware being cheaper than developer effort. If we now enter a world of AI-enhanced developer effort being cheaper than hardware, perhaps we can have lean efficient software again.

orthoxerox 8mo ago

> Only one company in the world knows how to manufacture them right now. And that company is in Europe, isn't it? The EU has a great opportunity to enter the market: it's a high-tech manufacturing job, not something that requires lots of cheap labor.

deepsun 8mo ago
Yes, but it's not that important. Any complex high-tech product requires suppliers from all over the world. For example, I bet the EU company depends on a lot of China companies critically. Just like any airliner is produced by pretty much the whole world.
joe_mamba 8mo ago
> The EU has a great opportunity to enter the market: You can't just get into RAM manufacturing overnight whenever you feel like it, like you're building washing machines. You need a lot more than just ASML machines, you need the supply chain, the IP, the experienced professionals with know-how, the education system, the energy, the right regulations, etc. The EU exited the RAM manufacturing business a long time ago when RAM prices sunk, see Qimonda, meaning it would be a long, expensive uphill battle to get back in, and currently EU has no major semiconductor manufacturing ambitions, or ambitions in commodity hardware manufacturing of any kind, so that's not gonna happen. Of course, RAM is no longer a commodity right now, but nobody can guarantee it won't be again when the AI bubble burst and RAM prices crash, so spinning up the know-how, manufacturing facilities and supply chains from the ground up just for RAM is insanely expensive and risky and might leave you holding the bag. > it's a high-tech manufacturing job, not something that requires lots of cheap labor. Except semiconductor manufacturing DOES require cheap labor relative to the high degrees of skills and specialization needed at that cutting edge. Unlike in Taiwan, skilled STEM grads in the EU (and even more in the US) who invest that time and effort in education and specialization, will go to better paying careers with better WLB like software or pharma, than in hardware and semi manufacturing that pays peanuts by comparison and works you to death in deadlines. Also, profitable semi manufacturing requires cheap energy and lax environmental regulations, which EU lacks. So even more compounding reasons why you won't see too many new semi fabs opening here.

joe_mamba 8mo ago

>Modern RAM is made in fabs, which are ridiculously expensive to manufacture. Modern EUV lithography machines cost around 500M each. They're manufactured by hand. Only one company in the world knows how to manufacture them right now. You're wrong here. You don't need the most cutting edge ASML EUV machines to make RAM. Most RAM fabs still use standard DUV.

Animats 8mo ago
> You're wrong here. You don't need the most cutting edge ASML EUV machines to make RAM. Most RAM fabs still use standard DUV. Ah. Please check that. Which types of DRAM can be made in a DUV fab? Obviously the older ones, but are those obsolete for new computers. This really matters.
- joe_mamba 8mo ago
  DDR4 and basic HBM is still in high demand right now and that was made before the first EUV fabs came online.
- amluto 8mo ago
  CXMT’s entire portfolio is made without EUV, and CXMT claims to have acceptable yield and performance comparable to other producers. Keep in mind that the high bandwidths of modern RAM modules aren’t really a property of the RAM cells so much as a property of the read and write circuitry and the DDR or HBM transceivers, and those are a large part of the IP but a small part of the die. There is no such thing as “double data rate” or “high bandwidth” DRAM cells. Even DRAM cells from the 1990s could be read in microseconds. Reading and streaming your fancy AI model weights is an embarrassingly parallel problem and even 1 TB/sec does not even come close to stressing the ability of the raw cells to be read. This in contrast to, say, modern tensor processors where the actual ALUs set a hard cap on throughput and everyone works hard to come closer to the cap. Take a look at what makes a modern computer with good RAM performance work: it’s the interconnect between the RAM and processor.
- sehansen 8mo ago
  From Micron, everything up to their 1-beta node is DUV. Their 1-gamma node they debuted last year is the only EUV node they have. If you bought a Micron-based DDR5 RAM stick a year ago it would have been DUV and you could get those up to DDR5-8000. 1-gamma increases that to DDR5-9200, so if you can live with ~15% less performance DUV is good enough.

m4rtink 8mo ago

Do you really need EUV for RAM manufacture already ? IIRC RAM and NAND still DUV & EUV is really only used for the most cutting edge GPU & CPU stuff.