The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics • Hacker News Board

Re: The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics

#221

Post by sophrosyne42 » Fri, May 22, 2026, 9:43 AM UTC

hackyhacky wrote: post #31

mhb wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Courtesy of TFA and capitalism: "In 1985, if you were a reasonably affluent American, the best computer that you could afford was the IBM PC AT. The PC AT would cost you about $6,000—$19,400 in 2026 dollars—and thus represented about a quarter of the median American’s annual income; and it ran on an Intel 80286 processor, capable of something like 900,000 instructions per second. Today, if you find yourself in a mark…

This quote has nothing to do with capitalism. Please note that "commerce" and "capitalism" are not synonymous, and that the former does not imply the latter. Capitalism is in no way a prerequisite for technological development.

"Capitalism" is an ever shifting ambiguity that exists to be a scapegoat to attack but is completely meaningless in its concrete usage by the attackers.

But "capitalism" in its historical and practical meaning means nothing other than commerce, i.e. the society based exchange, the system of production based on exchange. It was only through capitalist accounting methods that businesses were able to conduct commerce in such a way as to contrast costs and proceeds, and therefore create the optimizations that lead to mass computer production or, what is the same, cheap computers for the masses.

Re: The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics

#222

Post by sophrosyne42 » Fri, May 22, 2026, 9:44 AM UTC

richforrester wrote: post #34

mhb wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Courtesy of TFA and capitalism: "In 1985, if you were a reasonably affluent American, the best computer that you could afford was the IBM PC AT. The PC AT would cost you about $6,000—$19,400 in 2026 dollars—and thus represented about a quarter of the median American’s annual income; and it ran on an Intel 80286 processor, capable of something like 900,000 instructions per second. Today, if you find yourself in a mark…

That has little to do with what I said. A third of the world lives in poverty. That's the fault of capitalism.

The third of the worls that lives in poverty obstinantly refuses to adopt capitalist methods.

Re: The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics

#223

Post by roenxi » Fri, May 22, 2026, 9:45 AM UTC

csomar wrote: post #183

WalterBright wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why should society care about people making profits? The people making profits are the ones providing food, shelter, and phones to you.

No, the real people providing the food, shelter and electronics are the generally the lowest paid in society.

But they are making a profit. Otherwise they'd have to stop providing stuff, because they'd be broke.

Re: The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics

#224

Post by dspillett » Fri, May 22, 2026, 9:46 AM UTC

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #15

What was most surprising about all this to me was this line: > So modern DRAM manufacturing is an extraordinarily complex and expensive process. Building a single state-of-the-art DRAM fabrication facility, a “fab,” will cost you about $15 to $20 billion; acquiring all the necessary equipment, like lithography tools and etching machines, will cost you another few billion; and then it’ll take you a few years of produc…

> And yet I look at all the money being shuffled around between Nvidia and Google and Microsoft and Amazon and Apple

A lot of that is “weird money” created by the act of passing it around between the entities or “Holywood accounting” style money that exists when convenient and will vanish the instant it might be taxed or need to be extracted from the cycle to pay for something tangible. Trying to use a large amount of that money for tangible long-term building projects risks piercing the vail.

Re: The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics

#225

Post by cwillu » Fri, May 22, 2026, 9:48 AM UTC

sroussey wrote: post #146

xbmcuser wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While these private companies exist and are in it for the profits, they don't control the government, meaning any potential price gouging is strictly regulated. The Chinese government actively prevents private companies from becoming too powerful or dominating an industry in the public eye. Instead, they foster competition by promoting and building up alternative companies. A great example of this is how they handled…

But not open up to competitors like Visa.

Correct. A level playing field for all companies regardless of other factors is explicitly a non-goal.

Re: The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics

#226

Post by s08148692 » Fri, May 22, 2026, 9:50 AM UTC

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #15

What was most surprising about all this to me was this line: > So modern DRAM manufacturing is an extraordinarily complex and expensive process. Building a single state-of-the-art DRAM fabrication facility, a “fab,” will cost you about $15 to $20 billion; acquiring all the necessary equipment, like lithography tools and etching machines, will cost you another few billion; and then it’ll take you a few years of produc…

Tesla is building their own fab

Huge gamble - If they pull it off I wouldn't be surprised if other companies follow

Re: The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics

#227

Post by layer8 » Fri, May 22, 2026, 9:53 AM UTC

aurareturn wrote: post #184

swiftcoder wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For example, Apple might make fewer iPhone 18 and let it sell out frequently. They’ll use their RAM supplies mostly for the Pro phones. Apple has a second option that may not be open to most other vendors - as they've just demonstrated with the MacBook Neo, they could cut the RAM in half on the budget models. One good cycle of optimising the hell out of their (almost entirely native) software stack, and iOS would o…

I doubt they'd consider that because it's a downgrade. If things get truly desperate, then maybe.

The iPhone 18 is already being downgraded: https://www.macrumors.com/2026/04/22/leaker-apple-downgrade-...

Re: The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics

#228

Post by s08148692 » Fri, May 22, 2026, 9:53 AM UTC

xbmcuser wrote: post #42

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #15

What was most surprising about all this to me was this line: > So modern DRAM manufacturing is an extraordinarily complex and expensive process. Building a single state-of-the-art DRAM fabrication facility, a “fab,” will cost you about $15 to $20 billion; acquiring all the necessary equipment, like lithography tools and etching machines, will cost you another few billion; and then it’ll take you a few years of produc…

Part of this is a lie high prices for equipment has a lot to do with monopolies in the whole supply chain and one of the major reason I am rooting for China to get parity on node as that would mean it would have been able to break all the monopolies and we get competition on the whole production from uv machines, wafer, on equipment for storing etc. Renewables are rapidly taking the world to very cheap or free energy…

China becoming self sufficient in chip fab could be the trigger point for WW3 so lets not root too hard

Re: The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics

#229

Post by mschuster91 » Fri, May 22, 2026, 9:54 AM UTC

m463 wrote: post #49

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #15

What was most surprising about all this to me was this line: > So modern DRAM manufacturing is an extraordinarily complex and expensive process. Building a single state-of-the-art DRAM fabrication facility, a “fab,” will cost you about $15 to $20 billion; acquiring all the necessary equipment, like lithography tools and etching machines, will cost you another few billion; and then it’ll take you a few years of produc…

> Apple in particular has $20B in its couch cushions I wonder how long it REALLY took them to move from intel to apple silicon, which they don't even make. It might be easy, like a consumer deciding to generate their own electricity (pv on the roof) or it might be slightly harder, like a consumer deciding to generate their own electricity by drilling for oil, refining it, etc...

> I wonder how long it REALLY took them to move from intel to apple silicon, which they don't even make.

Apple has much, much more control over their silicon than they ever had with Intel.

With Intel, they were stuck with whatever Intel could supply - and that, particularly regarding power management, wasn't much.

In contrast, for ARM, Apple has been one of their longest-ever partners [1], with Apple holding one of the very rare and probably very expensive "Architecture Licenses" that allow Apple to not just build CPUs out of pre-made IP blocks, but also design their own cores and, and that is the crucial thing, extend the ARM instruction set on their CPUs.

The latter is what made the ARM move feasible, there would have been no way of getting high-performance emulation of x86 without a few specific extensions.

[1] https://www.macrumors.com/2023/09/06/apple-inks-new-deal-arm...

Re: The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics

#230

Post by ian_j_butler » Fri, May 22, 2026, 9:55 AM UTC

KnuthIsGod wrote: post #72

richforrester wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Literally the most overwhelming thought, reading this, is "man, capitalism is a mistake" The amounts of money circulating whilst some of us struggle to make rent ... Nothing fair, or just, about this world we live in

China going capitalist ( while remaining authoritarian ) has helped lift 800 million out of desperate poverty. I hope that India too can emulate this in my lifetime. I was born in Kerala and would love to see Indians live in a country that is as wealthy per capita ( PPP adjusted ) as Singapore or failing that even as wealthy as the USA. Capitalism has it's problems. But you struggling with rent is entirely your self-…

> But you struggling with rent is entirely your self-inflicted problem...

The funny thing about this is that practically every single person in the US between the ages of 25-45 was an early adopter and a big fan for some (or all) of FAANG in the early days, and clearly saw the importance. The fact that they aren't filthy rich and far wealthier than older people tells a story. Not a story of lattes and avocados, but a story where housing and education costs guaranteed that as a group they couldn't save, never had a chance to invest, still can't invest. With certain adjustments the story isn't so different for much of the western world.. maybe education was cheap/free but their domestic labor market was weaker, whatever. They were and are still pretty much guaranteed to be on the outside. Luck, timing, and good connections are nice at any time, but the last few decades it's everything. In another timeline maybe wealthy youth is landlording it over the impoverished oldies, but in the best timeline we'd split the difference.

Even worse, it's a uniquely bad time to be smart and hardworking, because that's the type of attitude that could stick you with a lack of resilience at just the wrong time. People who've coasted may do much better than ones who are striving. Would you rather be a university grad with new debt right now, or be a certified HVAC tech for the last 5 years? If you were a mechanic, would you want to own the shop with loans to pay off in this economy and tariffs to deal with, or would you prefer to be a simple employee that can just bounce once the company goes under? I've met phd's who are delivering pizzas to make ends meet. Blue collar folks not only have better job security at the moment, but going back some years, if they got a mortgage at the right time and place with that stable job maybe they could do normal life stuff like kids, retirement one day.

What lessons do we think young people will take from all this? Nothing against anyone who is lucky, but a stubborn belief in mythical meritocracy or the legendary American dream is absolutely stone-cold crazy these days. There's just the insiders and the outsiders and there's not much rhyme or reason to any of it.