9 ms·
CXMT has been offering DDR4 chips at about half the prevailing market rate
- tonetegeatinst 7mo agoMore competition is always good
- mrweasel 7mo agoThis feels like a classic business blunder. Focus hard on a single business segment, leaving an opening in the market for your competitors. Not because it wasn't profitable, but because it wasn't profitable enough for you, right now. Only downside is that now you've created an opening for a new player in the market. This feels like a short coming of western business/stock market thinking. Focusing on profit within the next few quarters, and not caring about the longer term consequences. For all it's flaws and shady business practises at least China can think beyond a single fiscal year.
- tjwebbnorfolk 7mo agoOk but this is how the market is supposed to work. If the incumbents aren't doing what their customers want, then competitors can rise and fill the gap and compete. This isn't a shortcoming, it's a competitive market working as intended.
- delecti 7mo agoThe market doing what it's supposed to do does not negate that the market segment has only been left open because of overly myopic businesses.
- estimator7292 7mo agoThat's what modern capitalism is and it's bad for everyone
- qup 7mo agoWhy would we think businesses will always make the right move? They'll blunder. They'll do it even harder in the absence of competition.
- delecti 7mo agoWho said I thought businesses would always make the right move? Businesses blunder. "The market" is just a set of observations, including that competitors will tend to take advantage of those blunders. It is not a failure of the market that businesses have blundered, nor surprising that it will happen occasionally, and neither I nor mrweasel implied otherwise.
- tjwebbnorfolk 7mo agoThe market is actively trying to solve it right now. Micron is investing $200B in new fabs. Everyone is trying to ramp up production. Yes, identifying a problem is easy. But solving shortages in all cases requires perfect knowledge of future demand. So, good luck.
- PearlRiver 7mo agoEveryone gets mad when Chinese do capitalism...
- bigyabai 7mo ago"Why is nobody berating China?" is my favorite oft-repeated refrain on HN.
- ta9000 7mo agoThey’re too busy berating the US.
- joe_mamba 7mo agoNO you see, we have to hate Chinese companies because they are unfair competitors since they get state funding from the Chinese government, unlike Intel, Micron, TSMC, ASML, Samsung who don't get state funding from the US, EU, Taiwan, ROK ... oh wait. Scratch that, we have to hate Chinese companies because they do business with the Chinese military, unlike Intel, Nvidia, Samsung who don't do business with the US and ROK military ... oh wait.
- dev1ycan 7mo agoI know you are being sarcastic but the reason why we have to hate Chinese is simply because the standard of living of Americans depends on China not succeeding, simple as that.
- joe_mamba 7mo agoWell then hey can just say THAT, instead of coming up with hypocritical BS that doesn't pass the smell test. People internationally have enough IQ to see through the double standards BS, especially since youtube is a thing. And the standard of living of working class Americans has been on a steady decline since Reagan by the hand of US administrations, not by the hand of CHina. This isn't defending anyone's standard of living, it's defending profits of domestic monopolies like Micron, who indulge in state subsidies from US taxpayers and then fuck then over on prices.
- assaddayinh 7mo agoLets not forget there is no competitors. There is one competitor- the chinese state, one huge company willing to subsidize any endeavor that will help it fmgain more marketshare with already captured markets.
- 127 7mo agoOnly if you don't want or need any geopolitical gradient at all.
- xadhominemx 7mo agoCXMT sells the vast majority of their bits at the prevailing market rate, just like everyone else. They are adding capacity as quickly as they can, with a 5-10 year planning horizon, just like everyone else. It’s really not that deep!
- orphea 7mo ago> They are adding capacity as quickly as they can [...], just like everyone else Are you sure? In the past they explicitly said they are not going to increase production. https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/dram/memory-makers-have-no-plans-to-increase-production-despite-crushing-ram-shortages-modest-2026-increase-predicted-as-dram-makers-hedge-their-ai-bets https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/dram/memory-maker...
- xadhominemx 7mo agoYes of course their messaging to customers and the investment community is that they will be rational and measured in their investments. In reality, they are adding capacity as quickly as possible as margins are too high. However, capacity addition leading edge semiconductor manufacturing has a multi-year lead time.
- overfeed 7mo ago> In reality, they are adding capacity as quickly as possible [...] Even if we ignore the fact that you can't build out factories in secret, this would be securities fraud by publicly listed companies. > ...as margins are too high This is not the first RAM boom-bust cycle, and memory makers are an actual cartel convicted of coordinating in the past - none if them are going to break rank when they can invest the minimum and reap outsized benefits. Also, no one wants to invest in additional capacity when the bottom can fall out at anytime, and shareholders demand your head- not even the AI companies want to bear that risk, which is saying something.
- washadjeffmad 7mo agoPRC asked them to curtail DDR4 production so they didn't bottom out the market a year or two ago, and to focus on latest gen development, like HBM. They were the world leader in cost efficient DDR4 production at the time.
- zozbot234 7mo agoIt's not really a blunder though. Given that total capacity is tightly constrained, Samsung and SK Hynix are happy to focus on what they do at their best and with the highest margins. Why shouldn't they supply the HBM market?
- overfeed 7mo agoIt's putting all eggs in one basket. If/when the higher-margin category collapses, they'll have no fallback. Imagine Chevrolet had discontinued Impalas and other low-margin cars, and switched to Corvettes during the pandemic
- zozbot234 7mo agoEven if there's a collapse in the high-margin market (I don't think anyone is expecting this right now), it will be slow and telegraphed in advance, giving them plenty of time to refocus on lower-margin products.
- CamperBob2 7mo agoGood description of what actually happened. Do they even sell any conventional 2-door passenger cars besides the Corvette these days?
- m4rtink 7mo agoMaybe not to starve whole segments of the society and economy of critical inputs ? This is why we have strategy reserves - to avoid greedy companies to make a quick buck when they find out they can sell the equivalent of crack and dump all the other now low margin stuff like food or other essentials. Sure, that company might make a killing for a short while, but people will die from hunger, missing medicine or freeze to death.
- zozbot234 7mo agoSo let's buy a strategic reserve of DIMM sticks from CXMT. But that's not a great strategy either, because RAM tech evolves. DDR3 to DDR4 to DDR5 to DDR6. So you need to rotate your strategic reserves over time, and luckily enough for you, the used goods market is doing exactly that for free!
- sophrosyne42 7mo agoThere is really nothing about the stock market that means only thinking about the mext few quarters. See all the losses on the profit and loss statements of AI tech giants, or, say, game console companies? Why are their stocks still valued so highly during these periods? The answer: investors are thinking long term. It is really impossible to have quality long term thinking without capitalization accounting and similar instruments that come out of the "wester" system of business that chinese free enterprise gladly and speedily copied when it was made free.
- twosdai 7mo agoI think the sentiment here is about management's tie of bonuses to near-term stock performance. Maybe not about the market itself, I agree with your view on investors want long term gains over short term fluctuations mostly.
- sophrosyne42 7mo agoIt's ultimately the investors and owners of companies which control the company.
- nirui 7mo ago> Focusing on profit within the next few quarters, and not caring about the longer term consequences Anything new? From my non-American view, American companies has done similar things for a very long time now. It happened in the consumer electronics, it might happen again in the IT industry. It's not the fault of the companies, they simply just wanted more certainty and the consumer market is not (when compare to cooperate contracts). But from the stand point of a nation, if no one creates low-end products, then no one will be providing low-end/entry-level jobs. That's when you got structural problems.
- someperson 7mo agoAs a outside observer, NAND and DRAM prices have skyrocket ed with the AI infrastructure boom just as the China-based fabs are coming online. It is wise for these Chinese fabs to eventually use a very aggressive dumping strategy to price well below cost push out other players forever, especially in DRAM. But right now it seems they can max out their supply capacity without selling below cost. Appears to me like China's endless state led (often unproductive) investment in semiconductor manufacturing subsidies (for decades) is about to pay off with some industry dominance soon. Like the electric vehicle sector.
- nutjob2 7mo agoIt's funny that you call this an "very aggressive dumping strategy" while AI vendors are doing the same but with even greater losses and on a much larger scale. It's all simply a fight for market share. The original sin is the existing DRAM vendors selling their entire (spare) capacity to the likes of OpenAI.
- xadhominemx 7mo agoNo one sold their capacity to OpenAI. The vast majority of DRAM is transacted in what is essentially a quarterly auction.
- nutjob2 7mo ago"RAM is going to AI: OpenAI has secured up to 40% of the market." https://globalcio.com/news/16062/ https://globalcio.com/news/16062/ You're maybe talking about the spot market, but companies are free to make any sort of supply contract.
- xadhominemx 7mo agoAI slop article
- vel0city 7mo ago
- swed420 7mo agoAwesome. Hopefully storage is next.
- nutjob2 7mo agoThis is good news. The price you pay for jacking up your prices is losing market share. Once established, the Chinese vendors will retain most the market share if the quality is ok. The SK/JP vendors are making a big mistake.
- xadhominemx 7mo agoEveryone is completely sold out and adding capacity as quickly as possible.
- ErneX 7mo agoAre they really adding capacity?
- ReptileMan 7mo agoI am sure you can lock great prices for ram for 2035 delivery.
- cmxch 7mo agoIf only on principle alone, could one secure a contract to buy a few TB of DDR5 memory to be delivered in 2035? And if so, how?
- ReptileMan 7mo agoFew TB probably not, but few EB I think you will be able to make a contract.
- cmxch 7mo agoOh well. Just wanted to do a commitment buy to at least say “I don’t care if my RDIMMs are long obsolete” for some existing DDR5 builds I have.
- xadhominemx 7mo ago
- ThrowawayTestr 7mo agoThis decade is going to end with Chinese dominance in everything. Trump and AI handed them everything they need on a platter.
- hyperman1 7mo agoWestern European countries got dominant, then got arrogant, letting the USA eat their lunch. USA got dominant, got arrogant, letting China eat their lunch. China is indeed getting dominant. They will get arrogant one day. Meanwhile, Western Europe and the USA are still very good places to live.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- yellowapple 7mo agoThe pertinent question, then, is who's gonna eat China's lunch? My guess would be south/southeast Asia (India and Vietnam seem especially promising), but if the US was smart it'd put its efforts fully toward as many infrastructure investments and trade agreements and immigration agreements as possible to create a pan-American economic union. We have the resources and technology to turn every country in North and South America into an industrial and technological powerhouse. We have the resources and technology to finally conquer the Darién Gap and connect North and South America with highways and high-speed rail. We have the resources and technology to go on the offense against drug cartels (while also eliminating the failed border controls and drug prohibitions that keep those cartels in business in the first place). If we're gonna be imperialists, then by golly let's at least be productive about it.
- zozbot234 7mo agoChina's big. It has a long way to go before all of it becomes developed enough that they have to worry about someone else eating their lunch. And Latin American nations can't get started on economic development because their governance sucks. It's actually a decades-old problem, and not one that the U.S. can do much about. The one country that probably has the best shot right now is Argentina, let's see how they do.
- Magnets 7mo agoThis is just marketing. Why would you sell at 50% of market rate? Chinese production of NAND and DRAM is not significant, it's single digit %
- amluto 7mo agoIt might be very effective marketing. The big non-Chinese OEMs trust and use Korean and Japanese DRAM, and they might have been unwilling to put DRAM from CXMT into their products. (CXMT is newish, does not have access to ASML gear, which ASML would like you to believe makes it harder to make high-quality DRAM, DRAM is historically not a very large fraction of the cost of most non-huge-memory machines, and a bad DIMM is an expensive mistake for a company like Dell or HPE that is on the hook for repairs.) But now CXMT seems to have gotten at least Dell, HP (I wonder if the article meant HPE), Acer and Asus to buy and attempt to qualify samples. If CXMT lands some serious purchasing agreements while still selling well above cost, that’s a win for them.
- deepsquirrelnet 7mo agoDoes the last part of your comment explain it? They need revenue to expand capacity and the market has opened up a window to become a bigger supplier while still being profitable.
- Tadpole9181 7mo ago> Why would you sell at 50% of market rate? Because market rate is a 400%+ markup right now and not everyone is a greedy American kleptocrat with a diagnosable addiction to extracting every possible cent of wealth on the planet within a single fiscal quarter.
- simoncion 7mo agoYeah. Seriously. I can see a few other benefits to the "Sell at a reasonable markup, rather than 'market price'" strategy. * You get a reputation for not price-gouging. * Your company gets used to operating with "enough" cash, rather than having "crazy" amounts of cash that it might be tempted to spend on misadventures. * When the collapse of LLM Mania burns the LLM industry and its hangers-on to the ground, you get to keep your prices the same and keep your business practices the same... rather than scrambling to figure out how to make do with far less cash.
- 7777777phil 7mo agoDDR4 going from $1.35 to $11.50 in a year shows this market was already distorted before CXMT showed up. Legacy DRAM is still over half of Samsung and SK hynix's production capacity. That's where the volume pain actually lands while they're betting everything on HBM4.
- bigbadfeline 7mo agoA near 10 times price rise of legacy chips and surely a lot higher profit increase couldn't motivate SKamsunix to increase their capacity for that segment, even more, they proudly informed the market about their decision to stop making DDR4 at the end of this year... to focus on even higher margin products. But they aren't going to stop whining about China, no matter how much pain the market experiences.
- Havoc 7mo agoGreat moment to break into the market if you're willing to forfeit profits
- fulafel 7mo agoHas DDR5 caught up to DDR4 latency yet? I remember it was worse at least in the beginning. There's more bandwidth per channel but a hw design can always add more channels for the desired BW. Not so for latency.
- kvemkon 7mo ago> add more channels and unfortunately increase latency even more with registered DIMMs. Comparing bandwidth increase (50 GB/s) to the stagnated latency (~80..120 ns total, less than ~0.1 GB/s) over last decades, I'm wondering, whether one still can call today's RAM random memory (though sure it can be accessed randomly). Similar to hard disk drives. Up to 300 MB/s sequentially but only up to less than 1 MB/s 4KB random (read).
- fhars 7mo agoPeople have been wondering that for a while: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19304281 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19304281
- maxglute 7mo agoStill no confirmation if CXMT or YMTC actually removed from entity list, until then this is jus cheap domestic inputs.
- wcoenen 7mo agoAs far as I understand, the "entity list" you are referring to is part of the "Export Administration Regulations", so it restricts sales from the US to restricted entities, not the other way around.
- maxglute 7mo agoConsumers generally safe to import for personal use, but for larger orgs, there's likely strict supply chain compliance risks that makes companies on 1260H list, i.e. military concern list no go.
- alecco 7mo agoGood news. Now we need Chinese manufacturers of DDR4 chipsets and motherboards.
- wmf 7mo agoChipsets don't determine the RAM type and all motherboards have been made in China for a while.
- alecco 7mo agoTaiwan dominates the global motherboard industry. (ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI, ASRock, etc. and MediaTek etc) The big Taiwanese manufacturers are chasing the AI dragon. https://www.digitimes.com/news/a20251021PD219/ai-server-asrock-2025-growth-gigabyte.html https://www.digitimes.com/news/a20251021PD219/ai-server-asro... (Oct 2025) OTOH, now I read small Taiwanese manufacturers who are left out of the Nvidia supply chain are reverting to DDR4 motherboards because of the DDR5 shortage. Strange times.
- lelanthran 7mo ago> Good news. Now we need Chinese manufacturers of DDR4 chipsets and motherboards. Search aliexpress for X99 dual socket motherboards.
- DoctorOetker 7mo agoIs there a reason GPU's don't use insane "blocks" of sdcard slots (for massively parallel io) so the model weights don't need to pass through a limited PCI bus?
- Neywiny 7mo agoYes. Let's do the math. The fastest sd cards can read at around 300 MB/s (https://havecamerawilltravel.com/fastest-sd-cards/ https://havecamerawilltravel.com/fastest-sd-cards/). Modern GPUs use 16 lanes of PCIe gen 5, which is 16x32Gb/s = 512Gb/s = 64 GB/s. Meaning you'd need over 200 of the fastest SD cards. So what you're asking is: is there a reason GPUs don't use 200 SD cards? And I can't think of any way that would work
- hedgehog 7mo agoSD is obviously the wrong interface for this but "High Bandwidth Flash" (stacked flash akin to HBM) is in development for exactly this kind of problem. AMD actually made a GPU with onboard flash maybe a decade ago but I think it was a bit early. Today I would love to have a pool of 50GB/s storage attached to the GPU.
- jiggawatts 7mo agoFirst gen HBF is targeting something like 1.2 TB/s!
- hedgehog 7mo agoOh definitely. The AMD past product just stuck 4x m.2 slots onto the board. Today that approach would be 50-60 GB/s read speed which would be useful enough for something that any of the vendors could build with existing components.
- magicalhippo 7mo agoSome years ago I realized that if I had oodles of money to spend I would totally get someone to make a PCIe card with like several hundreds microSD cards on it. You can buy vertical microSD connectors, so you can stack quite a lot of them on a PCIe card. Then a beefy FPGA to present it as a NVMe device to the host. Goal total capacity, as you can put 1TB cards in there. And for teh lulz of course.
- decryption 7mo agoThat explains the cheap DDR4 DIMMs on AliExpress. Can get 2x 16GB DDR4-3200 DIMMs for A$252 delivered to Australia. A local PC store has same spec “name brand” RAM for around $380-$400. https://a.aliexpress.com/_mssanU1 https://a.aliexpress.com/_mssanU1
- Forgeties79 7mo agoThese prices are insane. I can’t believe that’s what constitutes a good deal right now.
- Forgeties79 7mo agoFor context, I spent $105 USD (all in) for 2x16gb DDR5 ram last April
- WarOnPrivacy 7mo ago2x48GB DDR5 for $285 last March. Turns out I got the wrong kit for that build and had to buy another. It was too late to return it.
- Forgeties79 7mo agoBrutal
- blackoil 7mo agoIf you still have that wrong kit, now it's the time to sell it to make a fortune.
- WarOnPrivacy 7mo agoI thought about it but in Sept I decided my HV server needed better hardware.
- walterbell 7mo agoLook at pricing for hard drives, SSDs and even USB flash drives.
- guerrilla 7mo agoI was wondering when people would find out about CXMT. I wish them luck and hope the US doesn't sabotage them. We need diversity and competition right now.
- 127 7mo agoThe cure for high prices is high prices.
- kristianp 7mo agoAlso moving into HBM: > CXMT is in the process of converting wafer capacity equivalent to about 20 percent of its total DRAM output — some 60,000 wafers per month — at its Shanghai plant to the fourth-generation HBM3 chip production
- yellowapple 7mo ago> the average fixed contract price of PC DRAM DDR4 8Gb stood at $11.50 If that's the case, then why are the cheapest options I can find online multiple times that much?
- alex43578 7mo agoBrent crude is $71 a barrel, but you can't buy gas for $1.69. Why's that?
- dizhn 7mo agoAre you able to buy crude by the gallon and refine it yourself? That would bring the cost down a bit.
- bigfatkitten 7mo agoYou can buy oil on the market and take delivery, yes. Figuring out the logistics (tanker trucks, rail cars, storage tanks etc) will also be your problem though. Commodities markets aren’t like eBay, nobody is just going to FedEx you a barrel of oil.
- fc417fc802 7mo ago> nobody is just going to FedEx you a barrel of oil. I'm sure someone will if you pay enough. But you certainly won't be getting the market standard bulk price.
- dogma1138 7mo agoBecause that’s just the price for the dies, still need packaging, integration and then retail distribution. Also raw BOM is like 1/5th of the retail price usually.
- Tuna-Fish 7mo agoRaw BOM is much higher than 1/5th of retail price for ram. Some industries have higher margins than others. 11.5*8 = 92. I'm seeing plenty of DDR4 sticks below that price.
- yanhangyhy 7mo agoWhenever China is mentioned, it's always about government subsidies, as if Samsung didn't receive government subsidies when it was developing
- throwaway290 7mo agoremind me is Samsung's source subsidies also regularly attacking every country's telecoms and infrastructure
- 361994752 7mo agois CXMT attacking every contry?
- throwaway290 7mo agoits owner and boss but sure if they are ordered to they will, good point too;)
- vkou 7mo agoHow many countries has China bombed in, say, the last year, and how does that compare to the other superpower (and the washed out has-been superpower) in the room? It's difficult to comprehend the gall and hypocrisy requires to kvetch about this when there are four carrier strike groups sitting in the Gulf right now.
- throwaway290 7mo agowhat are you talking about? since when Samsung suddenly become American? how many did South Korea bomb?
- yehat 7mo agodude, you're way too excited. I understand your sentiment, but it applies for everyone these days. Just depends which propaganda you like more.
- walterbell 7mo agohttps://wccftech.com/apple-eyeing-a-partnership-with-chinese-memory-makers-ymtc-and-cxmt-as-the-big-three-adopt-hardball-tactics/ https://wccftech.com/apple-eyeing-a-partnership-with-chinese... Apple has planned to explore cooperation with Chinese memory chip manufacturers Yangtze Storage (YMTC) and Changxin Storage (CXMT) to strive for more favorable supply contracts [from the big three]
- hedora 7mo agoBack in the 1990’s everyone had to have a unix workstation for unclear reasons (why not run Linux for < 10% the cost?). There were crazy bubble economics schemes that meant doomed startups got unix boxes for free. When the bubble popped, the workstation vendors hit a triple whammy: Inferior $/perf, unlimited used inventory at low prices, and an economic downturn. The same exact thing is happening now, except the hardware is being jammed into data center models. Anyway, when the bubble pops, people making affordable consumer stuff will be fine (like this CXMT company). People that went all-in on firing all non-hyperscaler customers (like micron/crucial) will find they’re building the wrong chips for end-user devices, there is no server market anymore (for a few years), and they have a total addressable market of maybe 1000 distressed companies, globally. I predict the people making these decisions and destroying their companies to juice Q2 2026 financial outlook numbers will genuinely be surprised when the bankruptcies start.
- throwaway85825 7mo agoThey wont be allowed to go bankrupt.
- ekaryotic 7mo agogreat comment. actually reminds me of how intel screwed up with developing the first 64 bit processor, then amd came along with theirs and managed to force intel into compatibility. All these big companies think they're too big to fail until they do. at the end of the day the consumers hold the purchasing power. ignore them at your peril.
- WarOnPrivacy 7mo agoEveryone here wants to be able to buy RAM at a reasonable price again. After reading articles about CXMT and repeatedly reviewing the comments here - my take is there's nothing in play that will lead to reasonably priced RAM anytime soon. If I'm wrong please illuminate us. We could use some hope.
- walterbell 7mo agoCan Apple, Dell and HP lobbyists convince US regulators to lift restrictions on working with Chinese memory manufacturers, at least until Micron's new semiconductor fabs can ship US-made DRAM and SSDs to US OEMs in 2028? https://wccftech.com/cxmt-ymtc-removed-from-pentagon-list-opening-door-for-chinese-dram-adoption/ https://wccftech.com/cxmt-ymtc-removed-from-pentagon-list-op... The Pentagon has withdrawn the document that suggested updates to Section 1260H https://www.wsj.com/tech/micron-is-spending-200-billion-to-break-the-ai-memory-bottleneck-a4cc74a1 https://www.wsj.com/tech/micron-is-spending-200-billion-to-b... | https://archive.is/XKSpC https://archive.is/XKSpC Each fab will be 600,000 square feet—the size of more than 10 football fields—making them some of the biggest “clean rooms” ever built in America. To prepare the site, engineers have already blasted through more than 7 million pounds of dynamite. An army of construction workers, building contractors and architects have set up a small city’s worth of trailers so they can work around the clock.
- trash_cat 7mo agoGeopolitics and industrial policty aside, I think it's important to check how stable and reliable these chips are. I wouldn't count on them being on par with "western" ones. Correct me if I am wrong here.
- ErneX 7mo agoEven Apple is looking into them as providers. And imagine what the money Apple can provide in advance can do for their manufacturing needs if they are serious about securing memory supply for their product lines.
- globemaster99 7mo agoMost of the westerners and Americans got no idea about What they are talking. Chinese economy is a carefully engineered financial and industrial capitalism, that focuses on what real people need in the real world. American oligarchy really focus on financial engineering with profits on stock prices and quarterly profits.
- WhereIsTheTruth 7mo agoFlashbacks incoming https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1987-03-28-mn-698-story.html https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1987-03-28-mn-698-st...