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SoftTalkeryesterday at 8:02 PM4 repliesview on HN

High prices for RAM should attract competition.


Replies

pixl97yesterday at 8:17 PM

In general, no.

It takes billions to tens of billions to setup a fab. It also takes years to get it working. Then when you add in the IP for memory, it pretty much ain't happening.

All the RAM monopoly has to do is wait 3 days before you're producing and drop the price and you're ruined. Meanwhile they've built up a battle chest of hundreds of billions in profits.

China might be the only competition we see come out of this, but only because they are playing the long game and have trillions of US dollars to play the game with.

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GeekyBearyesterday at 8:45 PM

Chinese DRAM production is already getting ready to ramp up.

https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/ram/hp-reportedly...

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kingstnapyesterday at 10:42 PM

The only thing that can actually introduce competition in RAM is some form of government backing around national security concerns. China has been doing this for some time though so there will probably be major Chinese supply coming in the medium term.

andrepdyesterday at 8:17 PM

Real life is not SimCity, you can't just plonk more RAM factories like that. It takes an ungodly amount of capital investment, many years before you see a cent in return, plus there's only a couple firms worldwide that can do it in the first place.