I know it’d be expensive, but I wonder if it’d be worth it to valve to start producing ram. They’ve certainly got the money to get it started, they are getting heavy into hardware that they can use it in, and they could sell it as well.
I don’t know if there’s a shortage of raw material or if no one wanted to invest in more manufacturing when AI could crash within a short time.
In a nutshell this is impossible because of how the global supply chain works. Specifically how most of the hardware engineers/factories are in Taiwan, and how the technology to make chips is proprietarily owned by a company in Norway.
Like the whole reason China wants Tiawan in the first place is the same reason they can’t just bomb them into submission… Their population of highly skilled hardware engineers that fundamentally make the global chips supply chain possible is impossible to replace.
And China also can’t really invade because all the facilities that make the silicon are rigged to self destruct if China puts boots on their soil, at least last I heard.
I mean, it would bring global tech to a standstill. It would be a significant problem. Once existing stuff broke, there would be no replacement. I know very little about chip manufacture, except that the lithography machines are fantastically complex and costly. It would probably take years to spin up new production.
This seems like a pretty solid mutually assured destruction deterrent and doesn’t even involve nukes.
You have clearly and concisely explained the exact reason the US wouldn’t and couldn’t allow China to invade Taiwan (well, wouldn’t under a rational administration).
I wonder if it’d be worth it to valve to start producing ram.
They’d need to source the components outside of the increasingly monopolistic US-alligned group of hardware manufacturers. The only way you end run the Big Three is to go to… CHINA. And we’ve layered so many sanctions, tariffs, and putative measures on import of Chinese hardware that it would be a fool’s errand to bother.
I don’t know if there’s a shortage of raw material or if no one wanted to invest in more manufacturing when AI could crash within a short time.
Even if there’s an AI crash, the long-term outlook for chip demand only goes up. The problem isn’t with the economic demand, it’s with the provisioning of capital. For the most part, you need to spend tens - if not hundreds - of billions of dollars to start producing even the middle tier of nano-computing components in modern use.
I might suggest there’s another way to tackle this problem. And it’s one that Valve already is heavily invested in.
Lower resolution games. Lower hardware requirements. More efficient software engines. More games focused on the mechanics and story than the raw, realistic visuals.
You can run Doom on a pregnancy test and people still buy that game. Games like “Undertale” and “Vampire Survivors” do incredibly well in part because they are so accessible to anyone with a 15-year-old rig. Rather than trying to build a PS5-killer machine, you can go the Nintendo route and build a novel interface that runs on more basic components. Then you exploit the hell out of your Disney-esque IP without worrying that Halo: Remastered Delux Ultra looks better than the next iteration of Metroid Prime.
I don’t know if there’s a shortage of raw material or if no one wanted to invest in more manufacturing when AI could crash within a short time.
My understanding is that it’s the latter. AFAIK it takes something like 3-5 years to get a fab going if you already know what you’re doing, so it would not only be wildly expensive but you’re also gambling that RAM won’t come back down to a reasonable supply/demand in the next 5-10 years to break even on the whole process.
There’s also the fact that it wouldn’t really make sense for Valve unless they wanted to make a huge pivot in their whole business. Entry costs aside, manufacturing RAM is not really something a company can just do as a “side gig”. Valve is only like 400 people, so it wouldn’t be Valve just “starting to produce RAM” but rather Valve turning itself into a RAM manufacturer that also distributes video games.
No need, others vountries ram are emerging. Hope they start to get to techno. Even better if they copied it from US.
I think they are at reliable ddr4, testing ddr5.
I know it’d be expensive, but I wonder if it’d be worth it to valve to start producing ram. They’ve certainly got the money to get it started, they are getting heavy into hardware that they can use it in, and they could sell it as well.
I don’t know if there’s a shortage of raw material or if no one wanted to invest in more manufacturing when AI could crash within a short time.
In a nutshell this is impossible because of how the global supply chain works. Specifically how most of the hardware engineers/factories are in Taiwan, and how the technology to make chips is proprietarily owned by a company in Norway.
Like the whole reason China wants Tiawan in the first place is the same reason they can’t just bomb them into submission… Their population of highly skilled hardware engineers that fundamentally make the global chips supply chain possible is impossible to replace.
AsmL is a dutch company…
Also ,i’m not sure if HBM requires the smallest nodes
And China also can’t really invade because all the facilities that make the silicon are rigged to self destruct if China puts boots on their soil, at least last I heard.
Would be brilliant
I mean, it would bring global tech to a standstill. It would be a significant problem. Once existing stuff broke, there would be no replacement. I know very little about chip manufacture, except that the lithography machines are fantastically complex and costly. It would probably take years to spin up new production.
This seems like a pretty solid mutually assured destruction deterrent and doesn’t even involve nukes.
You have clearly and concisely explained the exact reason the US wouldn’t and couldn’t allow China to invade Taiwan (well, wouldn’t under a rational administration).
It’s a lot of things. But complex tech can involve literally thousands of hardware engineers. Each with very specific skills.
The proximity of these highly skilled workers to cheap chinese labour is another reason why this is difficult to replicate elsewhere.
They’d need to source the components outside of the increasingly monopolistic US-alligned group of hardware manufacturers. The only way you end run the Big Three is to go to… CHINA. And we’ve layered so many sanctions, tariffs, and putative measures on import of Chinese hardware that it would be a fool’s errand to bother.
Even if there’s an AI crash, the long-term outlook for chip demand only goes up. The problem isn’t with the economic demand, it’s with the provisioning of capital. For the most part, you need to spend tens - if not hundreds - of billions of dollars to start producing even the middle tier of nano-computing components in modern use.
I might suggest there’s another way to tackle this problem. And it’s one that Valve already is heavily invested in.
Lower resolution games. Lower hardware requirements. More efficient software engines. More games focused on the mechanics and story than the raw, realistic visuals.
You can run Doom on a pregnancy test and people still buy that game. Games like “Undertale” and “Vampire Survivors” do incredibly well in part because they are so accessible to anyone with a 15-year-old rig. Rather than trying to build a PS5-killer machine, you can go the Nintendo route and build a novel interface that runs on more basic components. Then you exploit the hell out of your Disney-esque IP without worrying that Halo: Remastered Delux Ultra looks better than the next iteration of Metroid Prime.
There’s a reason why there’s only, like, three RAM manufacturers. It’s horrifically expensive to start production.
Currently the spot price for dram is massively high. Theres so so much profit right now.
My understanding is that it’s the latter. AFAIK it takes something like 3-5 years to get a fab going if you already know what you’re doing, so it would not only be wildly expensive but you’re also gambling that RAM won’t come back down to a reasonable supply/demand in the next 5-10 years to break even on the whole process.
There’s also the fact that it wouldn’t really make sense for Valve unless they wanted to make a huge pivot in their whole business. Entry costs aside, manufacturing RAM is not really something a company can just do as a “side gig”. Valve is only like 400 people, so it wouldn’t be Valve just “starting to produce RAM” but rather Valve turning itself into a RAM manufacturer that also distributes video games.
You know i always forget how small valve actually is.
No need, others vountries ram are emerging. Hope they start to get to techno. Even better if they copied it from US. I think they are at reliable ddr4, testing ddr5.