[filloooo]

Sure, if they've got production grade EUV, but right now they don't even have production grade DUV.

I'm also sure they can go as far as 5nm like SMIC if they really wanted to, since it's strategic for China, but the cost would only be justified if the current cycle lasts long enough.

[direwolf20]

I was corrected elsewhere when I thought RAM was more expensive 10 years ago. RAM was actually cheaper 10 years ago, when it was DDR3/DDR4 too. If any company can replicate the 10 year old SOTA, they can bring prices down.

[mikestorrent]

This is what I expect to happen. 2016's ram was good enough for consumers then and probably still is for a huge class of consumers now. I'd rather 32GB of DDR3 than 8gb of DDR5.

[filloooo]

DRAM rarely break, yes, I have bought cottage industry recycled DDR3 with no problem whatsoever.

The problem, however, is IO controller support has been dropped, many new CPUs don't even support DDR4 any more, especially mobile ones.

[fjordofnorway]

The market seems to stay strange because few believe it can stay strange, but looking back at the netbook industry I feel like a few losers at keeping up for the AI level will realize they may as well make the products that people prefer old prices for and start resuming anything that can bring total system costs down.

[renewiltord]

You can get like terabytes of DDR3 used. No one wants that shit. Too slow. Power hog.

[nebula8804]

This is where China's crazy solar advantage affects real day to day outcomes. When you have electric costs going into 6-8 cents per kwh then you can run older nodes that slurp more electricity. They aren't even done lowering the price. I've thought about this recently. If the dream of meterless electricity came to fruition then that terabytes of DDR3 could essentially be run until it literally burned out and then recycled back into its core components. The sun provides more power than the entirety of society could possibly currently use and so its a shame that the ram is being tossed instead of used.

[gunalx]

Well yes, but it isn't too cheap for how 8ld it is.

[renewiltord]

Some dude literally gave away a couple of terabytes on Reddit homelab subreddit the other day.

[aurareturn]

Just before the ASML ban, China imported as many DUV machines as possible.

[beAbU]

Continue to dismiss China at your own peril.

[justapassenger]

China has a luxury of being able to not really care about the cost when it comes to what they view as a strategic advantage.

[llmthrow0827]

This option is available to any sovereign country.

[rjzzleep]

In fact, it is what most European countries used to do for their strategic industries.

[direwolf20]

America does it too for its strategic financial business, bailing out the banks after 2008.