Valve describes just how brutal RAM negotiations are in 2026
https://www.theverge.com/games/953945/valve-steam-machine-memory-component-crisisOpen linkView original on lemmy.ziphttps://www.theverge.com/games/953945/valve-steam-machine-memory-component-crisisOpen linkView original on lemmy.zip
They should make a no ram model, to drive the point home.
It was over 20 years ago Intel said something like you aren't a real company if you don't have a fab.
I think the big companies like Apple are going to vertically integrate more because the RAM shortage isn't going away. Even after the AI clouds collapse, home users are going to buy more. No one wants their lives on ChatGPT, but everyone wants a better local spell checker and that's 128GB per person.
It's not really viable. There are effectively 4 fabs that actually manufacture RAM dies (Samsung, SK Hynix, Micron and now YMTC). Everyone else is just a vendor that uses underlying die fabricated by these companies to produce finished modules. The supply chain issue is silicon dies, not end products.
Companies like Google and Apple are big enough to start their own fabs. Apple is 6 times larger than Intel.
Do you really expect companies that can't afford to do even simple assembly in the US to actually invest in manufacturing fabs that require endless amount of cash flow? It's not software where you can generate cash from the thin air via service fees.
They can afford assembly in the US but it is cheaper to do it foreign. If foreign assembly was suddenly 8x more expensive, Apple would build their own assembly.
The ram prices makes fabs cost effective for a company like Apple because the current situation isn't going away in a few years. And Apple owning their own fab doesn't necessarily mean made local. They will do whatever is cost effective.
This just proves why the public shouldn't own things to begin with.
Maybe all programs should just live in the cloud and we can just pay for subscriptions to only access the compute power when we actually need it.
The corporations need the RAM and the general public can share it. Kind of like a commune!
/s I assume?
No