Comment on Valve describes just how brutal RAM negotiations are in 2026
Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
It was over 20 years ago Intel said something like you aren’t a real company if you don’t have a fab.
I think the big companies like Apple are going to vertically integrate more because the RAM shortage isn’t going away. Even after the AI clouds collapse, home users are going to buy more. No one wants their lives on ChatGPT, but everyone wants a better local spell checker and that’s 128GB per person.
BrikoX@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
It’s not really viable. There are effectively 4 fabs that actually manufacture RAM dies (Samsung, SK Hynix, Micron and now YMTC). Everyone else is just a vendor that uses underlying die fabricated these companies to produce finished products. The supply chain issue is silicon dies, not end products.
Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Companies like Google and Apple are big enough to start their own fabs. Apple is 6 times larger than Intel.
BrikoX@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
Do you really expect companies that can’t afford to do assembly in the US because of it being too expensive to actually invest in manufacturing fabs that require unless amount of cash flow? It’s not software where you can generate cash from thin air via service fees.
Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
They can afford assembly in the US but it is cheaper to do it foreign. If foreign assembly was suddenly 8x more expensive, Apple would build their own assembly.
The ram prices makes fabs cost effective for a company like Apple because the current situation isn’t going away in a few years. And Apple owning their own fab doesn’t necessarily mean made local. They will do whatever is cost effective.