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Chinese memory can now match the speed and latency configs of the RAM in our gaming PCs
(www.pcgamer.com)
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
This was easy to predict.
Chinese government is not stupid. They have a strategy (more so than USA does). Years ago that was to dominate global manufacturing and supply chains. They were successful. Now the goal is to reach parity with Western chipmakers and/or get ahead. It's happening.
The AI boom was like a golden gift to them. Semiconductor prices are through the roof. So if they can produce almost anything at all in quantity it will sell for inflated prices.
While the tech companies of the world jerk each other off with AI, China is building DRAM capacity. CXMT is the first and will not be the last. They will scale quickly. If they have the process perfected they will build a fab in the time it takes USA to conduct the environmental review for the consideration of allowing a permit application to build a fab. They will not build one fab they will build 5 or 10. I'm proud to be American and I love my country but I compare USA to China on the ability to execute large projects like this and China will win every time. We have too much red tape, too many lawsuits and insurance and moving parts. China executes faster and more decisively.
So give it a year or two and China will have a fleet of pretty good fabs. They will sell memory for way less than what the others do. And then just as China made themselves indispensable for manufacturing, they will make themselves indispensable for DRAM.
Much of that red tape is there for good reason. It protects our natural resources and our citizens. I don't disagree the US could do better, but things like environmental studies are important to ensure healthy growth, not just rapid. AI data center bullshit happening right now is a perfect example of the impact and destruction of steamrolling these things.
In general I agree- the concept of red tape, environmental evaluations, etc is a good thing.
But we all know what the road to Hell is paved with.
Key is to find a middle ground- that lets a fab be built in an environmentally friendly way but also rapidly.