[HN Gopher] CXMT has been offering DDR4 chips at about half the ...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       CXMT has been offering DDR4 chips at about half the prevailing
       market rate
        
       Author : phront
       Score  : 122 points
       Date   : 2026-02-21 14:32 UTC (8 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.koreaherald.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.koreaherald.com)
        
       | tonetegeatinst wrote:
       | More competition is always good
        
       | mrweasel wrote:
       | This feels like a classic business blunder. Focus hard on a
       | single business segment, leaving an opening in the market for
       | your competitors. Not because it wasn't profitable, but because
       | it wasn't profitable enough for you, right now. Only downside is
       | that now you've created an opening for a new player in the
       | market.
       | 
       | This feels like a short coming of western business/stock market
       | thinking. Focusing on profit within the next few quarters, and
       | not caring about the longer term consequences. For all it's flaws
       | and shady business practises at least China can think beyond a
       | single fiscal year.
        
         | tjwebbnorfolk wrote:
         | Ok but this is how the market is supposed to work. If the
         | incumbents aren't doing what their customers want, then
         | competitors can rise and fill the gap and compete.
         | 
         | This isn't a shortcoming, it's a competitive market working as
         | intended.
        
           | delecti wrote:
           | The market doing what it's supposed to do does not negate
           | that the market segment has only been left open because of
           | overly myopic businesses.
        
             | estimator7292 wrote:
             | That's what modern capitalism _is_ and it 's bad for
             | everyone
        
             | qup wrote:
             | Why would we think businesses will always make the right
             | move?
             | 
             | They'll blunder. They'll do it even harder in the absence
             | of competition.
        
               | delecti wrote:
               | Who said I thought businesses would always make the right
               | move?
               | 
               | Businesses blunder. "The market" is just a set of
               | observations, including that competitors will tend to
               | take advantage of those blunders. It is not a failure of
               | the market that businesses have blundered, nor surprising
               | that it will happen occasionally, and neither I nor
               | mrweasel implied otherwise.
        
             | tjwebbnorfolk wrote:
             | The market is actively trying to solve it right now. Micron
             | is investing $200B in new fabs. Everyone is trying to ramp
             | up production.
             | 
             | Yes, identifying a problem is easy. But solving shortages
             | in all cases requires perfect knowledge of future demand.
             | So, good luck.
        
           | PearlRiver wrote:
           | Everyone gets mad when Chinese do capitalism...
        
             | bigyabai wrote:
             | "Why is nobody berating China?" is my favorite oft-repeated
             | refrain on HN.
        
             | joe_mamba wrote:
             | NO you see, we have to hate Chinese companies because they
             | are unfair competitors since they get state funding from
             | the Chinese government, unlike Intel, Micron, TSMC, ASML,
             | Samsung who don't get state funding from the US, EU,
             | Taiwan, ROK ... oh wait.
             | 
             | Scratch that, we have to hate Chinese companies because
             | they do business with the Chinese military, unlike Intel,
             | Nvidia, Samsung who don't do business with the US and ROK
             | military ... oh wait.
        
               | dev1ycan wrote:
               | I know you are being sarcastic but the reason why we have
               | to hate Chinese is simply because the standard of living
               | of Americans depends on China not succeeding, simple as
               | that.
        
               | joe_mamba wrote:
               | Well then hey can just say THAT, instead of coming up
               | with hypocritical BS that doesn't pass the smell test.
               | People internationally have enough IQ to see through the
               | double standards BS, especially since youtube is a thing.
               | 
               | And the standard of living of working class Americans has
               | been on a steady decline since Reagan by the hand of US
               | administrations, not by the hand of CHina.
               | 
               | This isn't defending anyone's standard of living, it's
               | defending profits of domestic monopolies like Micron, who
               | indulge in state subsidies from US taxpayers and then
               | fuck then over on prices.
        
               | yellowapple wrote:
               | Does it, though? If anything it seems like the opposite:
               | China's success had directly enabled my standard of
               | living as an American to be as high as it is.
               | 
               | I suppose it'd be true that the standard of living of
               | _some_ Americans depends on China not succeeding --
               | specifically, those Americans who own corporations
               | competing with Chinese firms -- but I think they 'll
               | survive just fine with only 10 yachts instead of 15.
        
           | assaddayinh wrote:
           | Lets not forget there is no competitors. There is one
           | competitor- the chinese state, one huge company willing to
           | subsidize any endeavor that will help it fmgain more
           | marketshare with already captured markets.
        
           | 127 wrote:
           | Only if you don't want or need any geopolitical gradient at
           | all.
        
         | xadhominemx wrote:
         | CXMT sells the vast majority of their bits at the prevailing
         | market rate, just like everyone else. They are adding capacity
         | as quickly as they can, with a 5-10 year planning horizon, just
         | like everyone else. It's really not that deep!
        
           | orphea wrote:
           | > They are adding capacity as quickly as they can [...], just
           | like everyone else
           | 
           | Are you sure? In the past they explicitly said they are not
           | going to increase production.
           | 
           | https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/dram/memory-
           | maker...
        
             | xadhominemx wrote:
             | Yes of course their messaging to customers and the
             | investment community is that they will be rational and
             | measured in their investments. In reality, they are adding
             | capacity as quickly as possible as margins are too high.
             | However, capacity addition leading edge semiconductor
             | manufacturing has a multi-year lead time.
        
               | overfeed wrote:
               | > In reality, they are adding capacity as quickly as
               | possible [...]
               | 
               | Even if we ignore the fact that you can't build out
               | factories in secret, this would be securities fraud by
               | publicly listed companies.
               | 
               | > ...as margins are too high
               | 
               | This is not the first RAM boom-bust cycle, and memory
               | makers are an actual cartel convicted of coordinating in
               | the past - none if them are going to break rank when they
               | can invest the minimum and reap outsized benefits. Also,
               | no one wants to invest in additional capacity when the
               | bottom can fall out at anytime, and shareholders demand
               | your head- not even the AI companies want to bear that
               | risk, which is saying something.
        
             | washadjeffmad wrote:
             | PRC asked them to curtail DDR4 production so they didn't
             | bottom out the market a year or two ago, and to focus on
             | latest gen development, like HBM. They were the world
             | leader in cost efficient DDR4 production at the time.
        
         | zozbot234 wrote:
         | It's not really a blunder though. Given that total capacity is
         | tightly constrained, Samsung and SK Hynix are happy to focus on
         | what they do at their best and with the highest margins. Why
         | shouldn't they supply the HBM market?
        
           | overfeed wrote:
           | It's putting all eggs in one basket. If/when the higher-
           | margin category collapses, they'll have no fallback. Imagine
           | Chevrolet had discontinued Impalas and other low-margin cars,
           | and switched to Corvettes during the pandemic
        
         | sophrosyne42 wrote:
         | There is really nothing about the stock market that means only
         | thinking about the mext few quarters. See all the losses on the
         | profit and loss statements of AI tech giants, or, say, game
         | console companies? Why are their stocks still valued so highly
         | during these periods? The answer: investors are thinking long
         | term.
         | 
         | It is really impossible to have quality long term thinking
         | without capitalization accounting and similar instruments that
         | come out of the "wester" system of business that chinese free
         | enterprise gladly and speedily copied when it was made free.
        
           | twosdai wrote:
           | I think the sentiment here is about management's tie of
           | bonuses to near-term stock performance. Maybe not about the
           | market itself, I agree with your view on investors want long
           | term gains over short term fluctuations mostly.
        
       | someperson wrote:
       | As a outside observer, NAND and DRAM prices have skyrocket ed
       | with the AI infrastructure boom just as the China-based fabs are
       | coming online.
       | 
       | It is wise for these Chinese fabs to eventually use a very
       | aggressive dumping strategy to price well below cost push out
       | other players forever, especially in DRAM.
       | 
       | But right now it seems they can max out their supply capacity
       | without selling below cost.
       | 
       | Appears to me like China's endless state led (often unproductive)
       | investment in semiconductor manufacturing subsidies (for decades)
       | is about to pay off with some industry dominance soon.
       | 
       | Like the electric vehicle sector.
        
         | nutjob2 wrote:
         | It's funny that you call this an "very aggressive dumping
         | strategy" while AI vendors are doing the same but with even
         | greater losses and on a much larger scale.
         | 
         | It's all simply a fight for market share.
         | 
         | The original sin is the existing DRAM vendors selling their
         | entire (spare) capacity to the likes of OpenAI.
        
           | xadhominemx wrote:
           | No one sold their capacity to OpenAI. The vast majority of
           | DRAM is transacted in what is essentially a quarterly
           | auction.
        
             | nutjob2 wrote:
             | "RAM is going to AI: OpenAI has secured up to 40% of the
             | market."
             | 
             | https://globalcio.com/news/16062/
             | 
             | You're maybe talking about the spot market, but companies
             | are free to make any sort of supply contract.
        
         | PowerElectronix wrote:
         | I personally fail to see the downside of any manufacturer
         | selling forever at a loss, except for the manufacturer itself.
        
           | xyzzy123 wrote:
           | You become dependent on the supplier.
           | 
           | The downside in general is that other countries lose
           | production capacity in steel, heavy industry, semiconductors,
           | machine tools etc - industries that took decades to build and
           | can't be easily replaced.
           | 
           | Also they gradually lose the ability to meaningfully innovate
           | in those sectors because there's no grounding against
           | production reality anymore.
           | 
           | This has geopolitical consequences further down the line.
        
             | riku_iki wrote:
             | > steel, heavy industry, semiconductors, machine tools
             | 
             | the question is if single country can carry all these
             | industries at loss for prolonged period of time.
             | 
             | Another approach is to rely on international supply chain
             | and speed of innovation, we can't produce steel
             | domestically profitably today, fine, we may buy it from
             | diversified international supplier network, and rebuild it
             | fast tomorrow if needed using new tech, and focus on many
             | other high margin verticals, instead of putting many
             | billions of resources into infra which could be obsolete
             | tomorrow.
        
               | xyzzy123 wrote:
               | This is fine as long as the supply chain is, in fact,
               | diversified.
        
               | riku_iki wrote:
               | sure, looks like more analysis is needed to check which
               | verticals are diversified and which are not, instead of
               | throwing blanket list of everything.
        
               | xyzzy123 wrote:
               | Agree, worth analysing what is genuinely commodity.
               | 
               | There are more elements to it though which can be sort of
               | hard to explain.
               | 
               | There are whole cultures and ways of thinking built
               | around production. The children of engineers who worked
               | on xyz v1.0 have a genuine advantage when its time to
               | work on xyz v2.0. There is a lot of tacit knowledge in
               | these engineering fields and you have a huge advantage in
               | knowledge retention if you can maintain unbroken chains
               | of succession.
               | 
               | You can't achieve the top levels of ability (decades of
               | experience, generational knowledge) if you are whip-
               | sawing production to and fro across the globe every 10
               | years.
               | 
               | There are also cross pollination effects. Being _in the
               | same community_ with as many related fields as possible
               | (co-located) is what drives cross-pollination and
               | mobility of ideas and people between industries.
               | 
               | Think how many countries have tried to copy "silicon
               | valley" and failed, and _why_ they failed.
               | 
               | What I'm saying is that technology is built by _people_
               | and there are human reasons why having local capacity is
               | beneficial for all the related industries in the area.
        
               | riku_iki wrote:
               | > The children of engineers who worked on xyz v1.0 have a
               | genuine advantage when its time to work on xyz v2.0.
               | 
               | my point is that other children with no extremely heavy
               | investments into perl v1.0, will have some skills in c++
               | v1.0 and python v1.0, and will have advantage in adapting
               | Tensorflow v1.0, which is more valuable than skills in
               | perl v2.0. Heavily investing in one industry you
               | sacrifice some flexibility.
               | 
               | So, this is multifactor analysis, lets say wise American
               | people will elect me as next president, I would create
               | list of industries, assign metrics (national security
               | importance, potential revenue in 5y from now, impact on
               | other industries, potential margin, risks of failure,
               | etc), then build some formula which aggregate those
               | metrics into single, and base on final metric allocate
               | weighted funds to support N top industries.
        
               | esafak wrote:
               | https://atlas.hks.harvard.edu/
        
             | zozbot234 wrote:
             | > The downside in general is that other countries lose
             | production capacity in steel, heavy industry,
             | semiconductors, machine tools etc - industries that took
             | decades to build and can't be easily replaced.
             | 
             | That's not really what happens though. You don't actually
             | "lose" capacity, you just move to higher-valued special
             | niches within the overall industry because (1) you can
             | afford to, while low-cost competitors can't and (2) you can
             | no longer expect to be the lowest-cost supplier for the
             | bulk of the market. That's a win-win development and
             | something to be encouraged.
        
               | AnthonyMouse wrote:
               | > You don't actually "lose" capacity, you just move to
               | higher-valued special niches within the overall industry
               | 
               | That's not what people mean by "lose" capacity.
               | 
               | Suppose DRAM companies expand capacity because prices are
               | high, then demand levels off, the price crashes, and they
               | all go out of business except for the one in China which
               | gets a government bailout. That's fine, right? We're not
               | interested in making DRAM, that's a fungible commodity,
               | we want to make iPhones or something. (They make those
               | too anymore, but never mind that.)
               | 
               | What happens now if China restricts what you can buy to
               | give an advantage to their own companies who are trying
               | to displace you in the higher-valued special niches? Or
               | just raises the price for you and not them? What if
               | there's a trade war? Or a conventional war?
               | 
               | When you still have a domestic industry, you go to them
               | and have a source for the commodity. If only one country
               | becomes the sole global supplier and that country isn't
               | even particularly friendly, that's _bad_.
        
               | zozbot234 wrote:
               | The domestic industry is still there, only instead of
               | mass-market DRAM it has started making higher-valued
               | varieties of the same stuff. If there's a trade war, they
               | _can_ easily reconvert to making the mass-market stuff,
               | just at much higher cost. You can 't expect more than
               | that, since they never really were as big or as low-cost
               | as the lowest cost suppliers can be in normal times.
               | That's not "losing" capacity, it's just acknowledging
               | that you can't create capacity out of thin air.
        
               | kyralis wrote:
               | > If there's a trade war, they can easily reconvert to
               | making the mass-market stuff, just at much higher cost.
               | 
               | "easily" is doing a lot of work in that sentence.
               | Depending on the good and what they switch to making,
               | this may neither be easy nor quick.
        
               | Espressosaurus wrote:
               | No, the domestic industry stagnates (at best) or
               | disappears (at worst).
               | 
               | You can't just spin up a 2nm wafer fab when the latest
               | you've been running is a 300nm process.
               | 
               | Compare: US shipbuilding industry to China or SK.
        
               | youarentrightjr wrote:
               | > If there's a trade war, they can easily reconvert to
               | making the mass-market stuff
               | 
               | Factories, tooling, supply chains, and engineering
               | knowledge aren't fungible in the way they would need to
               | be for your statement to be true.
        
               | timschmidt wrote:
               | Different types of DRAM can literally be made from the
               | same already-etched wafer. The DRAM bits themselves don't
               | change at all. What's different between DDR4, DDR5, and
               | HBM is the IO interface to the chip. Changing this does
               | not require significant retooling or relearning.
        
               | pdhborges wrote:
               | Does that mean CXMT is one inch away from also eating
               | into the DDR5 market?
        
               | zelphirkalt wrote:
               | Higher valued varieties, or just higher priced varieties,
               | that no one wants to buy?
        
             | nandomrumber wrote:
             | Blame China.
             | 
             | As though moving production to China wasn't something the
             | West did intentionally.
             | 
             | And _now_ continues to push manufacturing out of Western
             | countries by, for example in the UK and Germany, and
             | Australia too, making electricity and gas so expensive it
             | becomes cost prohibitive to manufacture much at all.
        
           | numpad0 wrote:
           | the currency eventually collapses
        
             | extraduder_ire wrote:
             | I don't know if it's still a thing, but China was getting a
             | lot of heat about a decade ago for purposefully devaluing
             | their currency to make their exports more attractive.
             | 
             | They kind of had to do this, because their large amount of
             | exports were pushing the value of it up compared to others.
        
           | creato wrote:
           | If you actually believe this, then what is your explanation
           | for a manufacturer to do this?
           | 
           | Do you think they are just stupid?
        
           | fph wrote:
           | Microsoft gave away Internet Explorer at a loss, and what
           | happened to internet standards?
        
           | skeeter2020 wrote:
           | First, they're not selling at a loss; the huge price
           | increases have allowed them to push aggrssively in the legacy
           | markets. They're making "slightly smaller" profits than other
           | manufacturers (of which there are now very few).
           | 
           | Second, they can drive out all competition and then have a
           | captive audience for whatever prices they want, as the
           | barriers to entry in these markets are very high. This is
           | essentially what's happened with all higher-end manufacturing
           | in the west over the past 30+ years.
        
         | PearlRiver wrote:
         | Chinese investment has not been unproductive. It gave them
         | independence so that the US could not cut them of- see Cuba.
        
         | dygd wrote:
         | > It is wise for these Chinese fabs to eventually use a very
         | aggressive dumping strategy to price well below cost push out
         | other players forever, especially in DRAM.
         | 
         | Crucial's departure from the consumer market left such a gaping
         | hole, that CXMT doesn't even need to push other players out to
         | gain a footing.
        
           | RobotToaster wrote:
           | It's more like everyone else abandoned the market, and CXMT
           | realised it was free real estate.
        
         | maxglute wrote:
         | How's it dumping below cost when hey can simply sell for 100%
         | margins instead of western makers selling for 400%.
        
           | shimman wrote:
           | Because only western companies are allowed to make massive
           | profits at the expense of entire nations, it's not greed when
           | they do it apparently.
        
         | RobotToaster wrote:
         | It's amazing what can be achieved when you can plan 5 years in
         | advance, instead of just making the line go up for the next
         | quarter.
        
       | swed420 wrote:
       | Awesome. Hopefully storage is next.
        
       | nutjob2 wrote:
       | This is good news. The price you pay for jacking up your prices
       | is losing market share.
       | 
       | Once established, the Chinese vendors will retain most the market
       | share if the quality is ok. The SK/JP vendors are making a big
       | mistake.
        
         | xadhominemx wrote:
         | Everyone is completely sold out and adding capacity as quickly
         | as possible.
        
           | ErneX wrote:
           | Are they really adding capacity?
        
             | ReptileMan wrote:
             | I am sure you can lock great prices for ram for 2035
             | delivery.
        
               | cmxch wrote:
               | If only on principle alone, could one secure a contract
               | to buy a few TB of DDR5 memory to be delivered in 2035?
               | 
               | And if so, how?
        
               | ReptileMan wrote:
               | Few TB probably not, but few EB I think you will be able
               | to make a contract.
        
             | xadhominemx wrote:
             | Yes of course. Looking at the share prices of their
             | suppliers-- ASML, Lam Research, Applied Materials, etc.
        
               | kvemkon wrote:
               | But since when? There are public announcements about new
               | energy deals since summer 2024. But I'm missing any
               | information about similar RAM/NAND/HDD deals back then,
               | so that corresponding shortages could be only for short
               | time until, say, summer 2026.
        
         | wrsh07 wrote:
         | It's not clear that raising your prices to match the
         | supply/demand curve is a mistake
         | 
         | They will compete on price if they are forced to, but they
         | aren't forced to right now
        
           | yellowapple wrote:
           | It ain't the price raise that's the mistake (even if that's
           | what's currently painful for those of us looking to buy RAM).
           | It's the willingness to _only_ raise prices, and not
           | meaningfully expand production, that 's the mistake.
        
       | ThrowawayTestr wrote:
       | This decade is going to end with Chinese dominance in everything.
       | Trump and AI handed them everything they need on a platter.
        
         | hyperman1 wrote:
         | Western European countries got dominant, then got arrogant,
         | letting the USA eat their lunch.
         | 
         | USA got dominant, got arrogant, letting China eat their lunch.
         | 
         | China is indeed getting dominant. They will get arrogant one
         | day. Meanwhile, Western Europe and the USA are still very good
         | places to live.
        
           | yellowapple wrote:
           | The pertinent question, then, is who's gonna eat China's
           | lunch?
           | 
           | My guess would be south/southeast Asia (India and Vietnam
           | seem especially promising), but if the US was smart it'd put
           | its efforts fully toward as many infrastructure investments
           | and trade agreements and immigration agreements as possible
           | to create a pan-American economic union. We have the
           | resources and technology to turn every country in North and
           | South America into an industrial and technological
           | powerhouse. We have the resources and technology to finally
           | conquer the Darien Gap and connect North and South America
           | with highways and high-speed rail. We have the resources and
           | technology to go on the offense against drug cartels (while
           | also eliminating the failed border controls and drug
           | prohibitions that keep those cartels in business in the first
           | place).
           | 
           | If we're gonna be imperialists, then by golly let's at least
           | be productive about it.
        
       | Magnets wrote:
       | This is just marketing. Why would you sell at 50% of market rate?
       | Chinese production of NAND and DRAM is not significant, it's
       | single digit %
        
         | amluto wrote:
         | It might be very effective marketing. The big non-Chinese OEMs
         | trust and use Korean and Japanese DRAM, and they might have
         | been unwilling to put DRAM from CXMT into their products. (CXMT
         | is newish, does not have access to ASML gear, which ASML would
         | like you to believe makes it harder to make high-quality DRAM,
         | DRAM is historically not a very large fraction of the cost of
         | most non-huge-memory machines, and a bad DIMM is an expensive
         | mistake for a company like Dell or HPE that is on the hook for
         | repairs.)
         | 
         | But now CXMT seems to have gotten at least Dell, HP (I wonder
         | if the article meant HPE), Acer and Asus to buy and attempt to
         | qualify samples. If CXMT lands some serious purchasing
         | agreements while still selling well above cost, that's a win
         | for them.
        
         | deepsquirrelnet wrote:
         | Does the last part of your comment explain it? They need
         | revenue to expand capacity and the market has opened up a
         | window to become a bigger supplier while still being
         | profitable.
        
         | Tadpole9181 wrote:
         | > Why would you sell at 50% of market rate?
         | 
         | Because market rate is a 400%+ markup right now and not
         | everyone is a greedy American kleptocrat with a diagnosable
         | addiction to extracting every possible cent of wealth on the
         | planet within a single fiscal quarter.
        
       | 7777777phil wrote:
       | DDR4 going from $1.35 to $11.50 in a year shows this market was
       | already distorted before CXMT showed up.
       | 
       | Legacy DRAM is still over half of Samsung and SK hynix's
       | production capacity. That's where the volume pain actually lands
       | while they're betting everything on HBM4.
        
         | bigbadfeline wrote:
         | A near 10 times price rise of legacy chips and surely a lot
         | higher profit increase couldn't motivate SKamsunix to increase
         | their capacity for that segment, even more, they proudly
         | informed the market about their decision to stop making DDR4 at
         | the end of this year... to focus on even higher margin
         | products.
         | 
         | But they aren't going to stop whining about China, no matter
         | how much pain the market experiences.
        
       | Havoc wrote:
       | Great moment to break into the market if you're willing to
       | forfeit profits
        
       | fulafel wrote:
       | Has DDR5 caught up to DDR4 latency yet? I remember it was worse
       | at least in the beginning. There's more bandwidth per channel but
       | a hw design can always add more channels for the desired BW. Not
       | so for latency.
        
         | kvemkon wrote:
         | > add more channels
         | 
         | and unfortunately increase latency even more with registered
         | DIMMs. Comparing bandwidth increase (50 GB/s) to the stagnated
         | latency (~80..120 ns total, less than ~0.1 GB/s) over last
         | decades, I'm wondering, whether one still can call today's RAM
         | _random_ memory (though sure it can be accessed randomly).
         | Similar to hard disk drives. Up to 300 MB /s sequentially but
         | only up to less than 1 MB/s 4KB random (read).
        
           | fhars wrote:
           | People have been wondering that for a while:
           | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19304281
        
       | maxglute wrote:
       | Still no confirmation if CXMT or YMTC actually removed from
       | entity list, until then this is jus cheap domestic inputs.
        
         | wcoenen wrote:
         | As far as I understand, the "entity list" you are referring to
         | is part of the "Export Administration Regulations", so it
         | restricts sales from the US to restricted entities, not the
         | other way around.
        
       | alecco wrote:
       | Good news. Now we need Chinese manufacturers of DDR4 chipsets and
       | motherboards.
        
         | wmf wrote:
         | Chipsets don't determine the RAM type and all motherboards have
         | been made in China for a while.
        
           | alecco wrote:
           | Taiwan dominates the global motherboard industry. (ASUS,
           | Gigabyte, MSI, ASRock, etc. and MediaTek etc)
           | 
           | The big Taiwanese manufacturers are chasing the AI dragon.
           | 
           | https://www.digitimes.com/news/a20251021PD219/ai-server-
           | asro... (Oct 2025)
           | 
           | OTOH, now I read small Taiwanese manufacturers who are left
           | out of the Nvidia supply chain are reverting to DDR4
           | motherboards because of the DDR5 shortage. Strange times.
        
         | lelanthran wrote:
         | > Good news. Now we need Chinese manufacturers of DDR4 chipsets
         | and motherboards.
         | 
         | Search aliexpress for X99 dual socket motherboards.
        
       | DoctorOetker wrote:
       | Is there a reason GPU's don't use insane "blocks" of sdcard slots
       | (for massively parallel io) so the model weights don't need to
       | pass through a limited PCI bus?
        
         | Neywiny wrote:
         | Yes. Let's do the math. The fastest sd cards can read at around
         | 300 MB/s (https://havecamerawilltravel.com/fastest-sd-cards/).
         | Modern GPUs use 16 lanes of PCIe gen 5, which is 16x32Gb/s =
         | 512Gb/s = 64 GB/s. Meaning you'd need over 200 of the fastest
         | SD cards. So what you're asking is: is there a reason GPUs
         | don't use 200 SD cards? And I can't think of any way that would
         | work
        
           | hedgehog wrote:
           | SD is obviously the wrong interface for this but "High
           | Bandwidth Flash" (stacked flash akin to HBM) is in
           | development for exactly this kind of problem. AMD actually
           | made a GPU with onboard flash maybe a decade ago but I think
           | it was a bit early. Today I would love to have a pool of
           | 50GB/s storage attached to the GPU.
        
         | numpad0 wrote:
         | Maybe latency. IIRC flash is a lot laggier than DRAMs and
         | SRAMs.
        
       | decryption wrote:
       | That explains the cheap DDR4 DIMMs on AliExpress. Can get 2x 16GB
       | DDR4-3200 DIMMs for A$252 delivered to Australia. A local PC
       | store has same spec "name brand" RAM for around $380-$400.
       | 
       | https://a.aliexpress.com/_mssanU1
        
         | Forgeties79 wrote:
         | These prices are insane. I can't believe that's what
         | constitutes a good deal right now.
        
       | guerrilla wrote:
       | I was wondering when people would find out about CXMT. I wish
       | them luck and hope the US doesn't sabotage them. We need
       | diversity and competition right now.
        
       | 127 wrote:
       | The cure for high prices is high prices.
        
       | kristianp wrote:
       | Also moving into HBM:
       | 
       | > CXMT is in the process of converting wafer capacity equivalent
       | to about 20 percent of its total DRAM output -- some 60,000
       | wafers per month -- at its Shanghai plant to the fourth-
       | generation HBM3 chip production
        
       | yellowapple wrote:
       | > the average fixed contract price of PC DRAM DDR4 8Gb stood at
       | $11.50
       | 
       | If that's the case, then why are the cheapest options I can find
       | online multiple times that much?
        
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