6 ms·

Price should send a signal to manufacturers to build more capacity. I wonder if they will though, it takes quite a bit of time, and it's not certain that the d

by thijson 4mo ago

Price should send a signal to manufacturers to build more capacity. I wonder if they will though, it takes quite a bit of time, and it's not certain that the demand will continue to exist once built.

mgfist 4mo ago
A fab for high end memory costs $20B and 5 years to build. It will happen, but yeah it takes time and money
- danaris 4mo ago
  It will only happen if the bottom doesn't fall out of the market for AI datacenters in the next few months.
  - chadgpt3 4mo ago
    It's coming up on a year since the crisis started and at every single point it's been "next few months"
    - danaris 4mo ago
      Well, that's the thing about a bubble: it can be very possible to accurately tell it's a bubble—and the definition of a bubble is that it's going to pop—without being able to tell just when it will pop. And given how much of stock prices these days is purely dependent on stock traders believing they'll be able to sell those stocks on to some Greater Fool later, rather than based on the reality of the company the stock is about...well, they can keep the ball in the air for quite a while. Personally, I suspect that the primary trigger for the big selloff is going to be the upcoming IPOs. Bigwigs get their big bucks, cash out, and leave everyone else holding the bag. But if any of us knew when events like those were going to happen, we'd probably be rich from that already, hm?
- cute_boi 4mo ago
  Sometime I wish China had capacity to manufacture RAM. They would build fab within 1 year..
  - Our_Benefactors 4mo ago
    They do, it’s called CXMT and they are making RAM under contract for Corsair
    - rvnx 4mo ago
      Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has warned Samsung and SK Hynix they could face 100% tariffs, framing it as a choice between paying a 100% tariff or building memory fabs in America... Punishing instead of supporting.
      - throw1234567891 4mo ago
        Who cares about America. American tech bros created the problem.
      - 0cf8612b2e1e 4mo ago
        Do tariff threats still matter? After being struck down, I thought the only new tariffs which could happen would have to be enacted by Congress? Or world that be a fun game where the new illegal tariffs would be on the books until the courts invalidate them again?
        jackvalentine 4mo ago
        The administration is trying every single angle they can to make congress-less tariffs stick. The latest is slapping a bunch of countries with 10% because they claim those countries insufficiently prevent goods produced by slaves from being imported which makes it unfair for producers in the U.S. Might be true but it’s hard to take that argument in good faith at this point.
      - lenkite 4mo ago
- pezgrande 4mo ago
  $20B is like pocket money at the scale the whole industry is moving.
  - mgfist 4mo ago
    Yes but you can't get away from a 5 year timeline, and then you have to project how many other fabs will be opening
nemomarx 4mo ago
So far haven't we seen the opposite? Consumer focused ram production shutting down to make more volume for server dimms or etc?
- fluoridation 4mo ago
  The bottleneck isn't the sticks, it's the chips. The chips are the same for consumer and server applications. What's been happening is that big companies have bought nearly all the wafer capacity for the next year or so, and perhaps some of that capacity has also been redirected from DDR5 to LPDDR5. If a stick manufacturer drops out of the consumer market that kinda doesn't matter, because manufacturing sticks is relatively low tech compared to manufacturing the memory chips. You can compare it to manufacturing video cards vs. manufacturing GPUs (as in the actual processing elements).
  - marcosdumay 4mo ago
    The fabs are the same and are the actual bottleneck. The chips are different for CPUs and GPUs.
- layer8 4mo ago
  What do you mean? RAM manufacturers shifting their capacities to server RAM and HBM is exactly what’s happening.
ecshafer 4mo ago
Government needs to get out of the way. Micron announced a memory fab in Syracuse in 2023. It took 3 years, 20,000 pages of "environmental review", deals with the government on amount of union contracts during building, etc. for them to break ground in 2026 for a 2030 opening date. In any reasonable world, a 2023 announcement should have broke ground in 2023.
- Shitty-kitty 4mo ago
  Buddy they ain't building an ice-cream parlor. 200 miles of the Hudson river is a Superfund site. The biggest polluters, PCB's, lead and mercury.
  - wahern 4mo ago
    And? The primary goal should be to catch and stop pollution, not make manufacturers spend years promising not to do something they're not allowed to do. If someone wants to build a factory that can't operate without illegal emissions, then so be it. It's their money lost. All that matters is that they don't actually pollute. Using red tape as some kind of prophylactic is ridiculous. If the state doesn't have the monitoring in place, you have to just trust the company, which is naive if not negligent. If you do have the monitoring, why require the extremely expensive song & dance? To protect corporations from negligently wasting money? Answer: because the song & dance is primarily about extracting concessions, like union labor or even cash (e.g. promises to pay to fix someone else's pollution, or contributions to various interest groups). The friction and expense involved in today's development review processes are many times more costly to all involved than the social benefit.
    - danaris 4mo ago
      > If someone wants to build a factory that can't operate without illegal emissions, then so be it. It's their money lost. All that matters is that they don't actually pollute. That's hopelessly naïve. If you let them build the facility that can pollute, they're going to pollute. And if you point to the pollution coming out and tell them "you have to stop," they're going to say "make us." And if you point to the pollution already in the environment and tell them "you have to clean that up, because you put it there," they're going to say "prove it." And they're going to tie the government up in court for years or decades, and then oh, whoops, somehow the entity that actually did all the polluting has no more money and can't do anything about it :-( Good thing they were only a subsidiary that all the profit and assets can be moved out of! And the people who actually live there are suffering from preventable diseases and dying of cancer at rates 5x the national average. How do I know all this? Because this has been industry's playbook for over a century.
wahern 4mo ago
Several Chinese manufacturers are doing just that, and have already expanded production: https://techwireasia.com/2026/04/chinese-memory-chips-ymtc-cxmt-nand-dram-expansion/ https://techwireasia.com/2026/04/chinese-memory-chips-ymtc-c... But because of tech trade barriers their primary focus is on the domestic market and only secondarily global markets.
- 9cb14c1ec0 4mo ago
  Fortunately RAM is largely a commodity and more for sale only in China means more for sale elsewhere.
varispeed 4mo ago
Why manufacturers would build more capacity to decrease the price (and profits)? This is similar situation to housing market. Prices are going up and supply is being restricted by whatever means. It will be a bit of Catch 22.
- amanaplanacanal 4mo ago
  Theoretically if you can build more capacity you can take customers from your competitors. If you don't really have competitors that doesn't work so well.
Rp8yXmdmr 4mo ago
We are down to 3 manufacturers thanks to RAM boom and bust cycles. The remaining ones are the one that know how not to over invest.
- layer8 4mo ago
  With China’s CXMT and YMTC it’s now going to be five again.

by thijson 4mo ago

Price should send a signal to manufacturers to build more capacity. I wonder if they will though, it takes quite a bit of time, and it's not certain that the demand will continue to exist once built.

mgfist 4mo ago

A fab for high end memory costs $20B and 5 years to build. It will happen, but yeah it takes time and money

danaris 4mo ago
It will only happen if the bottom doesn't fall out of the market for AI datacenters in the next few months.
- chadgpt3 4mo ago
  It's coming up on a year since the crisis started and at every single point it's been "next few months"
  - danaris 4mo ago
    Well, that's the thing about a bubble: it can be very possible to accurately tell it's a bubble—and the definition of a bubble is that it's going to pop—without being able to tell just when it will pop. And given how much of stock prices these days is purely dependent on stock traders believing they'll be able to sell those stocks on to some Greater Fool later, rather than based on the reality of the company the stock is about...well, they can keep the ball in the air for quite a while. Personally, I suspect that the primary trigger for the big selloff is going to be the upcoming IPOs. Bigwigs get their big bucks, cash out, and leave everyone else holding the bag. But if any of us knew when events like those were going to happen, we'd probably be rich from that already, hm?
cute_boi 4mo ago
Sometime I wish China had capacity to manufacture RAM. They would build fab within 1 year..
- Our_Benefactors 4mo ago
  They do, it’s called CXMT and they are making RAM under contract for Corsair
  - rvnx 4mo ago
    Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has warned Samsung and SK Hynix they could face 100% tariffs, framing it as a choice between paying a 100% tariff or building memory fabs in America... Punishing instead of supporting.
    - throw1234567891 4mo ago
      Who cares about America. American tech bros created the problem.
    - 0cf8612b2e1e 4mo ago
      Do tariff threats still matter? After being struck down, I thought the only new tariffs which could happen would have to be enacted by Congress? Or world that be a fun game where the new illegal tariffs would be on the books until the courts invalidate them again?
      - jackvalentine 4mo ago
        The administration is trying every single angle they can to make congress-less tariffs stick. The latest is slapping a bunch of countries with 10% because they claim those countries insufficiently prevent goods produced by slaves from being imported which makes it unfair for producers in the U.S. Might be true but it’s hard to take that argument in good faith at this point.
    - lenkite 4mo ago
pezgrande 4mo ago
$20B is like pocket money at the scale the whole industry is moving.
- mgfist 4mo ago
  Yes but you can't get away from a 5 year timeline, and then you have to project how many other fabs will be opening

nemomarx 4mo ago

So far haven't we seen the opposite? Consumer focused ram production shutting down to make more volume for server dimms or etc?

fluoridation 4mo ago
The bottleneck isn't the sticks, it's the chips. The chips are the same for consumer and server applications. What's been happening is that big companies have bought nearly all the wafer capacity for the next year or so, and perhaps some of that capacity has also been redirected from DDR5 to LPDDR5. If a stick manufacturer drops out of the consumer market that kinda doesn't matter, because manufacturing sticks is relatively low tech compared to manufacturing the memory chips. You can compare it to manufacturing video cards vs. manufacturing GPUs (as in the actual processing elements).
- marcosdumay 4mo ago
  The fabs are the same and are the actual bottleneck. The chips are different for CPUs and GPUs.
layer8 4mo ago
What do you mean? RAM manufacturers shifting their capacities to server RAM and HBM is exactly what’s happening.

ecshafer 4mo ago

Government needs to get out of the way. Micron announced a memory fab in Syracuse in 2023. It took 3 years, 20,000 pages of "environmental review", deals with the government on amount of union contracts during building, etc. for them to break ground in 2026 for a 2030 opening date. In any reasonable world, a 2023 announcement should have broke ground in 2023.

Shitty-kitty 4mo ago
Buddy they ain't building an ice-cream parlor. 200 miles of the Hudson river is a Superfund site. The biggest polluters, PCB's, lead and mercury.
- wahern 4mo ago
  And? The primary goal should be to catch and stop pollution, not make manufacturers spend years promising not to do something they're not allowed to do. If someone wants to build a factory that can't operate without illegal emissions, then so be it. It's their money lost. All that matters is that they don't actually pollute. Using red tape as some kind of prophylactic is ridiculous. If the state doesn't have the monitoring in place, you have to just trust the company, which is naive if not negligent. If you do have the monitoring, why require the extremely expensive song & dance? To protect corporations from negligently wasting money? Answer: because the song & dance is primarily about extracting concessions, like union labor or even cash (e.g. promises to pay to fix someone else's pollution, or contributions to various interest groups). The friction and expense involved in today's development review processes are many times more costly to all involved than the social benefit.
  - danaris 4mo ago
    > If someone wants to build a factory that can't operate without illegal emissions, then so be it. It's their money lost. All that matters is that they don't actually pollute. That's hopelessly naïve. If you let them build the facility that can pollute, they're going to pollute. And if you point to the pollution coming out and tell them "you have to stop," they're going to say "make us." And if you point to the pollution already in the environment and tell them "you have to clean that up, because you put it there," they're going to say "prove it." And they're going to tie the government up in court for years or decades, and then oh, whoops, somehow the entity that actually did all the polluting has no more money and can't do anything about it :-( Good thing they were only a subsidiary that all the profit and assets can be moved out of! And the people who actually live there are suffering from preventable diseases and dying of cancer at rates 5x the national average. How do I know all this? Because this has been industry's playbook for over a century.

wahern 4mo ago

Several Chinese manufacturers are doing just that, and have already expanded production: https://techwireasia.com/2026/04/chinese-memory-chips-ymtc-cxmt-nand-dram-expansion/ https://techwireasia.com/2026/04/chinese-memory-chips-ymtc-c... But because of tech trade barriers their primary focus is on the domestic market and only secondarily global markets.

9cb14c1ec0 4mo ago
Fortunately RAM is largely a commodity and more for sale only in China means more for sale elsewhere.

varispeed 4mo ago

Why manufacturers would build more capacity to decrease the price (and profits)? This is similar situation to housing market. Prices are going up and supply is being restricted by whatever means. It will be a bit of Catch 22.

amanaplanacanal 4mo ago
Theoretically if you can build more capacity you can take customers from your competitors. If you don't really have competitors that doesn't work so well.

Rp8yXmdmr 4mo ago

We are down to 3 manufacturers thanks to RAM boom and bust cycles. The remaining ones are the one that know how not to over invest.

layer8 4mo ago
With China’s CXMT and YMTC it’s now going to be five again.