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How can Apple deal with the memory shortage?

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Re: How can Apple deal with the memory shortage?

#161

Post by Danox »

bombcar wrote: post #52
NooneAtAll3 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in a sense that's exactly what cartel wants - to lure out investments that will get squashed into uselessness by supply flood that will follow

The key is Apple can be their own customer and just not care anymore. It’ll probably only be worth it if it enables something “new” like more bigger Ultra chips or something.

long-term if you want to build new devices, which are smaller faster better memory is gonna have to come in house. How does the Apple Vision, Apple Watch get smaller and four or five times faster? How do you make those Apple Glasses in the future if you don’t have that capability memory, modem etc.. in house?

Re: How can Apple deal with the memory shortage?

#162

Post by Danox »

brcmthrowaway wrote: post #46
NooneAtAll3 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in a sense that's exactly what cartel wants - to lure out investments that will get squashed into uselessness by supply flood that will follow

Who is the cartel? SK Hynix, Samsung and Micron? They should be banned.

This AI memory crisis will be their last big payday. I think the Chinese will take advantage of this and take over the memory market worldwide, excluding the United States and some parts of Europe. The rest of the world will end up using Chinese memory.

Re: How can Apple deal with the memory shortage?

#163

Post by Danox »

fhn wrote: post #45
ruguo wrote: post #31

I wonder if companies like Apple will eventually start making memory themselves.

they blew it! They could have bought Intel for cheap and made memory AND CPUs!

I shall keep this brief. Intel sucks. Intel and Microsoft rested on their laurels and now they’re playing catch-up Microsoft may hang in there, but overall worldwide Intel is in trouble.

Re: How can Apple deal with the memory shortage?

#164

Post by CamperBob2 »

CuriousRose wrote: post #83
deadfoxygrandpa wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hmm yeah. its cool that musk knows more about this than the entire industry

You could probably apply that logic to any innovation in any industry no? Reusable rockets likely got the same ridicule, as did fast satellite internet, self driving and fully electric vehicles. I can understand that Musk does not have the most palatable personality, but floating ideas and at least attempting innovation regardless of outcome over a long time is a net positive for society and should not be discouraged…

Reusable rockets likely got the same ridicule, as did fast satellite internet, self driving and fully electric vehicles.

In those areas, Musk successfully leveraged government largesse to compete with fat, lazy incumbents who had either coasted for decades (rockets and satellite Internet) or who didn't bother to show up to the game (EVs, self-driving and otherwise.)

That does not describe the semiconductor industry.

Musk has never beaten anybody who actually put up a fight, as far as I'm aware. I guess Blue Origin technically counts, but again that's not exactly TSMC.

Re: How can Apple deal with the memory shortage?

#165

Post by Danox »

kryptiskt wrote: post #3

This reads like Apple fanfiction to me. > But then Apple can negotiate on another basis and say, well, if you don’t do us a favor here and give us a better rate, then maybe we won’t work with you when all this settles down. You know things are going to settle down. These things are always cyclical. There’s never been a semiconductor boom that’s not followed by a semiconductor bust. Never. And they know it. I have to…

Ask Intel, Broadcom, AMD, Nvidia, Samsung chip division and soon to be replaced Qualcomm, Apples SOC designs, probably meant memory was coming in house at some point down the road anyway. The present market conditions will probably just hasten the inevitable move.

After all, how does one miniaturize future SOC devices if you don’t bring memory in the house eventually?

Re: How can Apple deal with the memory shortage?

#166

Post by Danox »

ls65536 wrote: post #13
coredog64 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple bought PA Semi as the starting point to getting off of Intel. Theoretically, memory seems like something Apple could figure out how to fab. And it's not like they don't have any capital reserves.

They bought P.A. Semi, but it was for their design capability; they never had fabs anyway, and Apple still depends on TSMC and others for manufacturing chips. Apple building fabs to ensure a guaranteed supply of memory (or logic) chips would be an unprecedented level of vertical integration, even for them.

Apple in the same timeframe also bought Intrinsity, and Anobit (a flash/SSD memory) company the Apple Silicon design group probably can do the design and engineering in house and we know they have the money the question is do they have the will their history says they do.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anobit

Re: How can Apple deal with the memory shortage?

#168

Post by Danox »

riffraff wrote: post #92
zarzavat wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No RAM, no profits. Apple has vertically integrated in the past for less reason than this. Moreover it's a massive economy of scale, while their consumer electronics competitors are busy fighting a losing battle against the server market for chips, Apple can undercut them, grow their market share and get even more service revenue.

RAM prices surging in the AI hype era does not mean they'll stay there for decades (see xAI already letting one data center go), and it would take a long time for Apple to become competitive. Should they also start CPU fabs? Batteries? Lithium mines?

That’s a decision for the new CEO (thank God he’s a technocrat), more than likely Tim Cook, and John Ternus) probably have already decided on what they’re gonna do long-term, from the outside looking in Apple has already replaced five companies? In recent times.

Memory is well within Apples design and Engineering capability. Long-term, Apple has to think about the Chinese getting a bigger part of the market in memory because they can undercut the three company cartel worldwide in time with this fake AI memory crisis.

Re: How can Apple deal with the memory shortage?

#169

Post by Danox »

Kon5ole wrote: post #160
rswail wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've got to wonder why. It makes no sense for xAI to make their own chips. The "integration" of SpaceX/xAI is just standard Musk-move-losses-to-the-company-making-money-at-the-moment bullshit. Apple actually have the runs on the board, xAI has Musk-BS.

>It makes no sense for xAI to make their own chips. The initial investment in chip fabs is so big it can't be justified when the established players already make enough to satisfy demand, but right now they don't so there's an opportunity. It's still risky for sure but it makes some sense that it happens now. Hyperscalers spend 100s of billions yearly, at some point the amount given to TSMC gets larger than starting…

The Chinese will be the one slipping in because of this opportunity. The question is is whether or not you still want to be dependent on outside memory when the Chinese takeover a larger part of the worldwide market?

Re: How can Apple deal with the memory shortage?

#170

Post by throw0101c »

pjc50 wrote: post #112
thisislife2 wrote: post #108

Just a thought - stop bloody soldering the RAM and the SSDs. That partially transfers the burden on to the customers and makes their product more repairable ... Mac Minis (with un-soldered RAM and HDD / SSDs) used to be sold with minimum 4 GB RAM, if I remember right). This, way, you can still sell devices with lower RAM, and customers can upgrade in the future when supply increases.

It takes up more space and costs more (connectors are surprisingly expensive), as well as adding an electrical overhead, while most (yes, not all) customers don't take advantage of it.

Not wrong, but some of these space/size/distance concerns were some reasons why the LPCAMM2 format was created:

* https://www.ifixit.com/News/95078/lpcamm2-memory-is-finally-...

* https://www.micron.com/products/memory/dram-components/lpddr...

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAMM_(memory_module)

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