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[EricHiggin]

JEMC said:

EricHiggin said:

As Haxxiy said, China doesn't have the manufacturing (tech) to directly compete just yet. Once they do, soon enough, then they'll be off to the races. So as bad as things are now for consumers, they will likely get worse as time goes on.

That's you assumption. We don't know when chinese manufacturers will be able to develop HBM chips, nor how it will affect the production of those memory chips the output of regular ones.

After all, we don't know how long it will take before we reach that point, we also don't know how much would CXMT and others have increased their production capacity nor even if AI will still be in so much demand by then. 

EricHiggin said:

To also assume that the regular players will have expanded production so much that there won't be shortages is a poor assumption. It's not like they didn't see this coming for a while now, yet their expansion efforts have been pitiful in comparison. Which they explain is on purpose because they can't guarantee constant success in the AI race, and don't want to end up with endless capacity and a slowing AI economy, or worse, a crash for their major Western AI customers because China vastly outpaces them or flat out ends up winning the AI race altogether.

Shortages will end at some point. It's not an assumption or especulation, it's a fact. What we don't know is when it will happen and how long it will be after that for prices to start coming down, much less reach the price that they had before the AI craze started.

Yes, SK Hynix, Micron and Samsung took it very slowly when it comes to increase their production capacity, but they have already announced their plans to invest billions to expand their production capacity. That's not an assumption, it's in the news, just Google it. Are those investments "real"? Will they actually commit to do them? Who knows! Time will tell, but the ones that are actually investing in increasing their production capacity are the chinese ones, which was my whole point since the beginning: once this is over, the memory chips landscape will be different. It will no longer be the big three and then some small ones, there will be four big ones, and one of them won't align too well with the others.

EricHiggin said:

Which also brings up the question of how far is the West, especially the USA, willing to go to make sure that doesn't happen? Would they do so mostly legitimately or would they try and interrupt China by different means, like even higher tariffs or flat out software and hardware bans? America is already doing that do a degree.

The US will have little to say about this. China will produce their own technology and their rown products, and while the US will very likely ban the use of chips made in China in products sold in the US, they can't ban the use of them in products that will be sold in the rest of the world. Asian countries will have no problem using memory modules from China, as will India, Australia or New Zealand. Heck, Hardware Unboxed tested a kit with CXMT modules a while ago, and I think they bought that kit from an australian retailer, not through AliExpress or some other chinese stores.

And when it comes to Europe, well, we don't have any company doing memory chips so, does it matter where it comes from? I don't see any reason to ban any products that would use them.

Seems like we're mostly in agreement then. (Below)

EricHiggin said:

JEMC said:

Say hi to our new memory overlords... well, not quite (yet):

Chinese CXMT to Match Micron's DRAM Manufacturing Capacity This Year
https://www.techpowerup.com/350726/chinese-cxmt-to-match-microns-dram-manufacturing-capacity-this-year
Chinese memory giant CXMT has been expanding its capacity so rapidly that the company is now able to compete with one of the largest memory manufacturers in the world—Micron. According to analysis from Citrini Research and their proprietary data, CXMT is projected to produce about 350,000 DRAM wafers per month by the end of 2026, assuming all current projects are completed on schedule. This is an impressive figure, especially considering that Micron, one of the "big three" DRAM manufacturers, is currently estimated to produce about 375,000 DRAM wafers per month by the end of 2026, assuming their capacity expansions are fulfilled. Micron has been a memory supplier for decades, while CXMT is a relatively new player that emerged to meet China's domestic needs.

As I said the other day, the big three may find themselves in trouble once AI/datacebter demand slows down and they have to go back to cater the common folks, as China may have secured a rather big part of that market for themselves by then.

There's another article about this on PCGamer (link) that expands on this, revealing why chinese companies can increase their production so fast compared to the western companies.

Possibly, but what's to say China never goes AI crazy in the (somewhat) near future like America has, if not worse? Perhaps China could eventually build manufacturing faster than AI was growing, but that would still mean that we may be in this bubble for quite a bit longer than some may anticipate.