With Apples wealth they should make their own fabs at this point, and before anyone says hur dur challenges and time… These fuckers probably wasted billions on cancelled projects like the Apple car. Everyone would benefit by a big player reducing demand and pressure for everyone else
Even if they do, ram fab is like 5-10 years if it’s in new place just because you need to establish and secure supply chain and actually find people who are capable to build it. Building another factory next to existing is still around 3-5 years. 2030 at best the prices will start to stabilize.
It’s not that you assembly a chicken coop, put gas turbines next to it, shovel bunch of of servers there and call it data center. You need minerals, equipment, certain standards and people who can manage to do something.
It’s not just money but also expertise required to build, run, and maintain the fabs, which are each different specialized skills (or more accurately an umbrella of different specialized skills). While these people certainly exist, I don’t think there’s a large pool of them waiting to get hired. And with memory production being so concentrated in Taiwan and South Korea, it will be difficult to poach workers because (as I understand) both cultures are big on loyalty to the nation.
That’s not to say I disagree that anyone else should try to get into the memory fab game (or chip fab in general) as I think the market needs more players, but it’s easier said than done, even if you have a ton of money to throw at the problem. Look at Intel, they struggled on the fab side and already had fabs going as a leading chip producer. Or AMD, who sold their fabs because they were struggling to keep them profitable.
Though I also think that governments would be smart to subsidize (or outright socialize) chip fabs, as depending on others to make these is giving up on a lot of economic power (which can affect military power, so spreading chip production out more could increase world stability).
Modern fabs would need to be a national project. They’re too resource intense for private businesses. Business can’t finance 2 parallel $50billion projects; nations could though.
My layman’s understanding is that manufacturing like this needs to be run constantly due to the cost associated with the production. Apple would have to sell their stuff to competitors at that point to have the foray make sense. Current manufacturers can make things for lots of different companies so they can ensure their line is always fulfilling an order. I’m not sure if Apple would want to do that.
The difference is no one expects the current climate to hold. No manufacturers are investing in new fabs because they expect this bubble to burst sooner than later.
With Apples wealth they should make their own fabs at this point, and before anyone says hur dur challenges and time… These fuckers probably wasted billions on cancelled projects like the Apple car. Everyone would benefit by a big player reducing demand and pressure for everyone else
Even if they do, ram fab is like 5-10 years if it’s in new place just because you need to establish and secure supply chain and actually find people who are capable to build it. Building another factory next to existing is still around 3-5 years. 2030 at best the prices will start to stabilize.
It’s not that you assembly a chicken coop, put gas turbines next to it, shovel bunch of of servers there and call it data center. You need minerals, equipment, certain standards and people who can manage to do something.
It’s not just money but also expertise required to build, run, and maintain the fabs, which are each different specialized skills (or more accurately an umbrella of different specialized skills). While these people certainly exist, I don’t think there’s a large pool of them waiting to get hired. And with memory production being so concentrated in Taiwan and South Korea, it will be difficult to poach workers because (as I understand) both cultures are big on loyalty to the nation.
That’s not to say I disagree that anyone else should try to get into the memory fab game (or chip fab in general) as I think the market needs more players, but it’s easier said than done, even if you have a ton of money to throw at the problem. Look at Intel, they struggled on the fab side and already had fabs going as a leading chip producer. Or AMD, who sold their fabs because they were struggling to keep them profitable.
Though I also think that governments would be smart to subsidize (or outright socialize) chip fabs, as depending on others to make these is giving up on a lot of economic power (which can affect military power, so spreading chip production out more could increase world stability).
Modern fabs would need to be a national project. They’re too resource intense for private businesses. Business can’t finance 2 parallel $50billion projects; nations could though.
My layman’s understanding is that manufacturing like this needs to be run constantly due to the cost associated with the production. Apple would have to sell their stuff to competitors at that point to have the foray make sense. Current manufacturers can make things for lots of different companies so they can ensure their line is always fulfilling an order. I’m not sure if Apple would want to do that.
In the current climate, it would be a very worthwhile investment. Apple could easily afford it.
The difference is no one expects the current climate to hold. No manufacturers are investing in new fabs because they expect this bubble to burst sooner than later.