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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

#601

Post by MrBuddyCasino »

_DeadFred_ wrote: post #477
landl0rd wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CXMT is a company with heavy state backing and control that started its current trajectory years and years ago. It has infinity money and isn’t allowed to go bankrupt. CXMT is reading political signals (Beijing wants indigenous AI up and down the vertical) as much as market.

Not sure "only the Chinese model can solve the normies pain" is a great look. Lately consumers are told capitalism is cheap TVs, phones, and computers while housing, healthcare, education, energy, and food climbed further out of reach. The "bread" part of bread and circuses has shrunk dramatically, "but at least you're getting cheaper circuses" is what they've been saying. Now you're saying only a heavily state-direc…

> Lately consumers are told capitalism is cheap TVs, phones, and computers while housing, healthcare, education, energy, and food climbed further out of reach.

Who says this? The latter are heavily regulated and not exposed to market forces, which is why they didn’t get cheaper, unlike TVs etc.

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

#602

Post by lmz »

try-working wrote: post #596

The Big 3 memory producers are really super charging their Chinese competitors CXMT and YMTC. They will IPO this year and they will be able to get massive funding for their build outs. If the Big 3 had been more prudent, they could have kept profits lower and avoided this, but now they've probably dug their own grave and will see massive decline in profits starting from 2027/2028 when Chinese capacity really comes on…

The article has examples from history of overexpansion and crashes. Would rapidly expanding (or keeping profits lower(??)) be beneficial long term for the Big 3? I bet they think it's better to bank the surplus now. The Chinese will have to get their investment back somehow too after the expansion spend.

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

#603

Post by try-working »

lmz wrote: post #602
try-working wrote: post #596

The Big 3 memory producers are really super charging their Chinese competitors CXMT and YMTC. They will IPO this year and they will be able to get massive funding for their build outs. If the Big 3 had been more prudent, they could have kept profits lower and avoided this, but now they've probably dug their own grave and will see massive decline in profits starting from 2027/2028 when Chinese capacity really comes on…

The article has examples from history of overexpansion and crashes. Would rapidly expanding (or keeping profits lower(??)) be beneficial long term for the Big 3? I bet they think it's better to bank the surplus now. The Chinese will have to get their investment back somehow too after the expansion spend.

Well, they're about to lose massive market share to CXMT and YMTC.

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

#604

Post by throwaway85825 »

Eric_WVGG wrote: post #575
swatcoder wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what happens if the market settles back down or the leading memory tech pivots away from what you invested all this capital and time chasing? You'd need a very strong, very particular forecast to make such a costly bet. And conversely, it may say something about their internal forecasts that they're not making the bet.

I’m of the (possibly unpopular) opinion that ~80% of these new data centers are never going to see the light of day. None of the economics or supply needs of these things make any sense. The water is generally not there, electric transformers are next to impossible to acquire. I just read about one in Utah that’s supposed to be 2.5x the size of Manhattan?? https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/933687/u.…

Neither transformers or water are the limiting factor, cash is. Right now the big 3 are taking all their profits and building data centers. If there's not an ROO they'll stop.

Transformers aren't so complex that production can't increase. Most water is used for agriculture and right now the data centers can pay more for it.

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

#605

Post by spunker540 »

joe_mamba wrote: post #563
ijidak wrote: post #550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to learn more about how they've been sabotaged. What happened?

Google US semiconductor sanctions on China. Basically US (and allies pressed by US) aren't allowed to export their most cutting edge semiconductor tools and materials to China, so China can only make chips using older-gen tools on older process nodes than western-aligned competitors. The other part of the sabotage is that western companies then have restrictions on what chips they're allowed to buy from China. IDK if…

I dont know if trade sanctions counts as "sabotage" but point taken.

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

#606

Post by georgeburdell »

lmz wrote: post #602
try-working wrote: post #596

The Big 3 memory producers are really super charging their Chinese competitors CXMT and YMTC. They will IPO this year and they will be able to get massive funding for their build outs. If the Big 3 had been more prudent, they could have kept profits lower and avoided this, but now they've probably dug their own grave and will see massive decline in profits starting from 2027/2028 when Chinese capacity really comes on…

The article has examples from history of overexpansion and crashes. Would rapidly expanding (or keeping profits lower(??)) be beneficial long term for the Big 3? I bet they think it's better to bank the surplus now. The Chinese will have to get their investment back somehow too after the expansion spend.

Profit is not a concern for the Chinese

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

#607

Post by Aurornis »

Aerroon wrote: post #376
gblargg wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This also put a lot into perspective: > these memory makers have learned a very particular lesson from the unforgiving history [deep drops in demand] of their industry: always leave demand unmet I can't blame them for keeping some reserve demand ready so they keep having customers over the years.

I wonder if this is actually true in the long-term though. If they were to flood the market with lots of high capacity memory, then I think our programs would start using more memory too. As a result we might end up needing more memory faster compared to if they keep demand unmet. Just consider that a chat application today takes more memory than a full 3D game with thousands of users (including chat) + the operating…

We already had that. Memory prices got really low for a while. If there are too many companies with too much capacity they’re forced to race to the bottom until one of them collapses and reduces supply.

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

#608

Post by [deleted] »

nuancebydefault wrote: post #180

So the availability of cheap phones is going down because of the cost of RAM. What about the RAM consumption trend of the last 10 years? I think it is very feasible to produce phones with the same amount of RAM as was the norm 10 years ago. The only compromise would be using older algorithms and features that consume less of it, and to take a bit of effort on keeping an eye on memory consumption in the development ph…

[deleted]

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

#609

Post by xbmcuser »

handle584 wrote: post #395
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…

I don’t get the example, any payment in China is basically a duopoly between WeChat and Alipay, meanwhile in US there are visa, mastercard, American Express and discover counting credit card payment only.

In the US, Visa and Mastercard control the backend infrastructure, giving them the power to decide who can use their services. This is why we see them blocking legal platforms or creators simply because a corporate board disagrees with what they are selling.

In China, this kind of corporate driven censorship doesn't happen. Tech corporations like WeChat and Alipay don't control the payment routing that is run by the state's central network. A merchant just needs a bank account and a QR code, and any customer can use it to pay them. The private apps cannot arbitrarily decide to block a legal merchant based on corporate politics or moral stances.

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

#610

Post by FarmerPotato »

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…

I worked in DRAM salvage from 1987-88. It became niche profitable to harvest 4116s from years-old boards (4164s if you could get them) and put them right back into 256K memory expansion boards for PC ATs.

256K bytes of RAM that way made us $128 in sales. I earned $3.35 an hour. Any inventory I accumulated went out the door next morning.

It was a brief moment, but it makes me wonder if we'll see refurbished memory in fashion next year.

BTW the company, OEM Parts, was one of the last great surplus shops, surviving until just recently. Probably there were still cardboard bins with my handwriting for all the TTL chips that weren't in demand.

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