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The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics

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

#261

Post by sokoloff »

spockz wrote: post #246
mrandish wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it seems they'd be a prime candidate to spin up their own memory fab. While Apple et al certainly have the money to tilt up their own fab, they're savvy enough to understand the memory market's long history of constant boom/bust cycles. I still remember the huge DRAM shortage in late 80s forcing my startup at the time to delay launching our new product for a year. People assume Apple cares about vertically integrat…

The only reason I can see Apple do this is if it enables them to sell entry level devices with vastly more ram than the competition can afford. Say entry level MacBook Pro with 256GiB ram to facilitate running frontier level local models. If that is an edge they want to have.

In what world would 256GB of RAM be “entry level”?

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

#262

Post by swiftcoder »

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 Neo is a downgrade versus the current MacBook Air too. Which is ok since it is also dramatically cheaper.

I don't necessarily expect them to cut memory on the existing models, but I could well see a 4GB iPhone e/mini showing up to shore up the bottom of the lineup, as the pro models get price increases.

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

#264

Post by simonh »

csomar wrote: post #181
shimman wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should society care about people making profits? Society would greatly benefit from cheap abundant ram than FAANG shares going up. I'm kinda sick about only caring that some billionaire makes more money and would rather you know... actually improve conditions to better society. This is why China is eating the West. Quite easy to start an electronics company when you have such an abundance of suppliers, compare th…

It's a cycle. The zeitgeist moves from communism to capitalism and vice-versa every 30 years or so.

The zeitgeist yes, but in terms of actual politics socialism nowadays is really a vague aspiration rather than any actual policies. Certainly here in the UK our Labour governments since the 90s have confined themselves to just tweaking the settings on the economy Maggie built in the 80s. I'm just about old enough to remember what actual socialist economic policies looked like.

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

#265

Post by MichaelZuo »

officialchicken wrote: post #220
mrandish wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This has become like opec's best years Yes, except no DRAM maker is taking this as a signal to go deep into debt to double or triple capacity. It takes a minimum of 3+ years to dramatically increase capacity and no one expects this inflated demand bubble to last that long. Because they've seen this cycle before, they'll bump next gen capacity up a bit more than planned, maybe 15-25% because the current windfall pro…

> Yes, except no DRAM maker is taking this as a signal to go deep... Incorrect. CXMT is taking this as a signal to open new fabs, create new products, develop new silicon manufacturing techniques, and enter the consumer market worldwide (except USA).

Isn’t that the point?

Everyone knows the commodity market (outside HBM) is going to be margin crushed within a few years… by CXMT, demand swings, and so on.

So nobody cares to fully meet the demand today. They are perfectly happy telling customers (those not willing to sign a 10 year contract paying up front at least) to go pound sand.

They don’t even need an OPEC like arrangement. They are effectively perfectly coordinated already in dismissing customers.

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

#266

Post by ahepp »

Animats wrote: post #148

This is another place where modern capitalism struggles in an area that requires large capital investment producing payoff after years of startup costs, and the buy side is volatile. We've seen this recently with rare earths, copper, and some other minerals. DRAM is almost in the same category. China has an advantage here, once domestic DRAM production finally gets going. DRAM policy can be set strategically. China's…

what share of the DRAM market does China control today?

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

#267

Post by zozbot234 »

kopirgan wrote: post #194

Very well written sub. Any prediction on when it'll end? Can Chinese companies scale up to scare the big 3 into increasing capacity or lose price control?

The Chinese memory makers can scale up but the amount of capacity they currently have is negligible. They're in the same boat as everyone else, it's just that nobody expects them to curtail production on purpose to raise prices even higher, whereas that's expected behavior (according to the article) from the established memory makers.

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

#268

Post by sokoloff »

ian_j_butler wrote: post #230
KnuthIsGod wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> it's a uniquely bad time to be smart and hardworking

I think the next decade will be one of the single greatest times to be smart and hardworking. I think we’ll see AI-powered tools evolve to give hardworking humans significantly more leverage than they’ve been able to individually harness before and coupling that with smart (meaning high and good judgment on how to use them) will be an incredibly powerful combination.

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

#269

Post by m4x »

sokoloff wrote: post #261
spockz wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only reason I can see Apple do this is if it enables them to sell entry level devices with vastly more ram than the competition can afford. Say entry level MacBook Pro with 256GiB ram to facilitate running frontier level local models. If that is an edge they want to have.

In what world would 256GB of RAM be “entry level”?

A world where Apple has invested in their own fabs, so they can sell devices with drastically more RAM than their competition at entry-level prices.

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

#270

Post by gostsamo »

Maxion wrote: post #204
eecc wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s an entirely different framework, one that doesn’t concern investment decisions of Apple or Google. I do agree that USA and EU could foot the bill and subsidize a couple billions in such industrial infrastructure, perhaps taking back a cut of the profit rather than privatizing all of it. But they’re not doing it, or are making pitiful efforts at that

It's just an insane amount of money to invest with the long-term effect of you oversaturating the chip market. Throwing 20B into a chip fab in the EU would be politically a very unpopular move, if it's done as a public company or worse directly state owned, you'll royally piss of Taiwan, South Korea and China and it's likely they'd retaliate by e.g. subsidising their auto industry more in order to give the death blow…

The issue with national investment in the EU is that it might be attacked as state sponsored activity where one can complain that public money are used for market moves or if it is EU wide initiative, then the governments will squabble whose economy will get the money. The framework is not mature enough to allow for delegating to someone to solve the problem for everyone and to balance the beneficiaries in the long term.
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