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> The speculators are not very smart when it comes to technology, and think RAM is RAM. There is at least three kinds of RAM that are important to this: DDR for

> The speculators are not very smart when it comes to technology, and think RAM is RAM. There is at least three kinds of RAM that are important to this: DDR for system RAM, GDDR for GPUs, and HBM for high density enterprise products, and they are not interchangeable, there is no one-die-fits-all solution. The commenter is also not very smart and does not realize companies making the RAM can trade capacity of one for another and any re-tooling at current price is still profitable. The commenter also does not realize that is also true for lines currently making SSDs

nopurpose 8mo ago
Reminds me of "false sharing" effect: hidden common dependency and bottleneck for what looks like independent variables on the surface.
DiabloD3 8mo ago
They can trade capacity, but they generally aren't. The huge storage-only fabs owned by Samsung and Micron do runs that go for 9 months to 12 months. Flash chips haven't been speculated on nearly as hard, and are suffering from the same sort of weird lack-of-nuance. Samsung, for example, isn't reassigning capacity to meet some sort of phantom datacenter demand that isn't already there, generically, across all datacenters, AI or not. A lot of SSD price skyrocketing is largely "SSDs have RAM on them for cache", not "SSDs have flash chips, and they're both made at the same fabs"... which oddly effects low end SSDs that don't have external cache. To make it worse, for the speculators who do understand this, because it isn't some universal homogeneous group, the flash chips that go into enterprise SSDs aren't the same that go into consumer SSDs. The Big Three still aren't doing some major re-tasking of capacity, as the actual global demand isn't outstripping supply any more than normal. There is no short term problem to fix, speculators are just gonna have to stop hoarding toilet paper like its the start of Covid. Edit: Oh, and if you want to ask how AMD/TSMC or Intel solve this? They can't, same reason why making their own in-house HBM isn't happening.
- davrosthedalek 8mo ago
  Both Western Digital and Kioxia have reported their 2026 Flash/Hard drive production capacity is sold out. Micron killed Crucial to focus on AI.
  - BobbyJo 8mo ago
    Samsung and SK Hynix have moved all of their capacity over as well IIRC.
  - DiabloD3 8mo ago
    I'm glad Kioxia (formerly Toshiba) have been able to do that. However, I also know they've been having problems meeting demand for quite some time, and haven't been able to scale up nearly as fast as the big three have. There was an incident in 2019 and another in 2022 that killed entire runs of chips and screwed them during the Covid datacenter rush. Micron killed Crucial because Crucial was a weird offering that competed with their own partners. This was always a weird problem, and it just didn't make financial sense to continue with it. One of the analyses I read was Crucial was less than 12% of sales. Like, don't get me wrong, I've liked many Crucial products over the years, and even recommended some of them, but it was always weird they were trying to out-compete companies like Adata and other major ODMs. The counterexample of this is Nvidia absolutely trying to kill their partners, and going to first party assembly and sales of products. Nvidia isn't even going to PNY anymore for ODM needs, but going directly to Foxconn. Micron execs claiming its because of AI is a bit weird and revisionist, because they've been working on exiting the Crucial brand since long before they publicly announced it. The public didn't learn of any such plans until right before the Ballistix brand sunsetting was announced in 2021, but started years before that. Like, I know they're just playing to their shareholders, but its still a bit weird.
    - Tsiklon 8mo ago
      When did nvidia drop PNY as ODM for their reference cards? I recall my A5000 (now 2 Gen old) was made by PNY.

nopurpose 8mo ago

Reminds me of "false sharing" effect: hidden common dependency and bottleneck for what looks like independent variables on the surface.

DiabloD3 8mo ago

They can trade capacity, but they generally aren't. The huge storage-only fabs owned by Samsung and Micron do runs that go for 9 months to 12 months. Flash chips haven't been speculated on nearly as hard, and are suffering from the same sort of weird lack-of-nuance. Samsung, for example, isn't reassigning capacity to meet some sort of phantom datacenter demand that isn't already there, generically, across all datacenters, AI or not. A lot of SSD price skyrocketing is largely "SSDs have RAM on them for cache", not "SSDs have flash chips, and they're both made at the same fabs"... which oddly effects low end SSDs that don't have external cache. To make it worse, for the speculators who do understand this, because it isn't some universal homogeneous group, the flash chips that go into enterprise SSDs aren't the same that go into consumer SSDs. The Big Three still aren't doing some major re-tasking of capacity, as the actual global demand isn't outstripping supply any more than normal. There is no short term problem to fix, speculators are just gonna have to stop hoarding toilet paper like its the start of Covid. Edit: Oh, and if you want to ask how AMD/TSMC or Intel solve this? They can't, same reason why making their own in-house HBM isn't happening.

davrosthedalek 8mo ago
Both Western Digital and Kioxia have reported their 2026 Flash/Hard drive production capacity is sold out. Micron killed Crucial to focus on AI.
- BobbyJo 8mo ago
  Samsung and SK Hynix have moved all of their capacity over as well IIRC.
- DiabloD3 8mo ago
  I'm glad Kioxia (formerly Toshiba) have been able to do that. However, I also know they've been having problems meeting demand for quite some time, and haven't been able to scale up nearly as fast as the big three have. There was an incident in 2019 and another in 2022 that killed entire runs of chips and screwed them during the Covid datacenter rush. Micron killed Crucial because Crucial was a weird offering that competed with their own partners. This was always a weird problem, and it just didn't make financial sense to continue with it. One of the analyses I read was Crucial was less than 12% of sales. Like, don't get me wrong, I've liked many Crucial products over the years, and even recommended some of them, but it was always weird they were trying to out-compete companies like Adata and other major ODMs. The counterexample of this is Nvidia absolutely trying to kill their partners, and going to first party assembly and sales of products. Nvidia isn't even going to PNY anymore for ODM needs, but going directly to Foxconn. Micron execs claiming its because of AI is a bit weird and revisionist, because they've been working on exiting the Crucial brand since long before they publicly announced it. The public didn't learn of any such plans until right before the Ballistix brand sunsetting was announced in 2021, but started years before that. Like, I know they're just playing to their shareholders, but its still a bit weird.
  - Tsiklon 8mo ago
    When did nvidia drop PNY as ODM for their reference cards? I recall my A5000 (now 2 Gen old) was made by PNY.