Use ZRAM, seriously.
The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics
191–200 of 682 posts
Re: The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics
#192Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why should society care about people making profits? Society would greatly benefit from cheap abundant ram than FAANG shares going up. I'm kinda sick about only caring that some billionaire makes more money and would rather you know... actually improve conditions to better society. This is why China is eating the West. Quite easy to start an electronics company when you have such an abundance of suppliers, compare th…
> Why should society care about people making profits? The people making profits are the ones providing food, shelter, and phones to you.
Well I am still waiting for my google home and my meta steaks.
Reality is, those companies don't give anything back, just siphone all profits into tax havens so owners can take as much cash out of it as possible, in one form or another.
Their goal is to provide nothing back as much as they could. Look at their actions, not some empty PR statements.
Re: The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
Literally the most overwhelming thought, reading this, is "man, capitalism is a mistake" The amounts of money circulating whilst some of us struggle to make rent ... Nothing fair, or just, about this world we live in
> Nothing fair, or just, about this world we live in We all make different choices, and so have different consequences. For example, I squandered the proceeds of a business deal on a new car. If I'd bought MSFT instead, I could have bought 100 new cars.
If I'd simply written the correct numbers on last week's lottery ticket, I could do that.
(hindsight stock picking is terrible!)
Re: The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics
#194Very well written sub.
Any prediction on when it'll end? Can Chinese companies scale up to scare the big 3 into increasing capacity or lose price control?
Re: The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
There absolutely are monopolies. There are, in fact, many state run enterprises. Where do you get these ideas?
State run is better than a private for profit monopoly or few-o-poly which is what we get. People all over the world have often revolted to get some enterprises state run (nationalizing) and were often punished or even bombed for it.
State run (or heavily regulated) services around here in Eastern Europe: health care, education and housing. All incredibly bad and expensive, I pay huge chunks of my monthly salary for them and I try to avoid them at all costs. They get worse and more expensive with time too.
All the other services and products I use in my life, from the car I drive to the clothes on my back, the food I eat and the device I write this on are provided by private enterprise and they have become much better and cheaper in my life time.
Re: The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics
#196What 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…
> 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…
This has become like opec's best years. Only there's no cartel at least not openly.
But there's another key bottleneck. Even with all the money in the world, getting those machines that etch the RAM could be a multi year ration shop queue. And they're not making those companies every day!
Re: The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics
#197So 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…
RAM usage doesn't just depend on the software that comes with the phone but also (or even more so) on the apps the user installs and on the content - so this is something that would need an ecosystem-wide adaption not just a single vendor.
Re: The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics
#198Earlier quoted context omitted.
While it's a possibility, do you believe it is likely enough in the very near future to the point where you are betting on it? Perhaps shorting TSMC? If I did so when I first thought about it, I would be broke by now.
The point to short will be when the Chinese army forms up. With Ukraine we saw it. It was incredibly obvious. Hilariously the Ukrainians themselves saw the huge army on their border and told everyone it wasn’t going to happen and refused to build any defences. Taiwan will be the same. But the satellites will give everyone enough warning.
> the Ukrainians themselves saw the huge army on their border and told everyone it wasn’t going to happen and refused to build any defences
You're going to have to cite that, because Ukraine was already in the low-intensity Donbass conflict when the most recent invasion happened.
But yes, you can't hide an invasion fleet. The Chinese navy only has three aircraft carriers. They've recently had high level purges in the PLA. Invading now would be a disaster for them. But you never know when a disaster is going to get ordered for political reasons.
Re: The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics
#199Earlier 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…
To reframe your great comment: Is it fair to conclude that DRAM is basically a commodity that can be specified well enough by a set of parameters? If so it won’t allow you to get any competitive advantage in your products and thus wouldn’t be a business you want to be in as Apple.
Yes, that's what I meant by "Mainstream DRAM". The basic parameters are specified by standards like JEDEC, so the most common types can be used in many systems thus reach high volumes. This can be less true for specialized RAM like HBM or the highest performance grades.
Re: The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics
#200Earlier 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…
To reframe your great comment: Is it fair to conclude that DRAM is basically a commodity that can be specified well enough by a set of parameters? If so it won’t allow you to get any competitive advantage in your products and thus wouldn’t be a business you want to be in as Apple.
The competitive advantage is having access to it.