alt Hacker NewsWorldwide chip pricing and it's effects on the overall economy are fascinating. I expected by now somebody with a gen -2 class VLSI plant would swing into action and make <thing> for 2/3 the cost of the majors, and clean up in volume as the market absorbs the price shock. But no, instead it suits everyone in the pipeline to whine about it, but mark up prices instead.
I am guessing the other side of this, the price drops will happen but slowly, and just like gas pricing, the profit is in rapid reaction to shortage and slow reaction to competition returning.
Chip pricing a sawtooth would make a LOT of money for somebody.
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rwmj • yesterday at 11:55 PM
Even on previous gen nodes it takes a year or two to bring a chip to full production.
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Well, you are working from all sorts of misguided assumptions about how you convert, the yield, the efficiency, the shared capital, and history.
Old gen logic barely exists, and won't convert. The tools are wrong so it wouldn't yield. And there isnt the expertise (on tool recipes and integration) to do it.
Historically, memory is a sawtooth business. But history isn't a great guide here: 10 years ago, a new plant added meaningful capacity, as it came with a shrink of about 30%. Today....it doesn't. So it take huge capital to add a very small amount of capacity.
You can dream that things like 3d dram and 4f cells will help, but they are unlikely to offer enough with demand.
And finally, everyone running a dram plant has lived through these capacity boom bust cycles and the consequently layoffs and pay cuts. I suspect they are happy to take money this time. I would be in their place.
I do hope we see a new dram or dram-like designs. And that there are more efficient dedicated ai processors. And that models themselves become more memory efficient. But I don't really believe any of these come soon.