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Sam Altman’s DRAM Deal

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Re: Sam Altman’s DRAM Deal

#131

Post by machomaster »

embedding-shape wrote: post #39
bee_rider wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Err… is there any question that the US is trying to slow down China’s high-tech computer development? I thought that was our open goal. Countries decided the extent to which they’d like to engage in free trade together. It is a knob that we’d hope our leaders would turn strategically. (Regardless of whether or not we think our leaders actually are doing a good job of it…).

> I thought that was our open goal. Is the goal also to hurt South Korean businesses and all businesses in the world, just to "pwn China" basically?

What better way to hurt the designated enemy and make others bare the cost?

Trump's America First in practice relies on a near-sided and overly simplistic understanding of the world (Win-lose, whatever is benefitting others must be a hinderance to the USA). Hence fighting the tariff wars against allies (Canada, Eu). Hence destroying Nato' credibility that was carefully built for 70 years. Hence ceasing to be Ukraine's ally (but continuing to be a trade partner, that sells weapons as long as Europe is paying). Hence helping Putin. Hence instigating problems with Taiwan if that means that TSMC will move some manufacturing to the USA.

It's a really miopic view, but at least on their part the behavior is intentional (consequences, on the other hand, are surprise for them).

Re: Sam Altman’s DRAM Deal

#132

Post by machomaster »

shkkmo wrote: post #119
roenxi wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As in producers not over-producing RAM should be illegal? A presumably short-term price spike in RAM of all things is a non-issue. It is a luxury good that only a very small number of people care about and there is no reason to think this blip is going to last. Apple did stuff like this all the time at their high point in the late 2000s and early 2010s, and it would happen often in other markets. The world is not sta…

> A presumably short-term price spike in RAM of all things is a non-issue. It is a luxury good that only a very small number of people care about Um... What? Pretty much every adult owns one or more items with DRAM chips in them and depends on businesses that use even more. The supply crunch will effect a surprising spread of the economy given how ubiquitous computers are now. Looking at delivery dates, the dram pric…

To add to your message.

Memory is everywhere. In computer, phones, fridges, TVs, cameras, toys, watches, all kinds of home and industrial appliances.

Re: Sam Altman’s DRAM Deal

#133

Post by jpgvm »

rootusrootus wrote: post #115
dmix wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On paper it can sound rational. In reality you look at stuff like cars, for only so long people will tolerate buying a car for $60k when other countries, whom you are also competing with, get buy similar cars for $10-20k from China. Those same vehicles are used to boost productivity in your own domestic industries. There is always a ton of risk involved with protectionism. Primarily whether your taxpayer-subsidized d…

> buying a car for $60k when other countries, whom you are also competing with, get buy similar cars for $10-20k from China I'd love to hear your examples of this happening. For $22K you can get a BYD Dolphin Surf in Europe. And that's a pretty small car. What are you paying $60K for in the US that's the same size? Maybe let's try a different match up. The BYD Atto 3 seems to start around 40K in Europe. It's smaller…

Atto 3 is $19.3k USD in Thailand.

So it's really just tariffs and taxes making it that expensive elsewhere.

Re: Sam Altman’s DRAM Deal

#134

Post by derektank »

hearsathought wrote: post #128
arjie wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you can have a "free and global market" when countries participate in large-scale state industrial policy. Given those constraints, you have to either enforce a zero-subsidy environment (the US has no power to do this) or you have to accept that trade control is one arm of your foreign policy goals and surrendering it entirely is unlikely to help your aims. For the most part, free and open trade is bene…

> I don't think you can have a "free and global market" when countries participate in large-scale state industrial policy. All industrialized countries participate in large-scale state industrial policy. It's a pre-condition of industrialization. A nation cannot industrialize without large scale state policy. And once industrialized, all nations maintain large-scale state industrial policy. Are you saying there never…

The US industrialized without much in the way of large scale state industrial policy. The federal government was quite weak in the 19th century and, excepting tariffs on British goods, I can't think of any explicit policies it established that were intended to foster industrial capacity. And I think it's debatable how much tariffs actually helped the US develop its manufacturing capacity

Re: Sam Altman’s DRAM Deal

#135

Post by machomaster »

arjie wrote: post #90
JSR_FDED wrote: post #10

If OpenAI were actually using the RAM that’s one thing - but stockpiling raw wafers in warehouses is egregious.

Guys, these are silicon wafers not bars of steel. You can't just stockpile 40% of annual capacity in a warehouse long-term. I would be incredibly surprised to find that any such large scale storage facility exists. Any storage of undiced wafers is temporary while the manufacturing pipeline proceeds. You've seen the pictures of clean rooms and stuff. There's no way you spend all that effort to make the wafer and then…

Why would you need a clean room if it is only for storage? Pack the wafer in a clean room and store the packages in an ordinary storage.

Re: Sam Altman’s DRAM Deal

#136

Post by behnamoh »

arjie wrote: post #67
embedding-shape wrote: post #15

> Budget brands normally buy older DRAM fabrication equipment from mega-producers like Samsung when Samsung upgrades their DRAM lines to the latest and greatest equipment. This allows the DRAM market to expand more than it would otherwise because it makes any upgrading of the fanciest production lines to still be additive change to the market. However, Korean memory firms have been terrified that reselling old equipm…

I don't think you can have a "free and global market" when countries participate in large-scale state industrial policy. Given those constraints, you have to either enforce a zero-subsidy environment (the US has no power to do this) or you have to accept that trade control is one arm of your foreign policy goals and surrendering it entirely is unlikely to help your aims. For the most part, free and open trade is bene…

> Think of it as

did AI write this?

Re: Sam Altman’s DRAM Deal

#137

Post by marcosdumay »

swatcoder wrote: post #43
embedding-shape wrote: post #15

> Budget brands normally buy older DRAM fabrication equipment from mega-producers like Samsung when Samsung upgrades their DRAM lines to the latest and greatest equipment. This allows the DRAM market to expand more than it would otherwise because it makes any upgrading of the fanciest production lines to still be additive change to the market. However, Korean memory firms have been terrified that reselling old equipm…

> This was not the "free and global market" I thought we were supposed to have at this point. Perhaps you haven't noticed but the pendulum has been swinging the other way for a while already and has a lot of momentum behind it. It's mentioned off-hand because the ongoing return to a multi-polar global order is covered elsewhere already, across dozens of articles every day.

> has a lot of momentum behind it

Does it? It's mostly the US pushing against globalism right now. Trump managed to unite almost the entire world.

Re: Sam Altman’s DRAM Deal

#138

Post by machomaster »

arjie wrote: post #96
hodgehog11 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't buy it. It's easier to make this argument for companies that are building their own hardware, since they know it can be immediately used. OpenAI's move is tantamount to hoarding for the sake of strangling competition. There was plenty of supply to allow for their plans without this move (especially since they will probably go bankrupt at this rate).

How exactly could they 'hoard' this? There's no place in the world to store that much undiced wafer. It will all go bad.

In what time will packaged wafers go bad? What is this based on?

Re: Sam Altman’s DRAM Deal

#139

Post by gizmodo59 »

With the amount of hatred for anything OpenAI it’s not surprising the author chose a clickbaity title. HNs quality of posts are going down and instead of objective analysis I often see very polarized and flamy articles, titles etc.

Re: Sam Altman’s DRAM Deal

#140

Post by didibus »

roadbuster wrote: post #80
didibus wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What they mean is that they bought 40% of all RAM production, they managed to do that by simultaneously making two big deals at the same time. It's buying up 40% of all RAM production with the intention to have most of it idle in warehouses that is "dirty". And in order to be able to do that, they needed to be secretive and time two big deals at the same time.

> It's buying up 40% of all RAM production with the intention to have most of it idle in warehouses They have no incentive to purchase a rapidly-depreciating asset and then immediately shelve it, none They might have to warehouse inventory until they can spin-up module-manufacturing capacity, but that's just getting their ducks in a row

The incentive suggested in the article is to block other competitors from scaling training, which is immensely RAM hungry. Amongst other things. Even Nvidia could feel the pressure, since their GPUs need RAM. It could be a good bargaining chip for them, who knows.

I'm not saying it's true, but it is suspicious at the very least. The RAM is unusable as it stands, it's just raw wafer, they'd need a semiconductor fab + PCB assembly to turn them into usable RAM modules. Why does OpenAI want to become a RAM manufacturer, but of only the process post-wafer.

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