you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 41 points 2 months ago (16 children)

Why won’t there be unbridled demand for these too?

  • source
  • hideshow 16 child comments
  • [–] 63 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

    Thing is, most of those data centers and video GPGPUs are dark and will likely stay so. The cards will be obsolete by the time the centers are built, the power sourced, they've been sued and injunctioned etc., etc. . (reminiscent of all that dark fiber left after the OG internet bubble pop)

    The RAMpocalypse is mostly market manipulation courtesy of SamA grabbing 40% of global supply (of wafers, not even chips yet) from two of the three memory companies on the same day. In a better (the old) world he'd have been put in jail for this and fraud already.

    Which is to say, the demand is mostly fictional and FOMO and the big three memory companies are leaning hard into it because profit, and, the price never comes all the way back down, also a win for them. They make huge profit (hence making 5 year price fix deals with stupid people) until the Chinese companies ramp up production and the game ends. The actual RAM may or may not actually end up used, depending on when the bubble pops and what happens after.

    Just rampant greed doing what it does, SNAFU.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 16 points 2 months ago (10 children)

    Supply rises to meet demand, driving competition

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 10 child comments
  • [–] 25 points 2 months ago (9 children)

    Except you don't start a dram company overnight...

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 9 child comments
  • [–] 18 points 2 months ago (4 children)

    Well yeah, but the price is so high because the big 3 refuse to meet the demand so CXMT selling ram is also going to force the hand of the big 3 unless they're okay with CXMT just gobbling up the market. It won't happen overnight but if the AI deals are to be believed CXMT has years to scale up production because the big 3 will have their docks stuck in the AI pot.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
  • [–] 4 points 2 months ago (3 children)

    You can't just scale up production on a whim, where do you get the litography machines from? ASML...

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • [–] 7 points 2 months ago (2 children)

    China makes their own I believe.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 child)

    But you could use it for slower access solid state, and then set that up as virtual memory.

    Youd be swapping like crazy but itd be so cheap compared to the same amount of real ram.

    I think this might work for many people just browsing the web. Maybe even games

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 9 points 2 months ago (3 children)

    Why don’t data enters buy these instead. Let us have the good stuff.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • [+] 25 points 2 months ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)
  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago (1 child)

    What's stopping them from doing the dame with these new players? I don't know anything about the memory market but that feels far more likely to happen to me than anything good for consumers.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • that would drive up the price of ram in China too, which would likely make the CCP quite cross with them. Electronics are a huge export and the Chinese government has to worry about entire cities going offline or having to pivot their entire industrial sectors if the shortage lasts too long.

  • source
  • parent