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RAM now represents 35 percent of bill of materials for HP PCs

arstechnica.com

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Re: RAM now represents 35 percent of bill of materials for HP PCs

#161

Post by sekai »

thfuran wrote: post #93
NooneAtAll3 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

most likely in a couple years this bubble will pop, just like 8 years and 16 years ago it's just a cartel cycle of gaining profits while soon eliminating all investments into competitors when flood of cheap ram "suddenly" appears

This is coming from an insane demand spike, not some nefarious plot by the RAM manufacturers.

> This is coming from an insane demand spike, not some nefarious plot by the RAM manufacturers.

Something something, 2000 dot-com bubble, something

Re: RAM now represents 35 percent of bill of materials for HP PCs

#162

Post by joe_mamba »

orthoxerox wrote: post #120
josephg wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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.

> 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.

Re: RAM now represents 35 percent of bill of materials for HP PCs

#163

Post by greybcg »

crakenzak wrote: post #155
lou1306 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't explicitly allocate cache, but you can lay things out in memory to minimize cache misses.

Out of curiosity, why has there not been a slight paradigm shift in modern system programming languages to expose more control over the caches?

There are cache control instructions already. The reason why it goes no further than prefetch/invalidate hints is probably because exposing a fuller api on the chip level to control the cache would overcomplicate designs, not be backwards compatible/stable api. Treating the cache as ram would also require a controller, which then also needs to receive instructions, or the cpu has to suddenly manage the cache itself.

I can understand why they just decide to bake the cache algorithms into hardware, validate it and be done with it. Id love if a hardware engineer or more well-read fellow could chime in.

Re: RAM now represents 35 percent of bill of materials for HP PCs

#164

Post by yxhuvud »

travisgriggs wrote: post #50

I had my formative years in programming when memory usage was something you still worried about as a programmer. And then memory expanded so much that all kinds of “optimal” patterns for programming just become nearly irrelevant. Will we start to actually consider this in software solutions again as a result?

We would have, if the expensive memory was a long term trend. It is not - eventually the supply will expand to match demand. There is no fundamental lack of raw materials underlying the issues, it is just a demand shock.

Re: RAM now represents 35 percent of bill of materials for HP PCs

#165

Post by rwmj »

crakenzak wrote: post #155
lou1306 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't explicitly allocate cache, but you can lay things out in memory to minimize cache misses.

Out of curiosity, why has there not been a slight paradigm shift in modern system programming languages to expose more control over the caches?

There has! Intel has Cache Acceleration Technology, and I was very peripherally involved in reviewing research projects at Boston University into this. One that I remember was allowing the operating system to divide up cache and memory bandwidth for better prioritization.

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/developer/articles/t...

Re: RAM now represents 35 percent of bill of materials for HP PCs

#166

Post by pipes »

thfuran wrote: post #93
NooneAtAll3 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

most likely in a couple years this bubble will pop, just like 8 years and 16 years ago it's just a cartel cycle of gaining profits while soon eliminating all investments into competitors when flood of cheap ram "suddenly" appears

This is coming from an insane demand spike, not some nefarious plot by the RAM manufacturers.

I can never understand why so many people resort conspiracy theories when the obvious answer is supply and demand. I know well educated people, who do this when they talk about the resential property market. (Including an accountant).

Re: RAM now represents 35 percent of bill of materials for HP PCs

#167

Post by jooz »

travisgriggs wrote: post #50

I had my formative years in programming when memory usage was something you still worried about as a programmer. And then memory expanded so much that all kinds of “optimal” patterns for programming just become nearly irrelevant. Will we start to actually consider this in software solutions again as a result?

When I train some leetcode problems, I remember the best solution was the one that optimised cpu (time) instead of memory. Meaning adding data index in memory instead of iterating on the main data structure. I thought, ok, thats fine, it's normal, you can (could) always buy more RAM, but you can't buy more time.

But well, I think there is no right answer and there always be a trade off case by case depending on the context.

Re: RAM now represents 35 percent of bill of materials for HP PCs

#168

Post by junon »

yxhuvud wrote: post #164
travisgriggs wrote: post #50

I had my formative years in programming when memory usage was something you still worried about as a programmer. And then memory expanded so much that all kinds of “optimal” patterns for programming just become nearly irrelevant. Will we start to actually consider this in software solutions again as a result?

We would have, if the expensive memory was a long term trend. It is not - eventually the supply will expand to match demand. There is no fundamental lack of raw materials underlying the issues, it is just a demand shock.

Also, it's not like we have regressed in the process itself either, which was historically the limiting factor. As you said this is purely an economics thing resulting from a greedy shift in business focus by e.g. Micron.

Re: RAM now represents 35 percent of bill of materials for HP PCs

#169

Post by debugnik »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #114
NooneAtAll3 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

most likely in a couple years this bubble will pop, just like 8 years and 16 years ago it's just a cartel cycle of gaining profits while soon eliminating all investments into competitors when flood of cheap ram "suddenly" appears

Eventually new capacity will come online, and the money the DRAM companies are making are going to accelerate even ,ore new capacity. If you can get your new capacity going before your competitors, maybe you can avoid a bubble burst. If you don’t build new capacity, your competitors will, etc, etc…

They're not building any new manufacturing capacity though. They assume this is a demand bubble and they don't want supply to exceed demand after it pops.

Re: RAM now represents 35 percent of bill of materials for HP PCs

#170

Post by Animats »

joe_mamba wrote: post #160
josephg wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

>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.

> 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.

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