Earlier quoted context omitted.
What would you expect yield to be?
With no prior experience? 0%. Those machines are not just like printers :-)
We'll have to gain some experience then :)
The RAM shortage comes for us all
241–250 of 416 posts
Re: The RAM shortage comes for us all
#242Earlier quoted context omitted.
China cannot buy ASML machines. All advanced semiconductor manufacturing in China is done with stockpiled ASML machines from before the ban.
As someone who knows next to nothing about this space, why can China not build their own machines? Is ASML the only company making those machines? If so, why? Is it a matter of patents, or is the knowledge required for this so specialized only they've built it up?
They can - if they are willing to invest a a lot of money over several years. The US got Nuclear bombs in a few years during WWII with this thinking, and China (or anyone else) could too. This problem might be harder than a bomb, but the point remains, all it takes is a willingness to invest.
Of course the problem is we don't see what would be missed by doing this investment. If you put extra people into solving this problem that means less people curing cancer or whatever. (China has a lot of people, but not unlimited)
Re: The RAM shortage comes for us all
#243Earlier quoted context omitted.
As someone who knows next to nothing about this space, why can China not build their own machines? Is ASML the only company making those machines? If so, why? Is it a matter of patents, or is the knowledge required for this so specialized only they've built it up?
Yes. ASML is the only company making these machines. And both, they own thousands of patents and are also the only ones with the institutional knowledge required to build them anyway.
I thought Fermi paradox is about nukes; I increasingly think it's about chips
Re: The RAM shortage comes for us all
#244Earlier quoted context omitted.
Micron has said they're not scaling up production. Presumably they're afraid of being left holding the bag when the bubble does pop
Hedging is understandable. But what I don't understand is why they didn't hedge by keeping Crucial around but more dormant (higher prices, less SKUs, etc)
The theory I've heard is built on the fact that China (CXMT) is starting to properly get into DRAM manufacturing - Micron might expect that to swamp the low end of the market, leaving Crucial unprofitable regardless, so they might as well throw in the towel now and make as much money as possible from AI/datacenter (which has bigger margins) while they can.
But yeah even if that's true I don't know why they wouldn't hedge their bets a bit.
Re: The RAM shortage comes for us all
#245Earlier quoted context omitted.
A dozen or so well-resourced tech titans in China are no doubt asking themselves this same question right now. Of course, it takes quite some time for a fab to go from an idea to mass production. Even in China. Expect prices to drop 2-3 years from now when all the new capacity comes online?
My napkin math: According to my research, these machines can etch around 150 wafers per hour and each wafer can fit around 50 top-of-the-line GPUs. This means we can produce around 7500 AI chips per hour. Sell them for $1k a piece. That's $7.5 million per hour in revenue. Run the thing for 3 days and we recover costs. I'm sure there's more involved but that sounds like a pretty good ROI to me.
A photolithography machine doesn't etch anything (well, some EUV machines do it as an unwanted side effect because of plasma generation), it just patterns some resist material. Etching is happening elsewhere. Also, keep in mind, you'll need to do multiple passes through a photolithography machine to pattern different steps of the process - it's not a single pass thing.
Re: The RAM shortage comes for us all
#246Earlier quoted context omitted.
Machines are less than 400 million.
You're just talking about a lithography machine. Patterning is one step out of thousands in a modern process (albeit an important one). There's plenty more stuff needed for a production line, this isn't a 3D printer but for chips. And that's just for the FEOL stuff, then you still need to do BEOL :). And packaging. And testing (accelerated/environmental, too). And failure analysis. And... Also, you know, there's a wh…
> 3D printer but for chips
how about a farm of electron microscopes? these should work
Re: The RAM shortage comes for us all
#247Perhaps we'll have to start optimizing software for performance and RAM usage again. I look at MS Teams currently using 1.5GB of RAM doing nothing.
I truly hate how bloated and inefficient MS/Windows is. My hope is that with the growing adoption of Linux that MS takes note...
Can we get web sites to optimize as well? I use a slower laptop and a lot of sites are terrible. My old Sparc station (40mhz) had a better web experience in 1997 because than people cared about this.
Re: The RAM shortage comes for us all
#248Earlier quoted context omitted.
CAS latency is specified in cycles and clock rates are increasing, so despite the number getting bigger there's actually been a small improvement in latency with each generation.
Not for small amounts of data. Bandwith increases, but if you only need a few bytes DDR3 is faster. Also slower speed means less heat and longer life. You can feel the speed advantage by just moving the mouse on a DDR3 PC...
RAM latency doesn't affect mouse response in any perceptible way. The fastest gaming mice I know of run at 8000Hz, so that's 125000ns between samples, much bigger than any CAS latency. And most mice run substantially slower.
Maybe your old PC used lower-latency GUI software, e.g. uncomposited Xorg instead of Wayland.
Re: The RAM shortage comes for us all
#249Earlier quoted context omitted.
a 2x16 ddr4 kit I bought in 2020 for $160 is now $220. older memory is relatively cheap but not cheaper than before at all.
I wondered how much of this is inflation -- after adjusting for CPI inflation, $160 in 2020 is worth $200 in today's dollars [$], so the price of that ddr4 kit is 10% higher in real terms. [$] https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/
USD is also weaker than it was in the past.
Re: The RAM shortage comes for us all
#250> And those companies all realized they can make billions more dollars making RAM just for AI datacenter products, and neglect the rest of the market. > So they're shutting down their consumer memory lines, and devoting all production to AI. Okay this was the missing piece for me. I was wondering why AI demand, which should be mostly HBM, would have such an impact on DDR prices, which I’m quite sure are produced on s…
It's kind of a weird framing. Of course RAM companies are going to sell their limited supply to the highest bidder!