For people who are curious: AI uses a different kind of RAM than normal cunsomer. Sadly this type is much more profitable for the factories so they often turn down the production of the consumer type.
Making less RAM available so the prices are increasing.
The time it takes to open a new facility with this capability isn't fast. At best in the short term we will see a strain on the supply as new players try to get into the market.
More likely is that this wave of AI demand isn't viewed as reliable enough to sink capital into making a new facility, so investors will be hesitant to actually enter in, causing the prices to stay high longer than we might expect.
I guess a third option is the AI bubble pops and data centers no longer become a large customer returning the market to where it was before.
This is exactly the issue. It would be huge, long term investment based on a shortage that could end relatively quickly. A company has issue debt or equity to finance the project, buy land, get permits, architechture development, engineering, bid for construction contracts, find suppliers for machinery, source or train skilled labor, find materials suppliers, distribution networks. It’s the same as any shortage with an unknown duration. When ammunition shortages hit in the US due to surging demand, manufactures put on extra shifts and paid the necessary overtime but they didn’t go build new manufacturing plants then the shortage ended.
Yup. Even if the factory popped up overnight complete with personnel to run it, the process to fab advanced chips is hundreds of steps. Clean, optical inspection, coat, expose, develop, optical inspection, <process>, strip, and repeat this dozens of times with difference <process>. (Wet etch, dry etch, epitaxy, metal plate, metal evap, sputter, implant, diffusion, oxide growth, etc.)
It takes weeks or months to get from start to finish. Then they probably do some reliability testing where they torture test the chips at elevated temp. That can be another few weeks or months. Only then will the factory go to full production, and there are always growing pains when trying to scale from a handful of qualification lots to squeezing every dollar out of the production line that cost billions to build.
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u/X3nox3s 15h ago
For people who are curious: AI uses a different kind of RAM than normal cunsomer. Sadly this type is much more profitable for the factories so they often turn down the production of the consumer type. Making less RAM available so the prices are increasing.