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Micron CEO Says Memory Supply Will Be Much Tighter in 2027 and 2028 Than in 2026

394 points · 443 comments · speckx

  1. ocd · · focus · HN ↗
    I'm not a business guy, but I think I would be very worried if I created any opening (even on the very long term) for competition to justify itself being built up to meet demand (or national security requirements of other countries) on an industry I mostly control, because I prioritized extremely high prices for a few years that might have the effect of changing the arithmetic for potential competitors that wouldn't have done it before.

    It makes me consider whether there would be retaliation in later years against the US intellectual property system in countries other than China. While RAM is a tangible product, the areas it serves aren't really.

    1. Tuna-Fish · · focus · HN ↗
      They are not prioritizing extremely high prices. TSMC has a similar waiting list, so does ever other tool manufacturer. Memory capacity is being increased approximately as fast as it can be.
      1. alephnerd · · focus · HN ↗
        There's no point bringing this up.

        Whenever anyone does, there are dozens of posts acting conspiratorial on HN.

        1. martin8412 · · focus · HN ↗
          It has honestly gotten frustrating to even read anything on the internet these days. It’s just conspiracies upon conspiracies all the time, and it’s constantly in your face.

          If only they were good conspiracies with some weight to them, but no, they fall apart if you have a rudimentary understanding of the subject.

          1. kuerbel · · focus · HN ↗
            It's easier to bear that there might be a conspiracy, than that this outcome is the result of chaos and stupidity and greed. Also it makes you think you are smarter than anyone else.
            1. alephnerd · · focus · HN ↗
              Fundamentally, it comes down to whether or not you think "AI/ML" can disappear tomorrow and the world would continue to run as normal.

              From what I have seen, it cannot. It has become foundational the same way Internet 1.0 (eg. Email, Static HTML, Web Directories, SSL) became foundational for a significant portion of the global economy in the 1990s and 2000s.

              1. HarHarVeryFunny · · focus · HN ↗
                AL/ML isn't going away, but what that means for demand for various types of memory remains to be seen. LLM are clearly a commodity, and once they are "good enough" then it'll just be about price, meaning that smaller and less memory hungry models will win.

                It's a bit like the Sun/etc workstation market vs PCs, and high end expensive PCs vs cheap ones. Once the cheap PCs became "good enough" then they naturally dominated.

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