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Sam Altman’s DRAM Deal

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Re: Sam Altman’s DRAM Deal

#201

Post by shash »

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.

If stored in proper conditions, the shelf life of undiced wafers is pretty much limitless. But if moisture or dust get in, it’ll start to have corrosion and other damage. Diced wafers on the other hand are placed on UV tape and I recently learnt that the shelf life of that is like a few months at best.

Nevertheless, unless you’re not storing them in a clean room of appropriate class (or in a vacuum pack), assume 18 months for undiced wafers.

In terms of size, I would think that stored in cassettes or carriers a vacuum sealed, it shouldn’t be too much. A 25 wafer pack is about half meter cube? A 40ft shipping container is about 68m^3. So one container can store about 140 packs of 25 wafers each. That’s 3500 wafers. They’re talking about 900k wafers. That’s about 260 containers. Call it 300 with extra space and stuff. Not exactly hard to provision.

Re: Sam Altman’s DRAM Deal

#203

Post by shash »

zerosizedweasle wrote: post #199
roadbuster wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The RAM is unusable as it stands, it's just raw wafer, they'd need a semiconductor fab The wafers are processed. That means Samsung/Hynix have taken the raw ("blank") wafers, then run them through their DRAM lithography process, etching hundreds of DRAM dies ("chips") onto the wafer. You could attach test probes to individual chips on the wafer and you'd have a working DRAM chip. In fact, that's how testing is perf…

You need 40% of the world's ram for testing?

Each die gets tested. Not that they’re testing their stuff with these dies.

Re: Sam Altman’s DRAM Deal

#204

Post by lillecarl »

beeflet wrote: post #195
harimau777 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did Apple reserve 40% of the supply and cause a massive shortage. If not, then I don't see how its the same.

Apple maintains efficiency and single-core performance dominance with the M-series processors by reserving capacity for cutting edge fabrication processes.

They're also reserving capacity on something that doesn't exist yet, and finalize their purchases into finished products. OpenAI is reserving wafers so others can't buy them. They are not the same

Re: Sam Altman’s DRAM Deal

#205

Post by watwut »

jayd16 wrote: post #120
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'm not sure any realistic definition of free market would mean your actions are free from consequence. The global market is anarchy in the literal sense and no one is bound by a higher authority. Coercion and cartels are part of a free market. Economic efficiency actually requires a lot of rules and regulations to achieve the free market playground we like to imagine.

Nah, it is simply just not free market. USA is actively and systematically acting against free market .

Re: Sam Altman’s DRAM Deal

#206

Post by m0llusk »

Strange how LLM vendors are flooding the market with reasons not to do business with them. Every paid agentic interaction contributes to all the bad behavior we are seeing. From out of control web scraping to buying up available hardware LLMs are turning out to be highly efficient misery manufacturing mechanisms.

Re: Sam Altman’s DRAM Deal

#207

Post by shash »

bluedino wrote: post #82

Imagine the outrage if OpenAI built their own fab or memory factory. Like back when Henry Ford built his own steel foundry.

That would make sense _except_ the amount of time and specialized knowledge it takes to build one. Easier by _far_ to go deal with TSMC and Samsung

Re: Sam Altman’s DRAM Deal

#209

Post by tarsinge »

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" ...

What are the chances the deal doesn’t go through because OpenAI fails to find enough money?

Between Google, other labs and China the risk of commoditization is climbing and so why would investors continue to throw money at them? Kind of the same problem people are starting to bring up regarding Nvidia order book no? Do SoftBank and Oracle have $500B in cash to go through, or does it count on new investors coming in to not implode?

Edit: From the Stargate page on Wikipedia it seems indeed there is a big uncertainty regarding financing:

> On August 7, 2025, Bloomberg reported that the project had not started and no funds were raised to meet the project's initial $500 billion budget. Market uncertainty, American trade policy, and AI hardware valuations caused the delay according to a Bloomberg News report

Re: Sam Altman’s DRAM Deal

#210

Post by derektank »

hearsathought wrote: post #154
derektank wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 indust…

Having access to large tracts of land is not a necessary precondition to industrialization (see South Korea). Did the capital accumulation from the exploitation of resources in the American West make it easier to industrialize? Probably. But America would have industrialized if it never expanded beyond the Ohio River valley (access to coal probably was necessary).

Also, as an aside, yes, most of the American West was largely lucked into. America was lucky that France and Spain were dirt broke, that Britain was distracted by continental conflicts with France and Russia, and that native societies had been decimated by disease and a subsequent collapse in governance. That's not to say that there wasn't smart, farsighted leadership in American government, but it was a weak power.

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