Micron, SK Commit Billions to RAM Capacity, but Almost Nothing Lands Before 2028

m4rtink 6 days ago |

It is allvsmoke and mirrors - the memory makes know better than anyone this money burning party will end sooner or later, so they will milk it as hard as they can. They will also invest zero money to capacity that would sit idle once the "AI craze of 2020s" is finally over.

guidedlight 6 days ago | |

They have to expand capacity, Chinese company CXMT is scaling fast; Micron and SK need to protect their market share even if they risk trading at a loss in 2028.

happyPersonR 6 days ago | | |

If people read nothing else, they need to read this. Now that they have EUV etc CXMT and others in China will scale much much faster. They always had the EE’s and hardware people. I’m excited to see what happens.

Or they’ll just take the easy money and join the price fixing cartel

Or they’ll run the others out of business by doing a Walmart and then just jack up prices.

butvacuum 6 days ago | |

the one opening in 2028 predates LLMs as we know them. It even predates CHIPS- because Micron got the appliction submitted in a couple months: which included the location.

Say what you want about AI- but we were already at peak "need more fabs" before openai yanked half of SKhynix and samsung's capacity.

bhouston 6 days ago |

"I've seen gluts not followed by shortages, but I've never seen a shortage not followed by a glut." - Nassim Nicholas Taleb

d3Xt3r 6 days ago |

If its all going to be new silicon, I hope they'll focus on CAMM2 - both memory and motherboard makers.

jauntywundrkind 6 days ago | |

I'm hoping for MR-DIMM myself. A ram channel that has 2x, 4x, maybe more capacity than before would be most welcome. Assuming the day when ram isn't up 500%+++ and I can afford some.

0x000xca0xfe 6 days ago | |

CAMM2 vs DIMM vs SODIMM is just packaging, the silicon chips are the same. As long as the silicon stays unaffordable the rest doesn't really matter.

d3Xt3r 5 days ago | | |

It's not just the packaging, the interface allows for much higher speeds and capacity.

Yes it doesn't solve the pricing issue but it at least makes the wait worthwhile.

0x000xca0xfe 5 days ago | | |

CAMM2 is really just two DIMM sticks in one; you can even buy adapters where you plug in two SO-DIMM modules and get one CAMM2 (and there are also adapters for SO-DIMM to DIMM). Yes CAMM2 allows for faster and better signaling but it is entirely orthogonal to DRAM silicon manufacturing.

What you probably want is more memory bandwidth by default in affordable consumer PCs and I absolutely agree, it's ridiculous how we are stuck on dual channel memory controllers in consumer land despite core counts having exploded.

Havoc 6 days ago |

So minimum of 1.5 years drought to go :(

lencastre 6 days ago |

Imma wait till the GREAT RAM CRASH of 2028.