If demand doesn't fall down or current manufacturers supply go up, somebody (presumably in China) will spin up fabs. Apple wanted to use blacklisted Chinese RAM already.
DDR5 is still mostly made with DUV (remember Intel 14+++++++++?), and even though manufacturers have slowly been moving a few layers to EUV the advantage is at the margin. Lack of EUV at scale will not prevent China from ramping useful RAM into this market.
Chinese fabs might not be so tied with red tape and regulation upon regulation (which is a funny reversal, in terms of "communism vs capitalism" bureucracy/inefficiency cold war thinking)
>1.) China is not communist, even remotely so. China is fascist in every sense of the word.
Except in the actual historical sense. They appear to enjoy all sorts of freedoms, increased prosperity, even have elections at different levels but under a single party system. Which is not necessarily that different than a effectively two party system.
>2.) Authoritarianism can move faster than anything. They can just say "wipe out that village, build the coal plant there, data center here, fab here.
Now that China is more effective, "it's easy because they're authoritarian". Before the argument was "authoritarianism can never be as effective as free-market democracy".
>3.) If it's red tape and regulation holding the US back, then that's clearly not "capitalism."
It's real world capitalism, not some fantasy some guy imagined removing all warts.
I think the most ironic fact of the 21st century is that there are less than 20,000 naturalized citizens in China. Western leftists don't really have a good explanation for that one and it definitely leans into the fascist characterization.
Ebay and Amazon are flooded with it. Especially if you are looking for anything prior to DDR5. DDR2 and DDR3 are especially flooded with weird brands you've never heard of before.
Unfortunately its not so cheap anymore as everyone ramped prices up of course.
Last year I could still get 32GB of DDR4 for under $60 from chinese brands.
Some of us keep the worthwhile trash alive forever. This laptop is gonna be twenty years old soon and it's too comfortable of a machine to be tossed to ewaste.