The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics

Post by cindyllm » Fri, May 22, 2026, 1:28 PM UTC

ACCount37 wrote: post #335

stasomatic wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can a recipe be acquired and reproduced to perform correctly from the start? Say one line is performing well, can its parameters be copied over to a new one and start producing? My head annoyingly refuses to accept the non-deterministic outcomes when applied to electronics. In other disciplines, let's say bow or musical instrument making, you need to harvest the wood, age it, dry it, pray to a deity, work with its na…

What we see as "just bits" is a product of thousands of men, smarter and more skilled than both of us could ever hope to be - all working together to keep those bits of ours delightfully simple. The unfortunate truth is, "bits" sit on a vast foundation of chemistry and physics pushed to their limits. It's a (mostly) deterministic subspace, carved carefully into the non-deterministic world with sheer effort and skill.…

Post by ceejayoz » Fri, May 22, 2026, 1:35 PM UTC

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”?

Post by SiempreViernes » Fri, May 22, 2026, 1:36 PM UTC

Tuna-Fish wrote: post #208

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…

> 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. That one was caused by manipulation by politicians, not market forces. Micron started a price war with Japanese memory manufacturers, the Japanese cut prices to compete, Micron sued them for "dumping". The saga ended with the 1986 U.S.–Japan Semiconductor Agreement, which, among other th…

Post by galangalalgol » Fri, May 22, 2026, 1:41 PM UTC

sarchertech wrote: post #290

simonh wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They'd more likely split themselves laughing. The solution to threats to global economic integration is to address the threats to global economic integration. It's not to cannibalise our own full-employment high value economies, by diverting enormous capital and labour into duplicating vast swathes of lower value jobs we don't actually have the work force for anyway, just so we can pay unaffordable prices for the res…

> The solution to threats to global economic integration is to address the threats to global economic integration. So permanent world peace. That sounds much easier.

Post by [deleted] » Fri, May 22, 2026, 1:44 PM 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…