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Apple? Sure. What about other developers? Firefox, Chrome already use gigabytes of RAM.
It's the websites that use that RAM, not the browsers. (Often the ads on the websites.)
I was pleasantly surprised at the tab unloading settings under "memory saver" in ungoogled-chromium.
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And 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.
The thing is, pretty much everyone relevant assumes it is a bubble and that eventually large players will end up facing mob justice. That's why the hundreds of billions of $ IOUs are getting passed around like hot potatoes, and that's (in addition to ASML, the key part of anything EUV lithography, being booked out for years) why no one is planning to construct dozens of billions of dollars worth of fabs. In addition,…
Where are SK Hynix and Samsung located again? Or 95% of Micron's facilities?
Ex-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.
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They 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.
SpaceX/xAI is investing in creating their own fab. If they can, Apple certainly can.
Operating a FAB requires employing PhDs that are willing to work 8 hours shifts with no breaks (each removal of a bunnysuit is an expensive exercise), and there’s no reason to believe SpaceX is capable of hiring such people.
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DRAM fabs are their own well-known specialized process which is covered by the DRAM companies. It doesn't make sense to start a competitor for it.
There's a bunch of chinese DRAM companies currently playing catchup to get closer to modern densities. Could Apple buy one of those? I'm guessing there would be regulatory hurdles to that on both sides of the pond.
They buy and build manufacturing capacity, and there’s also a huge shortage in that today.
This 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…
Apple 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.
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Apple 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.
DRAM fabs are their own well-known specialized process which is covered by the DRAM companies. It doesn't make sense to start a competitor for it.
Our problem is lack of competition
High prices for RAM should attract competition.