[ZenoArrow]

I'd see Chinese RAM manufacturers like CXMT filling the void left in the market for consumer-grade RAM modules, I appreciate they face challenges (like lack of access to cutting edge EUV machines), but the RAM just needs to be fast enough and affordable enough for the average user for these companies to make significant inroads into the market that Micron, Samsung and SK Hynix are abandoning to chase the AI server market.

[filloooo]

Their scale is simply too small to affect the market outside China, majority of their chips will be eaten up by HBM3 production with yet unknown yield rate.

They are forbidden to buy foreign equipment beyond their current process node, which is already obsolete, die size is 40% bigger than Samsung, not to mention lithography, the big 3 are using EUV while they are stuck with lobotomized DUV.

They can start making some decent money now, but vastly expanding capacity as is means enormous losses if the cycle went downward a few years later, that's how all previous makers went bankrupt.

They can squeeze out a bit more performance if they are ready to go beyond their current node using only domestic equipment and be blacklisted by the US government.

But the cap is there, unless they can make a working EUV machine in 5 years, they are doomed to be a minor player, if the current cycle even lasts that long.

[direwolf20]

They will grow exponentially and catch the western market unawares in 10-15 years with a sudden flood of cheap, effective chips. Just like everything else China makes. Electric vehicles for example.

[matkoniecz]

> die size is 40% bigger than Samsung

likely naive question: why it is a problem? I would be fine if RAM in my PC has 10 times larger physical size if it is overall cheaper.

I guess that larger may have more power draw, but given costs of RAM and electricity and power draw of RAM it sounds unlikely to be a problem.

At a high end it would run into real-estate prices - at some point using half of room for computer stops making economical sense, given costs of rent or buying flat space. But just doubling size of PC does not sound like a bad tradeoff if it would be say 20% cheaper. Or 50% cheaper.

Is it about not fitting existing motherboards?

Is there reason why they cannot just make memories physically larger? It is "only" 40%, not 40000%

[RobotToaster]

They're already producing 10nm DRAM with their current nodes, and they're working on producing 3d DRAM which may make node size somewhat moot.

[ZenoArrow]

> Their scale is simply too small to affect the market outside China, majority of their chips will be eaten up by HBM3 production with yet unknown yield rate.

They don't currently have the tech to compete on HBM3 production, but they can produce DDR5 memory, and they will undoubtedly be scaling up production on this.

[zozbot234]

Obsolete process node hardly matters when the rest of the market is bottlenecked on production capacity; small overall scale still might. Expanding capacity may or may not make sense; it depends on your prediction of the way the market will go.

[ErroneousBosh]

> They can squeeze out a bit more performance if they are ready to go beyond their current node using only domestic equipment and be blacklisted by the US government.

Which suits the rest of the world just fine. More for the rest of us, and if the single-digit-percent portion of their market that the US represents wants to lock itself out, no skin off anyone else's nose.

[lelanthran]

> which is already obsolete, die size is 40% bigger than Samsung, not to mention lithography, the big 3 are using EUV while they are stuck with lobotomized DUV.

And? That's good enough. My daily driver desktop, which I use to do development, plus play a few games (FC5, Dirt Rally, etc) has 16GB DDR3.

For 90% of computers in use today, including laptops, that RAM you call obsolete is fine.

Users aren't going to complain that a document which takes 3s to open now takes 3.5s

What you need as far as RAM goes, to make the computer perform acceptably is capacity. Users get a bigger performance boost by going from 8GB RAM to 16GB Ram and from 16GB Ram to 32 GB RAM than from DDR3 to DDR4 or from DDR4 to DDR5.

[beAbU]

Is EUV and latest&greatest nodes a necessity to create RAM? Especially consumer grade RAM?

[anonym29]

>market that Micron, Samsung and SK Hynix are abandoning to chase the AI server market

These three have collectively committed what, approaching $50B towards construction of new facilities and fabs in response to the demand?

The memory industry has traditionally projected demand several years out and proactively scheduled construction and manufacturing to be able to meet the projected demand. The last time they did that, in the crypto boom, the boom quickly turned into a bust and the memory makers got burned with a bad case of oversupply for years. With that context, can you blame them for wanting to go a bit more slowly with this boom?

Sure, the new fabs won't be up and at volume production until late 2027 / early 2028, but committing tens of billions of dollars to new production facilities, including to facilities dedicated to DRAM rather than NAND or HBM, is hardly 'abandoning'. They're pivoting to higher profit margin segments - rational behavior for a for-profit corporation - but thanks to the invisible hand of the (not quite as free as it should be) market, this is, partially, a self-solving issue, as DRAM margins soar while HBM margins compress, and we're already seeing industry response to that dynamic, too: https://www.guru3d.com/story/samsung-reallocates-of-hbm3-cap...

[ZenoArrow]

> Sure, the new fabs won't be up and at volume production until late 2027 / early 2028, but committing tens of billions of dollars to new production facilities, including to facilities dedicated to DRAM rather than NAND or HBM, is hardly 'abandoning'.

Look at what happened to Crucial. Why would Micron axe it's whole consumer RAM division if it was just experiencing a temporary drop in DRAM supplies until new fabs were brought online? Samsung and SK Hynix may have changes in priorities in the coming years, and in the case of Samsung I'm sure they'll still make sure to supply sufficient DRAM chips for the devices it manufactures (phones, TVs, etc...) but Micron has made it's current intentions fairly clear. They'll probably work with OEMs, but they're unlikely to return to selling to the general public any time soon.

[ls612]

This is the classic commodities cycle, and it happens everywhere in an economy where aggregate supply is inelastic in the short term but aggregate demand can fluctuate quickly. The reason it’s coming for DRAM first is that memory is the closest part to a pure interchangeable commodity and that recent process nodes have had almost zero improvement to memory density for years now, despite logic density continuing to increase exponentially. That and these companies have been known to fix prices in the past, but in this case the evidence suggests it’s a large aggregate demand shock.

[dist-epoch]

China also needs RAM for AIs, especially since they have plenty of electrical power and building speed to pump out data-centers.

[actionfromafar]

Turns out their wind "opercapacity" maybe isn't. Maybe they are trading chip efficiency for raw power.

[realusername]

That's probably what is going to happen, it's a strategic opportunity for the Chinese government here, there's a big market demand that can fuel their domestic production capabilities that nobody wants to take.

[giantrobot]

It would be a strategic opportunity for Intel, if they weren't run by imbeciles. DDR4 doesn't require the latest and greatest nodes. It's boring old technology. Even DDR5 is pretty boring. Intel could clean up fabbing DRAM (like they used to). But alas no. They're part of the semiconductor cartel and uninterested in the supply of DRAM increasing. Prices would drop and the fabs would only make stupid margins instead of disgusting margins.

[Imustaskforhelp]

I truly wish Chinese Ram manufacturers luck to fulfill this market. Seriously, the amount of ram and its downstream effects can be hardly understated imo. it really just starts impacting everything.

[alecco]

They will first fill the local demand for all their electronics manufacturing. Then their massive computer infra and AI. And if any is left, it will be bundled to local PC exporters like Lenovo.

[nerdsniper]

It’s fine if it’s just filling Chinese manufacturing. Low-cost VPS hosts are going to be using brands like Supermicro anyways. It still gets exported.

Except for RAM from YMTC, which the USA gave a near-death sentence to by placing it on the Dept. of Commerce “Entity List” so no USA-associated business can do business with YMTC now.

[neelc]

I am very hopeful of CXMT. But then then it could take a while for them to ramp up production. Maybe by then, the AI bubble would've burst.

One problem with US sanctions is it could hurt US companies too, like in the case of cutting-edge EUV and CXMT. This is when China is actually a hero and not a villain.

[phatfish]

We can certainly do with less plastic junk and fast fashion. But on the high end it hard to argue that cheaper Chinese products are ever a bad thing.

If corporations in western (aligned) countries stopped feeding sovereign wealth funds and private equity with profits and actually invested something maybe they could compete with China more closely, even with whatever shenanigans the CPC get up to with state support.