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How can Apple deal with the memory shortage?
- christkv 5mo agoOur problem is lack of competition
- SoftTalker 5mo agoHigh prices for RAM should attract competition.
- pixl97 5mo agoIn general, no. It takes billions to tens of billions to setup a fab. It also takes years to get it working. Then when you add in the IP for memory, it pretty much ain't happening. All the RAM monopoly has to do is wait 3 days before you're producing and drop the price and you're ruined. Meanwhile they've built up a battle chest of hundreds of billions in profits. China might be the only competition we see come out of this, but only because they are playing the long game and have trillions of US dollars to play the game with.
- SoftTalker 5mo agoThere are a lot of companies that have billions in cash and are also prodigious buyers of RAM. Companies like Apple, Google, Meta, Nvidia... Do they want to get into a commodity business like RAM production? Maybe not, but if prices stay high long enough that demand for their products falls off, they might think about it. I know that I personally and my employer are cutting way back on new technology purchases and squeezing as much as we can out of old equipment due to the cost of RAM and storage now.
- cogman10 5mo agoAnd none of these companies are operating their own fabs, that's the problem. Fabs are a cutthroat business that's very hard to get into. It costs billions of continual investment to stay a float. That's why there's really only about 3 different companies with cutting edge fabs. TSMC, Micron, and Samsung. Even intel, who built a huge portion of their business on cutting edge fab tech, has struggled to keep funding it. AMD got out of the fab business almost a decade ago (spinning off global foundries) and that spin off is no longer cutting edge. AMD uses TSMC. Fabs are some of the most expensive factories to operate on this planet due to a constant need for brand new equipment and cutting edge research. That's why there's not an Apple, Google, Meta, or Nvidia fab. That's why there's not an AMD fab. That's why Intel fabs are treading water. Without the constant investment, you very quickly find yourself in the company of yet another cutthroat industry, the "not cutting edge" fabrication industry. And that, by and large, has already been locked up by about a dozen fab companies.
- SoftTalker 5mo agoAnd a 64G DDR5 ECC DIMM costs $3K and is backordered. If ths isn't a bubble and demand persists, some new players are eventually going to want a cut of that.
- cogman10 5mo agoWe aren't talking about making new lug-nuts. A company can't just will a fab into existence. For example, Micron is actively building a few new fabs. One of which has been in progress since Biden (pretty close to my home in fact). It's not going to be completed for another 5 years at a minimum. And this is a company that has the experience and partnerships for producing fabs. Yes, a new company might decide they want to enter the market, but even if they decided, today, "Yes we'll do this" I'd expect a minimum of a decade before they start spinning out their first chips. That's also at least a $1T investment at this point to get started.
- astrange 5mo ago> And this is a company that has the experience and partnerships for producing fabs. Not even they necessarily have the experience to do it! Intel has a policy called "Copy EXACTLY!" for fab construction where they make every irrelevant detail the same as their last fab, because they don't actually know which of the details matter.
- cogman10 5mo agoOh for sure. A story that gets told at the micron factory is that for a long time they'd experience chip failures at increased rates. During the night it was pretty good, but during the day these random failures would creep up. After spending a lot of time studying the problem what they finally realized is they built the building too close to the interstate and vibrations from the interstate were ultimately making their way into the factory causing errors. To combat this problem, they spent millions retrofitting shock absorbers onto the building. It's not shocking that intel would do the same because even the slightest movements and vibrations can spoil the chips. Putting a restroom in the wrong spot might spoil a batch when someone flushes the toilet.
- pixl97 5mo ago>a lot of companies that have billions in cash They sit on billions because they avoid spending their money as much as possible. The amount they spend on RAM in surrounding few years would represent almost nothing to the massive money hole that would happen if they tried to make their own fab. Also, these problems tend to affect the entire market, which means if you're big, you're fine. It's when problems don't affect your competitors but affect you that the real issues for these companies crop up.
- andrepd 5mo agoReal life is not SimCity, you can't just plonk more RAM factories like that. It takes an ungodly amount of capital investment, many years before you see a cent in return, plus there's only a couple firms worldwide that can do it in the first place.
- GeekyBear 5mo agoChinese DRAM production is already getting ready to ramp up. https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/ram/hp-reportedly-eyes-chinese-suppliers-for-dram-as-global-shortage-sparks-shake-up-analyst-says-memory-chips-are-commodities-that-can-easily-be-replaced https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/ram/hp-reportedly...
- gessha 5mo agoIt might take a while but Chinese companies will figure out/steal/innovate into the right IP for different memory types and will cut out the American patents, ASML and East Asian fabs middle man. I can’t wait for times when I can afford chips from less than 8 years ago.
- kingstnap 5mo agoThe only thing that can actually introduce competition in RAM is some form of government backing around national security concerns. China has been doing this for some time though so there will probably be major Chinese supply coming in the medium term.
- laughing_man 5mo agoThe problem is every twenty years or so DRAM makers get burned by building for demand that mostly disappears overnight. They've been through it enough times that they're going to be really reluctant to build new fabs. They'll certainly put some effort into getting the absolute most out of their existing installations, but I would be surprised if you see a lot of new fabs until they decide the demand is durable.
- ceejayoz 5mo agoIf we assume a spherical cow!
- Danox 5mo agoIt will the Chinese, this will be the last big payday for the three company cartel and in time I think Apple will move in-house and design around.
- colechristensen 5mo agoNo, it's the time, effort, and capital necessary to build cutting edge semiconductor fabs. Measured in tens of billions of dollars and decades.
- kryptiskt 5mo agoThis reads like Apple fanfiction to me. > But then Apple can negotiate on another basis and say, well, if you don’t do us a favor here and give us a better rate, then maybe we won’t work with you when all this settles down. You know things are going to settle down. These things are always cyclical. There’s never been a semiconductor boom that’s not followed by a semiconductor bust. Never. And they know it. I have to think that the RAM suppliers wouldn't be that easy to intimidate with threats, since they know perfectly well how few alternatives Apple has. And they are also perfectly aware that Apple will play hardball with them when the market turns, regardless of whether they were nice to Apple now.
- coredog64 5mo agoApple bought PA Semi as the starting point to getting off of Intel. Theoretically, memory seems like something Apple could figure out how to fab. And it's not like they don't have any capital reserves.
- ls65536 5mo agoThey bought P.A. Semi, but it was for their design capability; they never had fabs anyway, and Apple still depends on TSMC and others for manufacturing chips. Apple building fabs to ensure a guaranteed supply of memory (or logic) chips would be an unprecedented level of vertical integration, even for them.
- opengrass 5mo agoCan't even find a ddr2 sodimm that's not a ripoff.
- refulgentis 5mo ago"So much so that I heard Samsung’s making more money now with memory than Nvidia’s making with their processors." I loved Asymco during the Apple 2010s run up, but this, inter alia things mentioned in other comments, should give the reader pause and evaluate how much of this is general knowledge x handwaving x vibes versus a practical ground floor understanding in 2026.
- throwaway613746 5mo ago[dead]
- jackmott42 5mo ago[flagged]
- fhn 5mo agobuy an Intel!
- autoexec 5mo ago[flagged]
- gensym 5mo agoYeah, I guess it was just charity that led them to develop a really fast, efficient processor and to put good memory in their machines in the first place. Don't mistake not caring about "specs" with being indifferent to the experience.
- autoexec 5mo ago"the experience" is what I meant by "vibes" and Apple users can care a lot about that. That means a whole lot more than just performance though which is why it's often so easy to find non-Apple products with way better specs for the same or lower prices. Some Apple users are fine with a slower experience as long as it's still an Apple experience.
- fhn 5mo agocompletely agree. Most Apple users are in it for the ecosystem. Tech people care about performance and these people don't typically choose Apple until recently with the M series which are a beast. Even I'm envious.
- regexorcist 5mo agoNo need to be. I'm rocking Asahi on a M1 and it's the absolute peak Linux desktop experience.
- ruguo 5mo agoI wonder if companies like Apple will eventually start making memory themselves.
- spiffistan 5mo agoThis is probably the natural conclusion but it will take some time to get there
- NooneAtAll3 5mo agoin a sense that's exactly what cartel wants - to lure out investments that will get squashed into uselessness by supply flood that will follow
- brcmthrowaway 5mo agoWho is the cartel? SK Hynix, Samsung and Micron? They should be banned.
- Danox 5mo agoThis AI memory crisis will be their last big payday. I think the Chinese will take advantage of this and take over the memory market worldwide, excluding the United States and some parts of Europe. The rest of the world will end up using Chinese memory.
- bombcar 5mo agoThe key is Apple can be their own customer and just not care anymore. It’ll probably only be worth it if it enables something “new” like more bigger Ultra chips or something.
- NooneAtAll3 5mo agoand that's part of risk management, on both sides does Apple have enough of a design moat to overcome eventual overprice compared to competitors when "outisde" production is 2,4,10x cheaper does Apple have enough of income/savings to maintain internal production capacity if it decides to switch back to outside sources or can Apple acquire enough fab competence to negate internal/external price difference we'll see how it plays out
- melonpan7 5mo agoThe author doesn’t seem to understand that Apple places RAM orders years in advance. I’m not sure if it’s even feasible or possible for Apple to fully integrate their supply chain and open up memory fabs, the cost of entry must be enormous.
- dweekly 5mo agoAnd by "places orders" we mean "helps TSMC acquire plots of land on which their next facilities will be constructed" kind of level of scope, timing, and commitment.
- fhn 5mo agoTSMC doesn't make RAM do they?
- dweekly 5mo agoFair, and I meant it as illustrative of partner depth generally rather than as a specific example around RAM.
- Danox 5mo agoNo, but they can and so can Apple if it becomes critical, I don’t know what is more critical to Apple than replacing Intel, Qualcomm, or Nvidia, but memory probably is number four on the list which means it probably is something that will be addressed?
- melonpan7 5mo agoYes I believe that’s what being a manufacturer partner entails
- michaelt 5mo agoIn my experience, the corporate-speak "partnering with" can mean almost anything. Apple gives TSMC a billion dollars to build a cutting edge fab dedicated to making Apple's chips, a deal they repeat several times over more than a decade? Partnership. Youtuber takes $300 to read an ad, giving viewers a 10% discount code? Also a partnership.
- dnnddidiej 5mo agoGot a shitty PC with 32gb ddr5 now the ram alone is almost worth as much as the purchase price of it all. It is playing up.. normally I'd return it to Amazon but...
- nikhizzle 5mo agoEx-Apple kernel engineer here, Apple will deal with the memory shortage by making software more efficient in ram usage. Apple will just make every aspect of the system more and more memory efficient. They've done it before over and over and can do it again.
- cybercatgurrl 5mo agoi wonder if this is the real reason behind the push for the snow leopard like release this year
- szmarczak 5mo agoApple? Sure. What about other developers? Firefox, Chrome already use gigabytes of RAM.
- bombcar 5mo agoSuddenly Safari can surge ahead again!
- replygirl 5mo agowelcome to the rust community
- astrange 5mo agoIt's the websites that use that RAM, not the browsers. (Often the ads on the websites.)
- clumsysmurf 5mo agoI disagree, there is low-hanging fruit Firefox is leaving on the table. The main thing that comes to mind is tab unloading. They don't unload tabs automatically like chrome can. I was pleasantly surprised at the tab unloading settings under "memory saver" in ungoogled-chromium.
- Jap2-0 5mo ago
- mixologic 5mo agoThis makes me wonder when we'll start trading memory on the commodities markets.
- markboo 5mo agoLess APP, more LLM
- nozzlegear 5mo agoWhat?
- washadjeffmad 5mo agoE=MC^2+AI
- treebeard901 5mo agoIf Tim Apple can't beg China for more while in Beijing then I guess they need to port SoftRAM 95 to OSX.
- gizajob 5mo agoMaybe even MagnaRAM after that. It had a crocodile on the advert.
- Nevermark 5mo agoTheir best strategy is to buy Micron Semiconductor 12 months ago with cash equivalents on hand, for $106 billion. No brainer. Best move they will ever did.
- insumanth 5mo agoMy Guess * Absorb the impact by some margin * Slash base models (which they are already doing) * Efficient software - So, end user experience is not affected. * Direct Price hike always be an option.
- hstaab 5mo ago#3 may prove difficult besides Safari
- realaknez 5mo agoI think it's kind of inevitable for somebody to take up a RAM factory to sell for normal consumers and brands even if it means less profit the sales would be much bigger. The question is if somebody is kind enough to do so.
- rswail 5mo agoI read somewhere that there are other memory manufacturers in CN that are pivoting to consumer RAM to fill the gap. Personally I think the AI boom will crash out when all of these datacentres get rationalized. RAM manufacturers will crash as is normal in the semiconductor market.
- thisislife2 5mo agoJust a thought - stop bloody soldering the RAM and the SSDs. That partially transfers the burden on to the customers and makes their product more repairable ... Mac Minis (with un-soldered RAM and HDD / SSDs) used to be sold with minimum 4 GB RAM, if I remember right). This, way, you can still sell devices with lower RAM, and customers can upgrade in the future when supply increases.
- iamshs 5mo agoAnother problem is locked hardware. Newest Synology hardware has lifted the HDD locks but still doesn't allow third party SSD and RAM. Mac Mini storage upgrade is a DIY solution, why not use the standard M.2 2230 slot?
- spider-mario 5mo ago> Newest Synology hardware has lifted the HDD locks but still doesn't allow third party SSD and RAM. True of NVMe SSDs, but SATA SSDs are no problem.
- iamshs 5mo agoYes. These units now come with dedicated NVMe slots and they don't accept third party drives.
- pjc50 5mo agoIt takes up more space and costs more (connectors are surprisingly expensive), as well as adding an electrical overhead, while most (yes, not all) customers don't take advantage of it.
- anonymars 5mo agoAlso somewhat less secure (cold boot attack: https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_boot_attack#Preventing_physical_access https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_boot_attack#Preventing_physi...)
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- green_3_space 5mo ago[dead]
- ksec 5mo agoI am just sadden to see this question constantly being floated. Someday Apple will make their own memory, own chip, own Fab. It makes zero sense for them to do so. People don't seems to realise how commodity works. When price is high everyone is saying it is a cartel. When they are losing money they say it is tough luck.
- raincole 5mo agoYeah. Everyone seems to forget that making memory was considered a bad business just a decade ago.
- Danox 5mo agoThe current memory crisis it’s just another/final nail in the coffin for Apple moving the design and engineering of memory in house they have the capability and they have the money to do so.
- ksec 5mo agoMay be Apple should purchase Intel or TSMC first? So they could be their own Foundry? What about ASML so they could produce the machine that fabs requires? And the current memory crisis? There is no crisis for Apple. There is only crisis for others buying at spot price.
- Danox 5mo agoApple doesn’t need to buy them just need to continue to partner with TSMC, as far as Intel is concerned why would they buy or work with them now? Intel is absolutely low end these days and they were the company that said no to Apple when Apple wanted them to design the chip for the iPhone, Intel couldn’t imagine a future where computing was smaller better faster and hence they missed the mobile revolution take Intel at their word the future just isn’t for them.
- ksec 5mo ago>Apple doesn’t need to buy them just need to continue to partner with TSMC, So why would Apple need to make their own memory? The theory is exactly the same. They just need to continue to partner with their NAND and DRAM vendors.
- Danox 5mo agoApple can deal with the memory shortage in the same way they dealt with Intel saying no to building a processor for the iPhone the Apple Silicon design group can certainly do what’s necessary in house to design memory and SSD’s in house, and since Apple saved money on not participating in the AI data-center fiasco money won’t be a problem. Apple can team up with TSMC to build some type of memory fab in the United States may take three years? Prineville, Oregon looks good close enough to water and Micron who won’t need many people once the Chinese use this memory crisis to take over the worldwide memory market… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TSMC_Arizona https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TSMC_Arizona TSMC announced the Arizona Fab in 2020 they won’t have the final build out until 2029 for the 2nm (Build in house go around)
- praseodym 5mo ago> since Apple saved money on not participating in the AI data-center fiasco They have unused custom built AI servers sitting in warehouses: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47221264 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47221264
- Danox 5mo agoDon’t be obtuse, what Apple didn’t do and isn’t doing is spending billions upon billions and dollars trying to train AI models like Meta, Google or Microsoft, Oracle and OpenAI those five companies together have spent well over $1 trillion dollars? In their efforts to date. Now I know Apple has given a measly one billion dollar refund to Google so far and they’re not paying OpenAI anything as far as we know and internally, maybe Apple spent a couple of billion dollars, which is less than what they spent on their rumored electric car so I think they have the money.
- spicymaki 5mo agoMemory optimization is incredibly low hanging fruit. We have been so spoiled with the abundance of memory. There is just so much code out there that does not manage object life cycles well (over allocation, leaks, etc.), encodes data in text rather than binary representation. The move to static binaries over dynamic libraries, applications that run web engines underneath rather than cleaner UIs. I hope the memory shortage will encourage us to focus on efficiency again.