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Sam Altman’s DRAM Deal

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Re: Sam Altman’s DRAM Deal

#151

Post by am17an »

behnamoh wrote: post #149
am17an wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's bad for consumers period. A deal that hampers 40% of global supply shouldn't be a thing, it's predatory. I know DRAM is not a necessity, but considering that PCs are going to be affected means this affects real things like schools and hospitals. There's being smart while making a deal and there's knee-capping the market with your leveraged to the tits business

but where do we draw the line? Would 39% be okay? and who's gonna draw the line and enforce it?

I hope this is not a serious argument. This deal is OOM larger than other deals

Re: Sam Altman’s DRAM Deal

#152

Post by butvacuum »

machomaster wrote: post #135
arjie wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Correct. It's rather routine for wafers manufactured for "last call" orders on ASICs exiting production to be stored as wafers due to not knowing how they need to be Packaged.

Re: Sam Altman’s DRAM Deal

#153

Post by christophilus »

lukeschlather wrote: post #84
adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the big problems here is that all of the hardware companies have been burned by hype before (e.g. crypto). No one actually believes that these AI companies will still be around in 5 years so spending billions to build factories for them doesn't make sense.

I don't know what companies will be around 5 years from now, but I would bet there will be more demand for RAM and the price per GB will be at least what it was before this price shock.

RAM is a very cyclical market, historically. You can look at $MU historical charts and kind of see that it trades like a cyclical (compare it to $RIO, for example).

Cyclical companies are easily burned by investing in infrastructure right at the peak. It happens all the time with little mining companies, and I think DRAM manufacturers are sort of the mining companies of tech.

Re: Sam Altman’s DRAM Deal

#154

Post by hearsathought »

derektank wrote: post #134
hearsathought wrote: post #128

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. 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

> The US industrialized without much in the way of large scale state industrial policy.

What? From funding the Lewis&Clark missions, to forcing japan open, to clearing out the natives for railroad companies, to helping found colleges ( check out many engineering/tech focused colleges like MIT was founded in the 1800s ). You can even argue that american independence and the civil wars were about expanding state industrial policy.

> The federal government was quite weak in the 19th century

So "weak" that we went from 13 small states on the east coast and expanded 3000 miles all the way to the pacific? What the hell are you talking about?

> I can't think of any explicit policies it established that were intended to foster industrial capacity.

The US became the dominant industrial power in the 1800s and you can't think of any policies that helped? You think all the territories in the ohio valley, texas, oklahoma, california, etc chock full of oil were just given to americans by overly generous natives, brits or mexicans? Are you a moron?

If the US didn't have state industrial policy, the US would have never become and industrial power. We'd have just gone down the jeffersonian agrarian paradise road.

Re: Sam Altman’s DRAM Deal

#155

Post by swatcoder »

marcosdumay wrote: post #137
swatcoder wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Britain? Russia? China?

Admittedly, Europe was being slow to reconfigure until finally forced to do so this year but they've jumped on board now too.

And in typical historical fashion, everybody with less little influence/independence to project their own sphere are now cautiously but attentively jockeying to accumulate the best deals they can gather among those they do.

The world is far from united, even if many do happen to share opinion about the administration.

Re: Sam Altman’s DRAM Deal

#157

Post by alsetmusic »

roenxi wrote: post #68
mlsu wrote: post #11

Moves like this should be illegal. It's becoming increasingly clear that OpenAI is going to get lapped by Google on technical merits. So this is the "code red" solution? Supply shenanigans? They are getting beat in the developer market by Anthropic. And getting beat on fundamental tech by Google. This is a company whose ostensible mission is to "benefit all of humanity" ...

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…

> 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.

Interesting in that I thought about their purchase of $1B of solid state memory at the height of their iPod run. The difference is that Apple had a hit product that was selling as quickly as they could be produced and there was a legitimate need if they wanted to meet the demand.

FTFA:

> No, their deals are unprecedentedly only for raw wafers — uncut, unfinished, and not even allocated to a specific DRAM standard yet. It’s not even clear if they have decided yet on how or when they will finish them into RAM sticks or HBM!

I don't consider this legitimate. It's not illegal, but it sure seems unethical and scummy and it pissed me off. OpenAI throwing its weight around is harming ordinary people who aren't competing with them.

Re: Sam Altman’s DRAM Deal

#158

Post by JSR_FDED »

misswaterfairy wrote: post #145
JSR_FDED wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really, you don’t think there is enough storage room in the world? It would require half of one distribution center of a major retailer.

> It would require half of one distribution center of a major retailer. That also meets the specifications of a clean room, and is actively maintained as one? If OpenAI bought 40% of the annual capacity of finished memory, with the goal of using it in their server farms ASAP, that's one thing. But unfinished wafers that still need to be protected to finish the manufacturing process, that OpenAI itself does not have a…

You do not need clean room specifications for storing wafers.

Re: Sam Altman’s DRAM Deal

#160

Post by kiratp »

This is missing a key part of the picture - Nvidia just announced that partners will need to source RAM themselves.

OpenAI is basically ensuring that they can actually get the chips they need for the DCs they are building.

I can’t guess as to what move came first (Nvidia policy change or these DRAM deals) but I would bet this is a large if not larger factor here than “bloc my competitors.

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