alt Hacker NewsThe worry is that these high prices aren't going to last long. And by the time you spend years building the capacity, the prices plummet making your facility uneconomical to run.
Ram will always be in some demand, but that doesn't mean it's viable for everyone to start building production.
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Not everyone but a supplier in the Europe would be a massive benefit long after the AI driven demand dies off. It'd free them from dependence on other countries for a critical resource making chips more affordable and the supply more stable which is good because the stability of the rest of the world is already questionable and big shocks are expected in the near future.
I guess the idea would have to be to look at it in the reverse: have some domestic capacity for those usual strategic supply independence reasons, even if it operates at a loss. And hope that occasionally, one of those demand surge waves will swipe through and make the cost not quite so bad. Outlier waves like the current one might even create a net positive, but that bet would not be the primary purpose, that honor would go to hedging against getting cut off.
there is another industry that is not economical in EU but we still do it. Food production. Because its strategic decision. Not saying that RAM is of equal importance like RAM, but saying that if there is a will there is a way.
AI demand isn't going away. It will just move from the data center to the local machine. On device AI is much better for the customer than it being in the cloud. Expecting people to stick with a few dozen gb of hbm is going to be the 'no one needs more than 640kb' of the 2030s.
> And by the time you spend years building the capacity, the prices plummet making your facility uneconomical to run.
People forget quickly why we only have a handful of DRAM manufacturers today.
There's a few things to note here:
1) Prices aren't returning to "normal".
The only way they will is if the hyperscalers and AI companies start to implode -- which will kill a huge portion of the US economy and lead to global recession, so, cheap RAM but nobody can afford it
2) By building up capacity you influence the outcome.
If someone else enters the DRAM space, the duopoly has to actually start thinking about competing on price, maybe they become price competitive before the launch of your new fab in order to kill it, but, it will have an effect and probably before it even opens
3) A western supply chain has benefits by itself.
There's a reason some industries are not allowed to die, most notably farming- because security and external pressure are concerning.
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Realistically there's no reason not to do this. It will be long, painful and expensive. The best time was a decade ago. The next best time is now.