this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2026

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275

Cheap Chinese chips could offer way out of RAM price crisis, Apple suggests (www.networkworld.com)

submitted 1 day ago by sanitation@lemmy.today to c/technology@lemmy.world

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[–] Wispy2891@lemmy.world 3 points 13 hours ago

The Chinese companies are also gouging prices

For work we need to give the user manual of the machines we sell in a USB drive. Because it's a 3mb PDF and nobody reads user manuals anyway we buy the shittiest and smallest capacity USB drives available on Alibaba in bulk (64-128 mb or even smaller).

They are so cheap that the plastic shell isn't even glued, it can be pried open with my nails. Because there's a 15% failure rate (either the computer reports it as empty, or the hash after writing doesn't match), I opened the faulty ones to check them. They're made with recycled nands from ewaste. Some chips are clearly resoldered from something else (glue residue from tore down stickers), others come from rejected production lines as the brand has been removed with a laser (for example, someone engraved XXXXXXXX over the SanDisk logo), others have numbers wrote with a marker.

Since november prices went up 70% "eh the nand prices went up because datacenter demand them".

Sure, ai datacenters are using 20 years old 64mb nand chips recycled from ewaste...

[–] Lemminary@lemmy.world 3 points 14 hours ago

Awesome! I can't wait for the US to kick itself in the nuts... again.

[–] DanceMomsSavedMe@lemmy.zip 34 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

Can't wait for USA and friends in the "free market" to make these illegal like they did with Chinese EV's.

Any day now. Bastards.

[–] FoxtrotDeltaTango@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 day ago

Laughs in smugglers

[–] wewbull@feddit.uk 2 points 1 day ago

Just the USA on that one.

[–] cockmushroom@reddthat.com 9 points 22 hours ago

Would be funny if China adopted US policy of preventing rival nations from accessing chips

[–] Jajcus@sh.itjust.works 62 points 1 day ago (3 children)

That is what I expected. There is a place in the market to sell more RAM and Chinese manufactureres will use it. They will build capacity to build those chips, eventually cheaper and maybe even better what the 'West' can do. And then the Western companies will complain, that 'this is not fair!'. Like with all the other manufacturing we gave away to China.

[–] zaphod@sopuli.xyz 56 points 1 day ago (2 children)

The "West" you're talking about is two South Korean companies and one US American company that mostly manufactures in Asia.

[–] Jajcus@sh.itjust.works 17 points 1 day ago

That is why I used the quotes, couldn't find a better adjective.

[–] DamnianWayne@lemmy.world 0 points 1 day ago (2 children)

So 2 American satellite companies and 1 American company?

[–] Cocodapuf@lemmy.world 6 points 1 day ago

No...

[–] zaphod@sopuli.xyz 2 points 1 day ago

No, two Chaebols and an US American company.

[–] PushButton@lemmy.world 15 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Then orange turd is going to ban that RAM because, you know, national security; just like the ban on routers.

[–] DisasterTransport@startrek.website 8 points 1 day ago

DRAM is a global commodity. Kind of like how Iran selling oil to China affects the price of WTI crude.

i think. I'm not a fuckin economist I just like to sound smart

[–] Localhorst86@feddit.org 5 points 1 day ago

More RAM for Europe, I guess...

[–] pastermil@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 day ago

That would be great for the rest of the globe.

[+] Sxan@piefed.zip -8 points 1 day ago (2 children)

It's þe way we do it. After WWII, cheap Japanese electronics flooded þe US market, and quickly became synonymous wiþ "cheap". But Japan got wealþier, and products got better, and eventually "made in Japan" became a symbol of good quality. And products made in Japan, for þe Japanese market? Even higher quality. We get þe cheap stuff.

It's happening wiþ Chinese products too. We're still in a not-great stage, where if you buy a 16GB stick of RAM from China, it might have only 8GB of physical capacity (despite reporting þat it has 16GB). And a lot of inexpensive stuff from China is disposable goods. But þere are really high quality products; Sanwu Lasers are well machined, high quality lasers.

Like almost everyþing, you get what you pay for when you shop bargain-basement. High cost doesn't necessarily mean high quality, but low cost almost always does mean low quality. If you are willing to not shop by lowest cost, you can get good stuff.

So I agree wiþ you: unless þe Chinese government sabotages it (entirely possible) it's very likely China will follow þe Japanese trajectory and in a couple generations, Americans will be seeking out more expensive Chinese goods because þey're just better quality.

[–] tedvdb@feddit.nl 5 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

What's up with the weird distracting in your text?

[–] SreudianFlip@sh.itjust.works 3 points 17 hours ago

For a while, it was believed to interfere with LLM scrapers and poison the training. I don't see it much lately. Seems like it would be trivial to parse and convert.

[–] impairedimperator@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 day ago

I already seek out "made in China" for certain goods, because of the quality

[–] hayvan@piefed.world 24 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Or Chinese makers also sell at market rates and rake profits.

John Apple is just asking for cheap stuff without effort. Maybe he works hard he can earn and buy a lot of RAM too.

[–] Cocodapuf@lemmy.world 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

*Tim Apple

[–] ClownStatue@piefed.social 8 points 1 day ago

Tim Apple is retiring. John Apple is taking over.

[–] Brkdncr@lemmy.world 40 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Why won’t there be unbridled demand for these too?

[–] MalReynolds@slrpnk.net 62 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Thing is, most of those data centers and video GPGPUs are dark and will likely stay so. The cards will be obsolete by the time the centers are built, the power sourced, they've been sued and injunctioned etc., etc. . (reminiscent of all that dark fiber left after the OG internet bubble pop)

The RAMpocalypse is mostly market manipulation courtesy of SamA grabbing 40% of global supply (of wafers, not even chips yet) from two of the three memory companies on the same day. In a better (the old) world he'd have been put in jail for this and fraud already.

Which is to say, the demand is mostly fictional and FOMO and the big three memory companies are leaning hard into it because profit, and, the price never comes all the way back down, also a win for them. They make huge profit (hence making 5 year price fix deals with stupid people) until the Chinese companies ramp up production and the game ends. The actual RAM may or may not actually end up used, depending on when the bubble pops and what happens after.

Just rampant greed doing what it does, SNAFU.

[–] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 16 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Supply rises to meet demand, driving competition

[–] Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com 24 points 1 day ago (4 children)

Except you don't start a dram company overnight...

[–] Goodeye8@piefed.social 17 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Well yeah, but the price is so high because the big 3 refuse to meet the demand so CXMT selling ram is also going to force the hand of the big 3 unless they're okay with CXMT just gobbling up the market. It won't happen overnight but if the AI deals are to be believed CXMT has years to scale up production because the big 3 will have their docks stuck in the AI pot.

[–] Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

You can't just scale up production on a whim, where do you get the litography machines from? ASML...

[–] MalReynolds@slrpnk.net 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

China makes their own I believe.

[–] Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Well not they dont (or its like ddr1)

[–] cheesorist@lemmy.world 1 points 17 hours ago

lmao, they do, its not as advanced as asml but they got good enough lithography machines to make gpus. they have ram covered.

[–] EonNShadow@pawb.social 11 points 1 day ago

That's the thing, the companies already exist, there are just import restrictions on them because China

[–] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 1 points 1 day ago

I didn't say it'd be overnight.

[–] FarceOfWill@infosec.pub 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

But you could use it for slower access solid state, and then set that up as virtual memory.

Youd be swapping like crazy but itd be so cheap compared to the same amount of real ram.

I think this might work for many people just browsing the web. Maybe even games

[–] DamnianWayne@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

You could also just download more RAM

[–] kibblebits@quokk.au 9 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Why don’t data enters buy these instead. Let us have the good stuff.

[–] tixooo@lemmy.zip 26 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Because they are in cahoots with the top 3 manufacturera to raise prises insanely. The moment a new player steps on to the market they can offer half the price and still have over 500% increased price.

[–] pycorax@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

What's stopping them from doing the dame with these new players? I don't know anything about the memory market but that feels far more likely to happen to me than anything good for consumers.

[–] DisasterTransport@startrek.website 1 points 1 day ago

that would drive up the price of ram in China too, which would likely make the CCP quite cross with them. Electronics are a huge export and the Chinese government has to worry about entire cities going offline or having to pivot their entire industrial sectors if the shortage lasts too long.

[–] melsaskca@lemmy.ca 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Apple would know. They use cheap Chinese labour. Why not cheap Chinese chips? Didn't america build a big chip factory back when Biden was Pres, or was that just an announcement with no follow-through?

[–] impairedimperator@lemmy.zip 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It's still being built, I think they had one of the planned production lines close to complete?

Chip fabs take like 10-15 years to get going

[–] SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 day ago

Yeah especially when you're starting from nothing. Chemicals needed to produce chips have multiple suppliers within a small geographic area in Taiwan. There are none in the US. Whelp, guess you need to either figure out how to transport some incredibly dangerous materials across an ocean or setup production of that chemical locally.

So it will take even longer for a chip fab to be online in the US than it would take in Taiwan.

[–] Greyghoster@aussie.zone 3 points 1 day ago

Not cheap Chinese chips! How unusual for the Chinese to have cheap chips! The world will end.