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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?

#91

Post by Auracle »

deadfoxygrandpa wrote: post #80
CuriousRose wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a point made recently by Musk that the whole clean room idea is outdated if you can just ensure the path the silicon takes from wafer to lidding is clean. Seems solvable to me, but leaves me wondering why it hasn’t been done before. I assume there is no human handling of raw/etched silicon now anyway, so why does the whole room need to be clean?

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

It wouldn’t be the first time an industry got bogged down by prior knowledge. Hell, it happens to all of us.

Re: How can Apple deal with the memory shortage?

#92

Post by riffraff »

zarzavat wrote: post #90
ls65536 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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?

Re: How can Apple deal with the memory shortage?

#93

Post by Nevermark »

HDBaseT wrote: post #53
ruguo wrote: post #31

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

I would suspect at Apple scale it makes sense. Apple has started making a lot of different things in house, its only a matter of time imo.

I doubt they want to make a commodity.

But who knows. Their unified memory architecture across core types already puts them in a different design space. Maybe that design space leads them to further opportunities for memory architecture differentiation.

I could see them (1) taking the two processing chips that make up an Ultra in coming generations, (2) fabbed with logic on top, and power distributed on the back side, as Intel is going for, and (3) sandwiching the logic sides around a layer of unified RAM, with (4) massive optical linking distributed across the surfaces, resulting in (5) unbelievable bandwidths and parallelism we couldn't dream of today.

And then, (6) announcing it at WWDC 2029 and (7) taking my money 5 minutes after the midnight when pre-order's start.

Re: How can Apple deal with the memory shortage?

#94

Post by ashoeafoot »

nikhizzle wrote: post #43

Ex-Apple kernel engineer here, Apple will deal with the memory shortage by making software more efficient in ram usage. Apple will just make every aspect of the system more and more memory efficient. They've done it before over and over and can do it again.

[dead]

Re: How can Apple deal with the memory shortage?

#97

Post by gizajob »

michaelt wrote: post #81
melonpan7 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes I believe that’s what being a manufacturer partner entails

In my experience, the corporate-speak "partnering with" can mean almost anything. Apple gives TSMC a billion dollars to build a cutting edge fab dedicated to making Apple's chips, a deal they repeat several times over more than a decade? Partnership. Youtuber takes $300 to read an ad, giving viewers a 10% discount code? Also a partnership.

There's partnering with Apple for several decades where they plan years in advance and pay billions without fail, and there's partnering with OpenAI where Sam Altman commits to giving you a Trillion dollars provided you can deliver all that ram up front and he can give you an IOU he got from Oracle who got it from Nvidia who got it from OpenAI. These are different things.

Re: How can Apple deal with the memory shortage?

#98

Post by silon42 »

jorisw wrote: post #89
tardedmeme wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fortunately, Apple devices only run approved software. Google will be forced to optimize memory or become unavailable on those devices.

Signed software. Not approved software. Mac apps can be installed after being downloaded from the web. And as if Apple would ever block/pull/disapprove the world’s most popular browser.

Aren't they actually blocking alternative browser engines on IOS still?

Re: How can Apple deal with the memory shortage?

#99

Post by exac »

silon42 wrote: post #98
jorisw wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Signed software. Not approved software. Mac apps can be installed after being downloaded from the web. And as if Apple would ever block/pull/disapprove the world’s most popular browser.

Aren't they actually blocking alternative browser engines on IOS still?

Yes

Re: How can Apple deal with the memory shortage?

#100

Post by tomalbrc »

NitpickLawyer wrote: post #88
upmostly wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read this as satire.

I've been running an M1 Air w/ 8GB for a few years, and it's still working fine.

Me too but the latest macOS version has ruined it for me, I had to switch back to a previous version.
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