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Comment by JumpCrisscross | Hacker News Reader

> why should or would companies not ramp up to eventually meet demand?

Memory is a cyclical market that has historically rewarded conservatism [1].

Counterpoint: there is enough demand from enough capital-rich customers that they may be willing to shoulder the capital risk.

[1] https://www.ldeepai.com/tech-hub/dram-industry-consolidation... Sorry for the slop link, it has a good chart from a solid source

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For existing producers expanding capacity would be a risky move. But it's the perfect time for any newcomers to enter the market. Low yields and worse product don't matter as much right now, and by the time the market cools down you have everything dialed in and can compete on even ground

> it's the perfect time for any newcomers to enter the market

This is a good hypothesis. Curious if anyone has data on the failure rates of new entrants in semiconductors based on how frothy it was on founding.

On one hand, more demand makes selling easier. On the other hand, a shortage makes your input costs (consumable and capital) pricier.

EDIT: It seems like the 2 to 3 year lead time and a crowding effect from new entrants historically made booting up a fab into a boom a bad bet [1]. (The article argues, convincingly, that this time may be different.)

[1] https://www.uncoveralpha.com/p/every-memory-cycle-ends-the-s...

I heard that China was spinning up DDR5 (but not HBM?) production in the next couple of years, with the hope of outcompeting Korea and Taiwan in the mid to long term.

It does seem like an opportunity on a silver platter for Chinese newcomers. Huge demand at the moment.

In two to four years, the Chinese will have at least half the memory market worldwide, and once in, they will continue forward and not look back.

I also believe there would be one or two tech companies that will get into memory by taking it in-house to make sure that they won’t have this problem again in the future.

Don't forget price fixing [1] which we are seeing clear indicators of happening right now too.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRAM_price_fixing_scandal

Thanks for the link (and underlying thoughts), I really hadn’t considered that.

So essentially, due to technological progress and other factors inducing price collapses (or at least cycles), you can’t start stockpiling insane amounts of finished-product semiconductor, which means you can’t scale production at current technology levels to infinity either?

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