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1 of 2 things will need to happen for the shortage to be resolved.
I believe 2 will happen before 1 because 1 will take several years to happen.
Gamers Nexus made a video recently where they were discussing a new Chinese company/manufacturer in the RAM game. It’s pretty early on, but looks promising.
For your second point/option: I agree something like this will happen first. But I don’t know if it will be a cancellation on all “fronts.” Microsoft’s CEO stated they HAVE the (DIM) RAM, but they DON’T have the GPU’s. So Nvidia is behind on manufacturing, but Micron, Samsung, and SK Hynix have actually got the stock, they’re just ONLY selling to corporations right now (or arbitrarily inflating prices for consumers to meet the inflated price they’re selling to corporations who already have more than they need, but refuse to stop buying).
That's just a more handwavy version of 1. Unless you are saying that new technology will come along that will make existing fabrication facilities capable of higher throughput without substantial upgrades/expansions to those facilities? It seems unlikely to happen any sooner than 1 does either way, unless there is a high readiness level technology that's going to massively disrupt the established field of industrial engineering in the next year that I haven't heard anything about
Then the current companies buying it will just buy more. So far there isn't significant movement in the space to try and do more with less, and the current strategy is to just keep throwing more resources at it.
I'm not sure there's a point where production could eclipse corporate orders with the current path things appear to be on.
The Chinese could do some coordinated push to take marketshare if they have state backing and are willing to accept medium term losses.
But then every western government will not allow the import of those products because of "national security"
I would by some backdoored Chinese RAM right about now. I have nothing to hide. if it comes without US five eyes backdoors, all the better.
I have nothing to hide.
What's your bank account number?
I expect that China is likely investing in 1 due to industrial policy. When 2 happens, it is going to collapse the industry.
It will likely be a combination of both. As prices increase, new fabs become more financially lucrative and viable. Demand will also fall as the bubble bursts, but likely will not go back to that it was either.
If we're lucky, maybe there's a sweet spot where new production for RAM ramps up just as the AI companies run out of money and cancel their orders, and then there's suddenly a huge surplus of RAM that they need to unload in a hurry lol.
ChatGPT will run out of money April 2027.
Also, more adaptation to Chinese-made RAM. The difference is negligible.
I can't wait till I can purchase China RAM! 👌
Don’t worry – monthly RAM subscriptions solve this!
Let's talk about ram leasing ! We can offer you a brand new pc if you get our 72 months ram leasing contract ! I will even add a ram dissipator if you get our fidelity card !
60 minutes of use for free with subscription. Must sign up for automatic payments.
And then each additional 15 min increments are $20. And the timer is always rounded up per session.
That's nividia's business plan.
Also after 12. Months, the monthly subscription will double and hopefully you won't notice since the payments are automatically taken out of your account.
Once Chinese companies ramp up production, there's going to be cheap RAM again. Also, the bubble will pop eventually.
*RAMp up production
I see what you did there
No. Most of the Chinese RAM production is going to Chinese data centers, as per Chinese government mandate.
Yeah if anyone is hoping for cheaper RAM from China flooding western markets. It may happen but it's not happening this decade. Hope you're ready to wait until 2030s because that's how long it's going to be short of the whole AI thing violently imploding.
Sure, that'll be the priority, but again, look at solar and EVs. Once production ramps up, these things start getting exported globally at way lower prices than western competition.
Which means Chinese data centers will not buy as much non-chinese RAM any more, so the prices will still fall due to that.
The RAM prices will come down when "AI" finally implodes and the tech bros have finished extracting every last bit of venture capital from idiots.
There will be a point where LLM investment scales back to fit closer to its actual economic productivity, once these companies and VCs run low on cash to shovel into the furnace. Then the prices will drop.
Either the AI bubble pops and the demand drops, or the AI industry becomes stable and supply increases.
I'm inclined to bet on the bubble popping. There are real businesses to be built on top of generative AI, but most of the current players have high costs and a long way to go before their revenue comes even close.
The bubble popping will be the point where ai companies have to charge what it costs to run these huge models.
Pretty sure this problem goes away once the Chinese are able to produce either equivalent ram or at least something good enough for manufactures to start using.
I'd say it's certainly possible for the economics and business strategy to shift in a manner where consumers get a much worse deal like this indefinitely. But it's really haad to say if it's actually going to play out that way or we experience a return to the previous equilibrium
If enough manufacturers exit the consumer space, like Micron is doing ...
It will end when western society crashes in 2 more years.
Scaling up fabs to increase supply is a very long-term process. You don't want to do it if you think the demand won't last at least several years. Maybe RAM manufacturers are drinking the koolaid and are spinning up fabs as fast as possible. Maybe they see the writing on the wall and are just cashing in until the demand dissolves.
When the AI bubble pops RAM prices will fall back, but they'll never be as low as they were before AI. AI is going nowhere, it's not quite like the Internet but it's still got its uses. So I think you'll see RAM prices fluctuate with an overall positive slope after the bubble pops.
The days of cheap RAM are over for the most part.
AI is now hooking into military funding. It is a weapon in itself, and it supports modern traditional weapons. The AI bubble is literally ironclad and safe from popping for alone time to come. (Purely my suspicion, and not based on much evidence, but I wouldn't bet against it)
I think the era of personal computing is dying out and remotely hosted software in data centers is superceding it. Even if AI overarching goals of reaching "true AI" fail, the data centers will be repurposed for literally anything else from hosting gaming to professional software to video processing, media, etc... People in rich countries will always be able to build their own personal computer for their own consumption but the people from poor countries are not in that position and will be the primary clients of these data centers.
You've got it backwards. Rich countries have the infrastructure for networked solutions.
Developing countries don't have reliable fast internet or reliable power to rely so heavily on cloud services.
Better yet, it's gonna be an opportunity for western infrastructure companies to enslave, yet again, the underdeveloped with predatory infrastructure loans like they did back in post-WW2.
Not this year at least.
Unless the AI bubble pops it’s going to take a long time for companies to scale up production. As long as AI is still in vogue it’s going to gobble up more and more ram.
If Elon was burned down it might help. Wouldn't hurt at least. Well except Elon. Burning is painful as hell.
Maybe through CXL you’ll be able to “download more RAM” (renting it, really)