Chinese memory maker CXMT enters mainstream consumer memory with Corsair Vengeance DDR5 kit — Chinese-made DRAM emerges as an antidote for crushing shortages
Posted by sr_local@reddit | hardware | View on Reddit | 191 comments
wickedplayer494@reddit
That's nice, but let's be honest, Corsair is almost definitely pocketing the difference.
sicklyslick@reddit
Fortunately there any more RAM makers. Competition will drive these down.
maxtinion_lord@reddit
Been on this Earth for a few decades, still waiting for tech companies to actually compete with each other and attempt decent products instead of high fiving each other whilst performing an Eiffel tower maneuvre on my wallet.
Amd really got me with the whole ryzen disruption thing.. right before they immediately became identical to Intel in business strategy and we just ended up with 2 companies doing the same anticompetitive nonsense while pretending to be locked in intense competition.
sicklyslick@reddit
yep because there's actually no competition in america. it's an oligarchy owned by a handful of companies.
wanna see real competition? look at TVs. china makes 90%+ of the worlds tvs. tvs get cheaper and better every year.
if china can get their hands on EUV and make high end semis, you bet your ass ram, cpu, and gpu prices will be crashing
MehEds@reddit
CPUs were one of the few components where prices remained stable in the last ten years. They actually do compete with each other, I get being cynical but your example's absurd.
dingo_xd@reddit
What matters most now is to produce more RAM chips. There is no other way because demand has increased by 20-40% because of AI. And the big three aren't building new capacity fast enough, possibly because they know they win more by taking their time.
StrategyEven3974@reddit
mmm. it's more like 20x - 40x.
dingo_xd@reddit
How much cheaper does CXMT sell their DDR5 RAM chips compared to the big three?
literum@reddit
That's not how prices work.
kingwhocares@reddit
YMTC is also going to be starting making DRAM by the end of this year. Add to that the fact that there will be no more Middle Eastern data centres for a while and AI companies failing to deliver that perfect LLM where the "perfect" can't be defined, leading them to scale back on investment (already being seen), there's definitely going to be price crash by next year.
If I were holding any stocks of memory manufacturers, I would be selling right now or near future.
W0LFSTEN@reddit
Scale back investment? Didn’t all of big tech just announce massively expanded AI budgets?
Guilty_Rooster_6708@reddit
Yeah. Anthropic’s so compute short they have to work w competitor xAI to rent their datacenter for Claude. More datacenters will be built.
Also, datacenters use HBM and China doesn’t have EUV tech to make HBM. Don’t sell your memory stocks now lol
CassadagaValley@reddit
Is there a breakdown of percent usage between free/cheaper plan users and the high-end users? None of these companies are making money on any of the tiers (free, cheap, expensive) so at some point the cost for these are going to skyrocket which should see a drastic reduction in compute needed. Eventually the majority of users are going to be enterprise if companies pay for it but I can't see your average Joe paying $100/month just to ask ChatGPT or Gemini basic questions you can put into Google.
Hebrewhammer8d8@reddit
Saw a client bill with 82k for Claude for 1 month. They were using a lot of tokens, and Finance person did an audit with CTO and Team Lead to figure out why bill was near this high for 4 months. A lot of employees were using it improperly, and rack to the bill. They limit the Claude usage, and started to monitor their LLM Service usage.
zagblorg@reddit
Google is becoming an AI agent experience soon, so will probably start charging. Hopefully not all search engines will copy them. Then we just need some actual websites to survive the drastic fall in add revenue caused by AI scraping their content to take their views away, or indeed the internet Apocalypse that ID verification is going to cause once it's ubiquitous enough.
It's somewhat confusing how US Big Tech seems to be collectively trying to destroy the internet, from which they make all their revenue...
mycall@reddit
AI agent experience doesn't have to be commercial.
drunk_kronk@reddit
I highly doubt Google is going to ever charge users for their main search functionality (what ever form that takes).
zagblorg@reddit
Apparently they have suggested it before. Will see how compute intensive the switch to AI agents and personalised vibe coded apps for UIs is. IIRC it's not too far away in their roadmap.
Guilty_Rooster_6708@reddit
Your point is kinda unrelated to what I’m trying to say. Regardless of profitability there’s a clear need for companies like Anthropic to invest in more compute, otherwise they would not cooperate w a competitor who they accused of distilling their models beforehand. And that demand will mean more capex investment
W0LFSTEN@reddit
The profitability argument has been ineffectively used to predict future spend (or lack thereof) for 3 years now. It’s an ignorant and naive way of looking at the industry.
Guilty_Rooster_6708@reddit
It’s enough of an indicator for Micron to move all production to HBM and SK and Samsung to prioritize it over GDDR and DDR5. What is this about ignorant and naive lol?
W0LFSTEN@reddit
I’m confused on what exactly you are arguing, sorry.
mycall@reddit
I wonder how much xAI team is learning from Anthropic through the process here.
Guilty_Rooster_6708@reddit
I said in a comment down here that Anthropic must be very desperate to rent compute from xAI because they have accuse xAI of distilling Claude before. I would say a decent amount, but it’s not going to matter much as long as xAI does not have access to Opus/Sonnet weights, Claude has not displayed CoT in their reasoning for a while now
Zealousideal-Cut4232@reddit
Large companies will survive.
I believe it’s the others who jumped the bandwagon and started investing like mad with no clear business plan or goals, hoping they will be ready when the demand is there.
Just like the dotcom bubble. Big players survived it and got filthy rich.
kingwhocares@reddit
OpenAI just closed their Video making AI.
_FUCKTHENAZIADMINS_@reddit
They closed it because they desperately needed compute to power their GPT models and because they can make way more money running the GPT models.
Due-Description-9030@reddit
Lmao, this doesn't mean anything. Open AI itself can shutdown and still big tech won't stop pouring in billions for their data centers.
kingwhocares@reddit
Given that Nvidia AI GPUs are nearly redundant for mass scale use after 5 years, doubt it.
Due-Description-9030@reddit
Wut? Who told you this?
kingwhocares@reddit
RTX 5090 based 96GB is far superior than a Nvidia A100 80GB.
Due-Description-9030@reddit
You do realise in the coming years, we'll be having GPUs far more powerful than a 5090? Lol
zagblorg@reddit
AI companies will. We probably won't. Jensen wants to rent us compute, not sell us hardware we own.
Due-Description-9030@reddit
No, consumers will still be able to get GPUs. Jensen needs to have cuda development going on after all. If he makes GPUs completely unaffordable, then market share would jump to AMD or Intel which Jensen wouldn't prefer happening.
kingwhocares@reddit
Thus, my "redundant after 5 years". Unlike you and me, these data centres run GPUs 24/7 and also cooling which requires a lot electricity. You are then running inefficient large compute at massive costs.
Due-Description-9030@reddit
Copper wires will soon be replaced with photonic chips and due to light based communication taking place, heat will be dramatically reduced since there will be no electrical resistance and energy leakage.
Ofc, the transition will take some years but by next decade or even mid 2030s, this will be something common in data centres, so they won't be facing the inefficiency they face today. Companies are already aggressively filling patents for optical I/O lol.
Maybe go read about hardware improvements before making assumptions.
zagblorg@reddit
But most of the heat is from the GPU die and memory chips, isn't it? Not to mention the VRMs providing them power. That are the components they put heatsinks on. The heat generated by the I/O is negligible by comparison...
W0LFSTEN@reddit
What does that prove, exactly? They did that to focus on more compute efficient projects (like Codex) because the compute shortage is so severe. They just raised $122b in their latest funding round, and will raise even more later this year when they IPO… What will they spend this money on?
kingwhocares@reddit
One of which was a $70b reduced Nvidia spending which relies on OpenAI buying Nvidia hardware. Almost all AI companies raised money this way. These are money that doesn't exist and a pyramid scheme.
W0LFSTEN@reddit
Okay? The canceled plan was for $10b per gigawatt for 10 total gigawatts that would have been deployed into the next decade… Only 1 gigawatt, or $10b, would have been redeemed this year. None of that amount was guaranteed.
Nvidia canceled that plan and instead they just straight up gave OpenAI a $30b block of money in exchange for equity.
You would not replace a penciled in agreement to be paid out over a decade with a straight cash payment today if you thought a crash was coming.
kingwhocares@reddit
That agreement comes in with OpenAI buying Nvidia GPUs. The money that doesn't exist is in circulation.
W0LFSTEN@reddit
Your argument was that investments are scaling back. All your points to prove that have arguably implied the opposite. Do you have any other points? Otherwise I am done here.
kingwhocares@reddit
30-100 = -70
They are definitely scaling back.
W0LFSTEN@reddit
Meanwhile OpenAI raised $120b a few months ago, and will raise another $60b later this year. That is $180b total, up from $40b last year. And yet, according to you, they are scaling back. So if all this money is not going towards expanding capacity (anyone following this industry knows that it is) what exactly is that $180b going towards? Please enlighten us.
RedBerryyy@reddit
Have you seen anthropics revenue?, they just had an outright profitable quarter and its still growing, its practically impossible to rent compute right now with the scale of demand. I wouldnt bet on demand abeting in the near future.
kingwhocares@reddit
Yes, if you are using nonsense like using a single month's revenue growth rate and apply it to forecast for the whole quarter/year (basically run-rate revenue).
_FUCKTHENAZIADMINS_@reddit
Their annualized run rate revenue has at bare minimum tripled from $9B in December 2025 to $30B+ in April, how is that nonsense?
kingwhocares@reddit
Because it didn't actually triple. They just took their most profitable month and predicted it will triple based on it.
_FUCKTHENAZIADMINS_@reddit
ARR is calculated by taking current revenue patterns and extrapolating it to a full year. Even if you argue that they’re just taking their most profitable day or week and multiplying it by 365 or 52 that still means their most profitable moments have tripled
Guilty_Rooster_6708@reddit
The fact that Anthropic needs to rent compute from a competitor says it all really. More datacenters will be built in the future and Anthropic and Google also use lots of DRAM and HBM for their TPUs.
China also doesn’t have EUV tech to make HBM which datacenters use, so they can’t make products to compete quite yet
kingwhocares@reddit
For you and me, that doesn't matter since China makes DDR5 memory.
Guilty_Rooster_6708@reddit
100%, but companies are going to prioritize making HBM due to higher profit margins since they are for profit, thus the situation won’t get better soon
kingwhocares@reddit
Chinese won't because they can't yet. They will be eating that DRAM market.
Guilty_Rooster_6708@reddit
I hope so bro for the sake of us gamers. But I follow Chinese AI development and something tells me they’ll be pulling all DRAM resources to make HBM and tackle the memory wall issue. China invest heavily in AI and LLMs so it makes sense for them to work on this bottleneck.
Most flagship Chinese LLMs like Deepseek V4, GLM, MiniMax and Moonshot’s Kimi are MoE of around the same weight and activated parameters and they are all looking to improve throughput as well as model size. All or these require more memory and memory bandwith
RedBerryyy@reddit
Either way, people were suggesting forecasts to hit their current revenue level within a few years, "unreasonably optimisitic" not that long ago.
GenZia@reddit
There’s only so much data you can feed into an LLM before it starts farting out gibberish.
Personally, I don't think current language models are going to get much better/smarter over the years, though I've been wrong before.
PointmanW@reddit
I don't think anyone is aiming for some kind of "perfect" LLM, just increasingly useful one.
personally, as a senior software engineer, just one year ago I only use it to generate small snippets of code, and usually have to do some fixes to get it working, it usually fail on longer code even with perfectly clear specification.
Now I can trust it to generate several files at one, and the code perfectly comply with specification most of the time and I almost never have to fix anything anymore, it has become much more reliable.
then now you have recent news of it cracking a famous problem that mathematician have tried and failed to solve and got a Field medalist excited about it.
so well, you don't really know how much more it can get better, people has been saying it gonna hit a wall for all of 2024 and 2025 and it's still getting better.
Caffdy@reddit
everyone and their mothers around here on r/hardware believes themselves experts on AI and the hardware industry, predicting things that never comes to pass; the only thing they show is their hateboner for the technology and inability to comes to grips to a new reality: AI is here to stay, it has already proven useful in many ways. Reddit is an echo chamber, the real world with real people there is plodding forward
JQuilty@reddit
That math problem was not an LLM. And LLMs/image generation are all these coked up MBAs and stock traders care about.
_FUCKTHENAZIADMINS_@reddit
The math problem was proven by an unreleased version of GPT
PointmanW@reddit
It was done by ChatGPT 5.5 Pro, a LLM.
SJGucky@reddit
There is the problem with accuracy. I can't trust an LLM that is not 100% accurate.
The problem is that performance vs accuracy is not linear. It takes an infinite amount of processing power and energy to get to 100% in the current state.
mycall@reddit
I'm glad my boss doesn't think that about me.
Exist50@reddit
Even if you could somehow tell if a human is lying (empirically not the case for most), people can be wrong without being deliberately so.
Express_Living2264@reddit
this isn't really a problem for testable tasks.
more is better but we are well in the region of good enough
this isn't about lying. can you tell if a human tells you something that is wrong that he believes is correct? you can't reliably. either way this can be fixed with #1
Orolol@reddit
So you have some kind of superpower ?
Jimmy_Nail_4389@reddit
Not sure that claim stands up when you look at how easy we all fall for propaganda and advertising.
TheBraveGallade@reddit
Humans can also tell you what thwy believe is true but in reality isnt, so...
Due-Description-9030@reddit
Do you realise they're only gonna get better especially with hardware dramatically getting better in the coming years?
Why do you people always base your views on what's present at the moment?
People said something similar when DLSS came out and now so many calling it "black magic" lol. The same shit is gonna happen to everything else.
JQuilty@reddit
LLMs have many limitations. Saying hardware will get better is like saying that in itself will make things like the traveling salesman problem easier.
Due-Description-9030@reddit
We're bound to get more breakthroughs in AI architecture and algorithmic design, so even if they don't entirely solve the limitations, they'll still dramatically improve the quality of LLMs and vastly improved LLMs compared to what we have today will actually start being highly useful for people.
There's simply no reason to assume that things will stay stagnant in the tech industry.
JQuilty@reddit
That's not how math works. That's like saying we're bound to make progress on solving NP Hard problems quickly soon. We have R&D spending out the ass and countless number of cocaine addled MBAs all in on lies from Sam Altman, Elmo, Nadellya, and others. Yet we've plateaued, and people like Yann LeCunn think its a hard one.
Idrialite@reddit
It's not at all like that.
Due-Description-9030@reddit
Read my post again.
I said even if limitations aren't solved, there's still a lot of improvements left and even that would lead to people using LLMs more and more.
Express_Living2264@reddit
i think we kinda suck at truly perceiving the quality increase with LLM's. Video generation models makes the advances far more obvious. I'm guessing LLMs are getting better at least at a similar rate.
chaddledee@reddit
Realistically, if it's possible at all, it's going to take a couple of different breakthroughs before we reach AGI. We have no idea how long it'll be before those breakthroughs will happen.
gartenriese@reddit
We can already see this with DLSS. The newest models are only better because it costs more performance. I guess Nvidia hit a wall and can't optimize it further.
kingwhocares@reddit
They will definitely be in the next 10-15 years but not in the 3-5 years. The rate of improvement isn't always linnear or exponential.
dakjelle@reddit
When the hype is over and the realities set in these Chinese manufacturers will still be here and then it's going to get ugly.
I hope it was worth it because the future is going to be rough for those that went for the quick buck
Due-Description-9030@reddit
That's not true, the big three companies still are the only ones who can keep supplying HBM for now which the data centres need. These companies can literally cancel consumer grade ram and offload it to other companies like these and they still would be making a fortune.
BadGoodNotBad@reddit
Until the AI bubble pops.
pack_merrr@reddit
It's beyond me how anyone can seriously think there is an "AI bubble", maybe a year ago I could have seen the argument, today that's just insane.
Due-Description-9030@reddit
This is something a lot of people are mindlessly parroting about on the internet.
Are you in the idea that an economic bubble is going to pop and companies are gonna forget the existence of AI after that? That's it, no more production of hardware geared for AI technologies? Lol
Look, no amount of economics bubbles or inflation or stock market crashes or are gonna stop big tech from doubling down on AI. Also, maybe go take a look at how hardware is going to get dramatically better in the coming few years - there's simply no reason for big tech to stop investing in AI / data centres.
GalvenMin@reddit
Show me how they can make more money than what they're gobbling up right now, and I will believe it's not a bubble.
Due-Description-9030@reddit
It being a bubble or not won't stop companies from investing in building data centres... so, I don't know what are you trying to prove here
residentgiant@reddit
Investing in data centers that are being built at the speed of molasses with hardware that will be outdated by the time they're finally up and running. wcgw?
Due-Description-9030@reddit
How will it be outdated when no one else will be using the new hardware?
No one's going to be having the most updated hardware other than the data centres. As it is, they already have HBM which is something consumers aren't gonna get in the foreseeable future.
residentgiant@reddit
Right so all of the factories are just going to chill, and Nvidia will hit the brakes for the next half a decade while they wait for those warehouses full of Blackwell GPUs to stop collecting dust and go into operation. Cool.
StradlatersFirstName@reddit
Interesting how the AI booster stopped replying when confronted with this information...
hojnikb@reddit
if cost of building a data center exceed it's longterm value (ie it cant pay itself viably over the x amount of years) companies will stop building them en masse. At the end of the day, they're out to make a profit. At some point crazy valuations will stop and crazy venture capital will dry up just for being AI. Similar thing happend in 00s. Just being a dotcom company wasn't enough for investors to throw money at you.
Also when people realise AI isn't actually artificial intelligence, but just LLMs pretending to be intelligent, things will start popping. We're far away from actual AGI. That might be the next gold rush in the coming decades.
Due-Description-9030@reddit
Dotcom back then was different. As of now and for the foreseeable future, big tech isn't gonna stop making profits and long term contracts have already been laid out for data centres. There's virtually 0 chance for these hyperscalers to go bankrupt and I think you know why for obvious reasons.
Moreover, stock market isn't the entire story. Stocks can crash and companies can still be performing great or will catch very soon considering how hardware is going to improve in the coming months.
Data centre costs will also go down a lot once they adopt photonic chips and replace copper wires since they eliminate electrical resistance and energy leakage by communicating via light. It'll dramatically reduce heat emissions and the need for cooling will go down greatly.
Nuclear energy companies have literally laid out decade long contracts with these hyperscalers.
The foreseeable future is based on a very clear path and even if stocks go down, the data centers and big tech's expenditure on them won't slow down. Economic bubbles (if at all it's a bubble) won't stop AI advancements and adoption.
Kujara@reddit
Do tell.
What on earth is gonna change, on the data center level, in the coming months ? As in, things that will actually exist then ?
Due-Description-9030@reddit
Coming years*
hojnikb@reddit
You can just build nuclear over the night. Even if you decide you need on today, there's gonna be a decade, before such unit is operational. Decade in tech world is massive amount of time.
Those hypescalers will hit a wall someday. If it's not power or funding, it will be something else. There's only so much power, so much silicon output and so much location you can build and have the talent nearby.
Every bubble it's the same story. "This time it will be different". Sure, it's different, but the idea is the same. You can only go so crazy before shit starts breaking apart.
Due-Description-9030@reddit
They're not doing all of this overnight, this is literally why I mentioned about decade(s) long contracts being laid out already.
And photonic chips are also going to dramatically decrease heat and energy wastage since they'll eliminate electrical resistance and energy losses which copper wires give. Companies are already aggressively filing out patents for optical I/O. Lumentum's stocks have blown up since the past few years. And on top of this, we are still yet to have GPUs based on 1nm processes and we are going to be seeing die stacking in GPUs soon. I can go on and on.
Dotcom bubble was merely a bubble and it didn't have unstoppable cash cows like these big tech companies investing into decade long contracts. And regardless of what happens to the stock market, nothing will stop these data centre contracts.
At best, there'll be some minor corrections here and there and you'll have YouTubers posting clickbaits on how companies are failing but the reality is nothing is stopping them from investing into all of this.
hojnikb@reddit
All of the things you mention ain't just around the corner. photonic chips sounds nice on paper, but we're still far away from deploying actual tested products based on that tech. I think die stacking will happen sooner, but that won't yield as much gains as you might thing.
Some form of stacking already exists (HMB and 3D-vcache is being one of them).
The issue is, that tech companies have to show growth, but that can't happen if appetite from shareholders/venture capital investors exceedes what it can happen in real life.
Just remember self driving for example. This was touted from tesla as the next big thing almost 10 years ago for being just around the corner. But reality kicked in and almost 10 years later, we still don't have. Not in the proper sense of the world.
Sometimes problems are much harder to solves and just throwing gobs of VC money at the problem cant solve it overnight.
GalvenMin@reddit
Of course not, but right now the premise is that AI will be everywhere as well as paramount to economic growth in any aspect of the human existence. That requires quite a bit of data centres. Now if you apply some correction to this premise, not as many data centres will be required, which is my point.
ChinoGambino@reddit
To get a return on investment for the datacentres being constructed the entire US tech sector would have to double its revenue in the next 4 years. It doesn't make any financial sense for the paying side of the equation. Hyperscalers are plowing trillions into data centres to service LLM companies like OpenAI generating 10s of billions in gross revenue at best while losing billions each quarter. 6 companies are paying Nvidia 50 billion a quarter for new GPU racks they hope to turn on in the next 18 months so they can immediately start losing money.
This is not going to end well. Silicon makers are cashing in on stupid money while it lasts.
Jonny_H@reddit
There's not enough money in the world to pay the valuations of the AI-inflated tech valuations. Of course it's a bubble.
The question is if it'll "burst" and at what speed - there's always the option of decades long slow "stagnation" correction instead, like Japan post-80s peak.
mycall@reddit
During a burst, that's perfect time for an industry to pivot the model architecture to some hybrid JEPA-Commons decendent.
notgreat@reddit
Well, or the wildest dreams of the AI companies come true and AI becomes good enough that human labor is economically nonviable. Thus causing the collapse of the entire world economy and making it literally impossible for anybody to ever get a job.
Surely there can be no possible downsides to this.
Jonny_H@reddit
I know Musk is a joke, but the "xAI" (AKA the latest paperwork shenanigans where Musk-owned companies purchase other Musk-owned companies to artifically inflate their on-paper calculated "value") called the TAM for their "Enterprise AI Solutions" $22 trillion.
That's higher than the total taxable income for everyone in the United States. That's not just replacing Every single employee (including people not doing "office/knowledge" work, and the managers/CEOs apparently buying into this dream), but doing so at a higher cost than their current salaries.
It's all just magic made up numbers, and has been for a while.
Idrialite@reddit
You're neglecting Jevon's paradox. We have the amount of labor we have because of its price. If labor becomes cheaper to train and buy, demand will increase.
Jonny_H@reddit
But that price of labour is what drives consumer demand in the first place.
And Jevon's paradox is just about demand as efficiency increases - not about the distribution of cost and value as a proportion of the total economy.
The idea that AI can somehow replace all other economic activity while also increasing the cost is insane - as that's what these valuations would require.
Allfeelings0Logic@reddit
This is assuming the government doesn't change taxation and social distribution of funds.
The real question is how powerful will AI become because as long as government is "by the people for the people" it's the people who have the real leverage. But what happens when the machines become so superior that they can easily overpower humans rendering adults into dependent babies that can't fend and provide for themselves, what happens when they become so intelligent that they can outsmart our leaders and take full control of their destiny themselves?
It's a dangerous situation to create entities that will render the most powerful entity on earth (humans) powerless.
Jonny_H@reddit
Yeah, it's "If it actually gets close to the numbers being thrown around, the Economy, and Society as a whole, has to change in ways that make running on current assumptions somewhat useless.
And the transitions tend to be.... Fractious.
cotdt@reddit
Open AI ordered a lot of memory that they won't be able to pay for
Due-Description-9030@reddit
OpenAI itself can shutdown and nothing will stop these hyperscalers from investing into data centres.
OpenAI is one company and that's it.
Allfeelings0Logic@reddit
Unfortunately there's no real sign of a bubble. We're are on track to still be suffering from huge AI investment even in 2028.
Marmoto1969@reddit
Lamentablemente???… lamentas el desarrollo tecnológico real de la IA ?
mycall@reddit
Web 2.0 came out of the dotcom boom, out from a popped bubble.
Hyunekel@reddit
What's ugly?
SpHoneybadger@reddit
I hope all those manufacturers who went for it get crushed in debt
Clueless_PhD@reddit
Even Chinese companies went for it. They cared about business, not customers.
sicklyslick@reddit
The Chinese can't make HBM memory used for data centers.
Allfeelings0Logic@reddit
Can they make GDDR7?
puffz0r@reddit
not yet
Clueless_PhD@reddit
I meant that they are selling DRAM at nearly same price of Big Three DRAM manufacturers.
https://www.techspot.com/review/3089-ddr5-made-in-china/
sicklyslick@reddit
I'm hoping they can increase production and drive the price down.
W0LFSTEN@reddit
Well Micron, Samsung and SK are actively paying down debt and growing their cash on hand. Although I can’t speak of their Chinese peers.
trichocereal117@reddit
It’s the OEMs that purchase chips and put them into consumer products that are taking on massive debt
Oxflu@reddit
They have a fixed cost on their factories which are sitting idle because there's no chips to put into products. They can quadruple the price of the product if they want but we can't afford them anyway and it doesn't make up for the lost volume. Realistically if they shudder right now some billionaire will buy the plants when the crisis is over at a fraction of the valuation.
mycall@reddit
Yeah the next generation bilionaries will have lessons learned too.
W0LFSTEN@reddit
Which ones?
trichocereal117@reddit
ADATA, teamgroup, and more. https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/taiwanese-memory-module-makers-raise-880-million-to-stockpile-chips
W0LFSTEN@reddit
It’s short term debt, in Adata’s case. And that’s per their 2025 financials. So they took out a loan sometime last year, purchased inventory with it, and now they are actively selling down that inventory. Not sure if they have fixed contracts, but there is a good chance they’ve made a significant profit on that investment.
PutridFlatulence@reddit
central banks bail everyone out now, debt no longer matters. All they want is to inflate and inflate some more.
bubblesort33@reddit
I don't think going for, or not going for the quick buck would have made any difference here. China would have entered either way.
dakjelle@reddit
China got a free pass with the current market, there is no competition only demand.
test5784@reddit
Even if they flood market witch DRAM (which will take years anyway, given their limited production capacity), the big companies wont care at all, cause they dont even want to manufacture consumer RAM..
dakjelle@reddit
You are not wrong but your looking at it with the same shorted sighted approach as the "big companies" that doesn't care. There is a day after the AI hype where the demand won't be there and then they will make whatever the hell they can sell.
And we all know how China handles shit like this, unlimited state funds and loans to establish the technology and production lines, then a few years to sort out who was able to build the best solution and then let the others die.
hojnikb@reddit
yeah, when CXMT seriously starts expanding it's production capacity for consumer ddr5, eventually production will meet the demand.
But if AI bubble pops and everyone has crazy production but no real demand from datacentres, shit is going to start dropping in price like a rock. If that ever happens, ddr will be pennies on the dollar.
Express_Living2264@reddit
it's a new player on the market with the exact same interests as the competition. It will hurt. They just use the gaming market as a stepping stone.
test5784@reddit
They dont have technology to threaten HBM market, which is where most of the big money is made. And even if they did, they dont have capacity. It might hurt eventually, but that wont happen for a very long time.
GenZia@reddit
There's nothing stopping CXMT and YMTC from joining the HBM bandwagon like Micron, Samsung, and Hynix.
Tenelia@reddit
I'm handling some projects in China atm. What's not reported is that China has been shifting to design and build data centers as a public service to its people, as a net effect of
1) Cutting environmental impact, especially in low water areas.
2) Ensuring citizenry and small business access to compute and storage.
3) Preventing both domestic and foreign capitalists from hoarding resources as well as wasting non-renewables.
It's not about how far behind they are, but the national-level civil servants and CCP technocrats strongly believe humanity is entering an era of climate disasters, which happens to be vastly exacerbated by foolish billionaires that have taken over western governments.
Case in point: Foreigners think that fighting desertification means planting trees, but the actual science and engineering involves very careful and hyper-local applications on both preventing water loss and water usage, which intersects with PREVENTING the spread of sand and loss of bio-friendly top soil. Alot of their local compute goes to fuel such scenario calculations and scentific experiments.
Considering the CCP mandate to ensure domestic needs are met first, I'm unsure we will see significant export volume until all of these considerations are cleared up.
test5784@reddit
Got that from some propaganda course? How many social credits do you get for this nonsense, lol?
sicklyslick@reddit
Aren't you the one swallowing propaganda? You're so brainwashed to believe China = bad that you mentally cannot accept any positive things said about China.
I mean, if you have factual evidence the above poster is lying, then post it? If not, then you're just making an assumption based on your existing belief. This is literally bring brainwashed, lol.
max123246@reddit
Nuance is dead for these people
zghr@reddit
Online I either get "China is a shiny flawless spaceship" or "China is a crumbling prison". Nothing with nuance.
Johnicorn@reddit
You’d be surprised, but they’re catching up quicker than I expected.
I think china is trying to gain market share, once the bubble pops and prices start going down, I doubt the Korean memory market is going to be cheaper than the Chinese. At least till DDR6 is out and china has to catch up again
jedrider@reddit
I would not be surprised if all of a sudden, China rules the gaming world as Nvidia and Amd are now abandoning it.
sshwifty@reddit
All it takes is China to roll out a 4070 equivalent with 48gb at $600 or below and they will own the market for gaming and local AI, and probably a huge swath of other markets.
They already have all the processes in place for everything except the chip.
My hot take anyways.
zghr@reddit
"You want our children to have CCP spying chips in their computers??" - said the politician bribed by someone.
taxiscooter@reddit
IMO the AI part of this dream requires a level of Linux support that Chinese manufacturers haven't demonstrated interest in any other product category. Buy any Chinese product that supposedly supports Linux and you get a 4.x custom kernel. Like come on, even some modern Android phones are on 6.x now.
__________________99@reddit
China moves like 10 times faster in advancement than everywhere else, it seems. Just look at how they advanced in cars. They went from making 3 wheeled, motorcycle engine powered capsules with leather exteriors in the 1990s to electric cars that rivals Rivian and Tesla in about 20 years only.
PutridFlatulence@reddit
Autocratic systems with competent leadership work well and can best their western counterparts. The problem as always is human nature. Still China right now can get things done as you said much faster than bloated western governments and their red tape and corruption.
BabySnipes@reddit
Bureaucratic governments are too slow for the modern world. Unless it changes we’ll just get left behind.
PutridFlatulence@reddit
I don't disagree with you there. Slow to react.
Exist50@reddit
At least for EVs, I don't think that claim holds water. We're at the point where legacy automotive companies license EV tech from their Chinese competitors.
genmud@reddit
Having worked at an automotive EV company, I would confidently say that much of the motor and battery technology was researched / developed elsewhere but mass produced in China.
China used this as a springboard into new things, but to discount the decades of R&D they got to skip through forced IP/technology transfers and corporate espionage downplays the uneven playing field the rest of the world has in competing with them.
Exist50@reddit
How can you argue that? Again, we have American companies, in some cases, licensing the tech from the Chinese companies that developed it.
_girltwink@reddit
Us consumers won't really give a damn if the products are made from stolen trade secrets if they're as good as, and cost less than, established companies.
Especially with how established companies have treated the average end user in the past few years
__________________99@reddit
Oh, I agree wholeheartedly. The only issue I take with China is they always claim they innovated on their own. But they probably only lie about it to avoid legal issues and blatantly admitting they stole trademarked and copyrighted ideas.
hackenclaw@reddit
if there is a day where memory crash, China could control by highly "discourage" their domestic DRAM from buying Korean/US Dram maker. Those BIG three will end up holding a lot of RAM stick forcing to sell at a huge loss in the remaining global market.
These AI boom is really a perfect opportunity for Chinese DRAM maker to chew a lot of market share from the BIG 3. The only thing they have to worry about it USA coming back again with more DUV restriction forcing ASML to stop selling tools to CXMT, YMTC; slowing their factory expansion.
test5784@reddit
Without EUV, they are unable to compete, no matter how much Reddit sucks up to them lol.
nittanyofthings@reddit
Wouldn't that require EUV instead of multipaterning?
Vushivushi@reddit
They're shipping HBM3 produced with multipatterning.
W0LFSTEN@reddit
This has been true for multiple years now.
WhoTheHeckKnowsWhy@reddit
yeah they have already made HBM for a while, but it all gets sucked into domestic state demand.
test5784@reddit
CXMT capacity is so small that it wont have any impact. Maybe in the coming years...
puffz0r@reddit
they are attempting to scale up rapidly though, I read a while back they wanted to double their wafers/month this year
TK3600@reddit
Around 2028 is when it has the scale to affect bottom line of cartels.
test5784@reddit
Could be
Fusifufu@reddit
The market reacts to high demand with new supply. Hardware conspiracy theorists on Reddit baffled - wasn't there a cartel and the economy is fake anyway?
This is of course a good and welcome development.
puffz0r@reddit
uhhhh, what? cxmt didn't just spring out of the forehead of zeus as soon as we had a dram shortage lmao, they've been around for a decade as a chinese government funded operation, their government has been investing in this stuff since they decided on the "made in china 2025" plan in 2015. Sure, they have good timing, but the idea that "competitors just happen to show up whenever there's market manipulation" is junk economics. The barriers to entry to these advanced manufacturing industries is extremely large.
LessonStudio@reddit
I don't think that nvidia, CPU makers, memory makers etc understand that very few of us have any brand loyalty left.
Yes, we might have a "favourite" brand where the value for money is the least worst.
But, we all know they've been screwing us over for years.
When, and I do mean when, these chinese companies start making better value for money products we will switch. Even if you are stupid enough to say, "Buy local" nvidia and whatnot are not local, they are Taiwan, Korea, etc.
It would be weirdly racist to say "but not chinese"
There is zero reason we have to support these trillion dollar companies' shareholders. If anything, it is revenge time.
If there is a chinese memory module sitting there for $50, and some western company has one for $50 and down from $250 because they are now facing real competition, I will buy the chinese one just as punishment for their having screwed me over for years.
I suspect some of the chinese stuff will initially be "quirky" and things like drivers won't just be junk, but one or more of the companies will put in a glaring back door. This will be what people say for years after they are as good as most chinese tech is now, they will point out some nothing company back in 2027 who had crap product pulling some unethical stunts as if it represented the totality of the chinese market going forward.
I buy lots of electronics from china right now as I develop electronic products. I can say without hesitation that they are more delightful to work with than the almost angry documentation and lack of support I get from US suppliers.
PutridFlatulence@reddit
Young people tend to have brand loyalty because of elevated hormones and lack of life experience. That goes away as you get older and realize corporations are not your friend.
mycall@reddit
Is it also possible their specific interests are optimized for discovering their future, their path forward from being a generalist to fitting into some corporation (I favor B-Corps but is out of fashion).
HisDivineOrder@reddit
Nothing more American than competition...
LessonStudio@reddit
The moment tiktok started to compete with us social media companies, they not only stole it, but handed it to a political supporter.
mycall@reddit
Nation-states have always had this capability.
Imaginary_Demand4053@reddit
True for me. For pc parts, brand means absolutely 0 for me. Most people are probably similar to me and want value, ie performance per dollar.
itSUREisAI@reddit
As a Chinese, I am glad that some local manufacturers are making huge efforts to catch up with the top players in the semiconductor industry, but I can't help feeling sorry that the engineers and workers must be working extra long hours to step up quicker. I used to be one of them, until mental health issues demanded me to get the hell out of there.
Miserable-Egg8383@reddit
What happened to EV and solar will happen to DRAM even HBM. Faster than you would ever expected
letsgoiowa@reddit
Imagine the glory of cheap HBM. Then they won't try "ohhhhh us poor $1000-$4000 card can't possibly afford HBM :( "
Kichigai@reddit
Yes. The antidote for decreased supply and constant demand is increased supply.
HuntKey2603@reddit
...Yes? what's exactly wrong with that sentence?
Kichigai@reddit
Exactly my point. Duh, we know that. Was it really necessary to put something so obvious in the headline?
account312@reddit
The goal of a headline is not to be nonobvious.
atape_1@reddit
Yeah like it will be any cheaper.
BadGoodNotBad@reddit
That's their entire play, look what they're doing with the EV market.
Marble_Wraith@reddit
Not the best timings... But if it's at a reasonable price? Shut up and take my money.
scoobydobydobydo@reddit
if their ram sticks are good expect fast price drop and a lot of productivity in this field
nittanyofthings@reddit
Microsoft: never mind about that optimized windows!
WhoTheHeckKnowsWhy@reddit
My take i've gleaned is yes CXMT DDR5 been tested and is good stuff even for performance ram, so sadly; Yes it will also probably be super expensive as most of the good binned stuff will never leave China.
I give it a year till CXMT is able to put a real hard dent downward into the pricing of performance binned DDR5, and a year for other Chinese Dram IC makers to push down the price of slow JEDEC stuff.
Dudi4PoLFr@reddit
It's Corsair, if you think that those will be affordable, I have some bad news for you....
Joezev98@reddit
It's economics 101. If you're in an equilibrium and introduce more supply, you need to lower prices, or you end up with unsold stock.
imKaku@reddit
Corsair ram dosent sell more expensive then other types of ram. That´s just not how the ram market works.
This ram set will still be decided by supply and demand. If its cheaper then other sets, it will sell. If its more expensive then other sets it wont be sold.
popop143@reddit
Not all Corsair RAM are overpriced RGB kit. There are simple Corsair kits that are comparable in price to other brands like GSkill and TeamGroup (last I checked when I was buying RAM last yeae).
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