mesamunefire@piefed.social 3 days ago
At what point do we start making the factories ourselves? No really if ddr3 is significantly going up would it make sence for all these smaller companies to pool thier resources and start fabbing thier own chips?
Nobody (aside from China, for purely geopolitical reasons) really wants to invest billions of dollars in a multiple years long process that could be instantly undermined by the popping of the AI bubble.
This level of demand is not sustainable, and the big tech companies know it.
This isn’t really accurate, there’s been literally hundreds of billions invested over the past several years. The only reason prices are predicted to normalize after 2028 is because that’s when the new fabs come online that those investments are paying for.
Who do you think is going to be buying DRAM at the current prices in 2027?
Before the bubble, there used to be oversupply of DRAM leading to price fixing scandals, that’s what will eventually happen again.
Probably anyone who wants RAM. 2027 production is mostly already sold, the shortage isn’t going away until there’s more fabs. 2027 is more likely to see higher prices than lower.
Unfortunately, we’re not going to get an over supply of DRAM once the bubble pops.
Most of the current production is HBM, which is just architecturally different enough from DRAM to not be useful for desktop computers
I thought ireland and a couple of other countries are stepping up quite a bit recently? I know they have been at the forfront of the EUs efforts to start building chips and have been doing so last 10 years to start scaling.
Just did a search, looks like its going to happen: https://wallstreettimes.com/intel-foundry-5-billion-ireland-chip-manufacturing-2026/
This level of demand is not sustainable
Totally agree!
Seems like also for geopolitical reasons
It takes 4-5 years to build a new memory fab from scratch for companies in the industry.
They’re talking about no price reductions for 1.5 years.
(And the reason they’re saying thst is because the first significant new production capacity isn’t expected to be up until mid-2027 and isn’t expected to be scaled up to full production until 2028.)
And they already moved that forward by something like six months, probably by spending more on stuff like construction so I doubt that there’s more slack to eliminate.
It upfront investment cost is simply too much to just start manufacturing your own chips. Just the fab alone would take around 20-30 billion and 4-6 years to build. Then add another couple of billions and 3-4 years to design a DDR5 chip that would give comparable performance to what the big 3 manufacture.
ASML has an order book running to 2028, the problem is it’s almost impossible to create a competitor to ASML - Demand for fabs is not the issue.
At scale sure. But for like a small controller or power supply?
It’s decades away. Making dumb chips is possible, but we lack the supply chains, infrastructure, and learned knowledge of making advanced tech.
If you doubt this look at how intel and nvidia are having a hard time in making usable chips on US soil.
Nice profile pic. I’ve been wanting to find a maker/tinkerer community on lemmy but I haven’t come across one yet. Am I just not looking hard enough? I love seeing and discussing people’s DIY electronics / 3D printed projects.
Your client shows profile pics?
Piefed works on firefox moble well, so thats what i use 😁.
I used to use sync, but it’s been abandoned and I heard from other former sync users that summit had a comparable feature set, so I switched to that. Summit shows profile pics next to each user.
Yours does not?
Theres some. Honestly more people are on mastodon than lemmy. It hasnt taken off like the mastodon crowd. If you do #maker on mastodon.social for example, its much better.
I wish the threadiverse supported hashtags and more mastodon stuff but it is what it is.
Thanks!
Really? I’ve always had fewer interactions on Mastodon but then I’m fairly new here and I was fairly early to Mastodon.
I had to really look. But once i started following it was an avalanche. Lots of indie creators and such.
Warl0k3@lemmy.world 3 days ago
unfortunately chip foundries take years to set up (just filtering the air alone takes months), so it’s not really a solution - although china is attempting to do exactly this.
brave_lemmywinks@lemmy.world 3 days ago
"It’s hard work and it takes too long. China is trying to do it "
2 years later and after China has done it, “why are the chineses takes the head on all of this? we should be doing things more like China.”
Warl0k3@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Sorry, I was perhaps unclear - China is and has been setting up chip foundaries regardless of the global memory prices, simply to have domestic production of those components. Production of memory modules during this period of AI ratfucking is just a happy bonus.
brave_lemmywinks@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Yes because they have an autonomy incentive, but “our” (as in Western capitalism) incentives is solely on profit and profit is being done, therefore we will never solve this because in fact there’s no problem. We are being mocked by all these PC parts suppliers.
SatansMaggotyCumFart@piefed.world 3 days ago
Haven’t they been drooling over Taiwan’s tech and foundries dryers now?
Gork@sopuli.xyz 3 days ago
Why filter the air at all? Why not just turn the clean room into a vacuum? No air contaminants since there’s no air.
I have no idea how silicon fans work so this probably isn’t realistic.
Warl0k3@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Many reasons! The enormous building imploding is probably the big one, but risks from cold welding, cooling, relying on exposure to atmosphere for many steps in the process, etc. are all additional factors. It’s a good question though.
AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Just put them in space, that way they’ll be right next to all the datacenters that Musk will be building there. It’s much more convenient!
mesamunefire@piefed.social 3 days ago
I can just see makers starting to do small scale projects such as https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/ddr5/russian-enthusiasts-are-building-their-own-ddr5-ram-amidst-the-worldwide-shortage-as-easy-as-sourcing-your-own-memory-modules-and-soldering-them-on-empty-pcbs
And then naturally expanding. I mean we talk about all these hypotheticals but at a certain price range, impractical turns practical. If you camnot convice any big chip makers to make your thing and people will pay 2x for your thing, then getting togethervwith smaller manufacturing starts to make sence.
I dunno im just a small maker person. Made my own laptop from parts and all that. I see this as a potential opertunity.
Benaaasaaas@group.lt 3 days ago
You still need the chipmaker to make you the memory module, assembly is not the problem
Kirp123@lemmy.world 3 days ago
There is a guy on YouTube doing it and making videos about the process. He turned his shed into a clean room lol.
youtu.be/h6GWikWlAQA
isleepinahammock@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 days ago
Sure. A hobbyist with the right equipment can make technically functional memory as a scientific curiosity. But making any memory module that is as powerful as anything that’s come out in the last twenty years is going to require millions of dollars in investment and years of effort combining the work of thousands.
mesamunefire@piefed.social 3 days ago
Oh nice ill take a look! We have a 10k pick and place machine over at a local makerspace and ive thought about prefab chips before. Just for fun, but its still a bit of money.