Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News.
Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast.
Speaker 3: I'm Joll Wisenthal and I'm Tracy Alloway.
Speaker 2: Tercy, you know what I'm worried about. I don't know
Speaker 2: if I'm worried about it, but it kind of feels
Speaker 2: like the direction things are going, which is that like
Speaker 2: all energy, industrial commodities, anything that we use for any
Speaker 2: purpose is just going to like feed the AI beast
Speaker 2: and us humans We're just gonna get left out in
Speaker 2: the cold. They're like nothing for you. We gotta like feed,
Speaker 2: We gotta feed it all to the AI. And and
Speaker 2: maybe in ten or twenty or fifty years, the AI
Speaker 2: is it's so powerful. They just decide, why why do
Speaker 2: humans get any of this? We just thought we should
Speaker 2: keep it all to ourselves.
Speaker 3: A legitimate concern, I would say, I mean, to some extent,
Speaker 3: we are already seeing this crowding out effect. Right, So
Speaker 3: energy prices in certain areas have been going up, and
Speaker 3: most recently memory chip prices. So this has been all
Speaker 3: over earnings. Recently. You had companies like Apple saying that
Speaker 3: because of a crunch in memory chip supply, they might
Speaker 3: have to either raise their prices or like cut down
Speaker 3: on the amount of phones they use. Nintendo, Like, if
Speaker 3: you pull up a chart of Nintendo shares right now,
Speaker 3: they are just getting hammered, and supposedly it is all
Speaker 3: because of this memory chip shortage. By the way, do
Speaker 3: you remember do you remember like buying your first PC
Speaker 3: in like you bought one before I did, I think,
Speaker 3: But mine was in the mid nineties, ye, I think,
Speaker 3: I go. Do you remember how much memory those things had?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 2: Like nothing?
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like I looked it up, something like less than
Speaker 3: ten megabytes for a bunch of them. You know how
Speaker 3: much PCs have nowadays?
Speaker 2: Actually, I have no idea.
Speaker 3: I think it's let's see sixteen gig by Yeah, isn't
Speaker 3: that crazy?
Speaker 5: It is?
Speaker 2: It is really crazy. I remember, like, do you remember
Speaker 2: zip drives? Yeah, oh my god, or like, and there
Speaker 2: were all these special you know, obviously various memory peripherals
Speaker 2: that you could buy and they came in sort of
Speaker 2: dedicated cartridges and stuff like that. I think they're called
Speaker 2: zip drive. Yeah, I think right, there was zip drive.
Speaker 2: I don't remember. Yeah, yeah it was. Yeah, that's wrying,
Speaker 2: additional memory storage, etcetera. It used to be this big
Speaker 2: part of the consumer process. I'm actually glad. You know,
Speaker 2: my son really wants a Nintendo. But if they can't
Speaker 2: produce them anymore because they can't get the memory, then
Speaker 2: I say, sorry, no video games.
Speaker 3: That's so mean. You're gonna have to sit them down
Speaker 3: and be like, I'm so sorry, son. There's this thing
Speaker 3: called the supply shortage. I'm going to use this as
Speaker 3: a learning opportunity to explain how global supply chains actually work.
Speaker 2: Totally, you know what. The other the one interesting thing
Speaker 2: is if you look at spot dram prices, which we
Speaker 2: have on the terminal, this is I think maybe the
Speaker 2: interesting dynamic. There's a lot of AI related things on
Speaker 2: the terminal that have been surging for several years, most
Speaker 2: notably some of the big chip companies and video et cetera.
Speaker 2: If you look at a chart of Spot dram prices,
Speaker 2: the big surge wasn't until late last year, and then
Speaker 2: since then it's gone nuts. So for a long time,
Speaker 2: even as this AI story, the AI meme, the AI
Speaker 2: industry like propagated, people were really paying attention to that
Speaker 2: area and then suddenly it's just gone like you know,
Speaker 2: the haywire. Yeah, and so obviously huge supply demand and balances.
Speaker 2: We need to understand what's going on because I think
Speaker 2: the stakes are you know, it's getting so much. As
Speaker 2: you mentioned, a lot of companies are losing out pretty big.
Speaker 2: Others are making a lot of money. Yeah, we started
Speaker 2: need to get a handle on what's going on with
Speaker 2: the memory.
Speaker 1: Let's do it.
Speaker 2: I'm really excited to say we really do have the
Speaker 2: perfect guest. We're going to be speaking with Ray Wong.
Speaker 2: He's an analyst at Semi Analysis, and he's recently published
Speaker 2: a brand new report on exactly this topic, talk about
Speaker 2: a memory super cycle and so forth. So truly the
Speaker 2: perfect guest. As I mentioned, he's comes to us from Korea. Ray,
Speaker 2: thank you so much for coming on odlots.
Speaker 4: Nice to me in Bove and thanksful having me so
Speaker 4: many questions.
Speaker 2: Really appreciate you joining us. Let's just start with the basics,
Speaker 2: like what is it about AI or what is going on?
Speaker 2: What is the core idea such that demand for memory
Speaker 2: in various forms is absolutely seem to be booming right
Speaker 2: now in a way that must have caught the supply
Speaker 2: side of the equation very off guard.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think you know, to really do get kind
Speaker 4: of the some of imbalanced supply TMO dynamics. Really we
Speaker 4: wanted to get like you know what happened a few
Speaker 4: years ago, right, because you know your capacity to check,
Speaker 4: like your investment few years ago, and what's happening you know,
Speaker 4: like in twenty twenty twenty four, it's it's sort of
Speaker 4: a down cycle, right because remember doing the COVID, all
Speaker 4: the companies so try to flug in to buy tons
Speaker 4: of DRAM, right, and you know there's a lot of
Speaker 4: purchases there, right, and there's sort of like upcycle, right,
Speaker 4: but it's like a very very short up cycle because
Speaker 4: like when the COVID gradually getting better, right, you actually
Speaker 4: don't need that much DRAM And back then the company
Speaker 4: will be like, hey, you actually don't have a sustainable right,
Speaker 4: So they don't want to over invest to expand their capacity.
Speaker 4: And when you go into the down cycle, your capet
Speaker 4: typically be Americans trained Meri like, you know company from
Speaker 4: their perspective, they try to be conservative. So that leads
Speaker 4: to twenty twenty four and twenty five that you're incremental
Speaker 4: waver for capacity that goes So DRAM is actually quite limited.
Speaker 4: But what's happening on the demand and it's absolutely the
Speaker 4: demand was asserrating so fast, right, you know, it's you know,
Speaker 4: one way to look at it is to look at
Speaker 4: a media's earnings, right, and if you when you when
Speaker 4: you're on one side, your demand asserting so fast. On
Speaker 4: the other hand, on the supply side, your supply just
Speaker 4: couldn't catch up. And there's more nuances behind the supply,
Speaker 4: right because before they are just supplying all the commodity
Speaker 4: DRM like DDR LPDDR, right, the all the memory that
Speaker 4: goes to PCs, goes to laptops, goes to your mobiles,
Speaker 4: goes to Nintendo switches. Right. But you know what's happening,
Speaker 4: you know, in this AI, it's like there's a new
Speaker 4: thing called SBN. The think about. It's like a special
Speaker 4: memory for directly for airs arter and that memory is
Speaker 4: extremely drent wayfar intensive to give you a sense, right,
Speaker 4: you know, on the same way, for a basis, you
Speaker 4: can produce three more bits if you do commodity DRM,
Speaker 4: but you can only produce one bit of HBM, right,
Speaker 4: and that ratio will actually going higher when you go
Speaker 4: to HPM four HBM five in the next few years. Right.
Speaker 4: So in that way, on the same way, for basis
Speaker 4: you can you can only produce that much HBM, and
Speaker 4: right now what's happening is like, hey, this HPN is
Speaker 4: super super profitable, and why not we that? Okay, more
Speaker 4: wafare for HBM. But so here's the problem, right, you
Speaker 4: only have that much wafer and you need to try
Speaker 4: to do everything. So that's funding out a lot of
Speaker 4: the supply going to the commodity dram. Right, so we
Speaker 4: have we have sort of both things. That's happening and
Speaker 4: essentially comes down to like I think, really, you know,
Speaker 4: things start really kind of people are wearer. It's like
Speaker 4: probably Q two T twenty five that people realize, hey,
Speaker 4: like you know, we actually couldn't find enough like enough DURAN,
Speaker 4: enough commodity d REM and also HPN for their demand.
Speaker 3: So you mentioned the sea word just then oh wait,
Speaker 3: not that seaword commodities.
Speaker 2: You mentioned commodities.
Speaker 3: And when I'm reading these articles about a memory chip shortage,
Speaker 3: people use commodity type language. Right, So you hear super
Speaker 3: cycle a lot, you hear commoditized chips versus I don't
Speaker 3: know other types of chips. Are they customized? I don't
Speaker 3: think so. But anyway, how much does this particular industry
Speaker 3: actually resemble a commodities like industry, and then maybe explain
Speaker 3: a little bit more why historically it has been really
Speaker 3: really cyclical.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so I think a couple of reasons.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: You know, Fundamentally, the sort of the cost of bits
Speaker 4: for DRM was actually coming down every single year significantly, right,
Speaker 4: even you know in most recent years was also coming down.
Speaker 4: But like the extent that they are coming down for
Speaker 4: every single year is actually slowing down, like you know,
Speaker 4: over the past like ten twenty years. Right, So the
Speaker 4: cause was key going down, right, So because it's hard
Speaker 4: to become of like you know, the most competitive part. Right.
Speaker 4: Another thing is there's the nest of the committee that
Speaker 4: let's set up the standard for d REM right. So, well,
Speaker 4: you're doing the similar products, right, you're just having you know,
Speaker 4: oh this is kind of a little better power efficiency,
Speaker 4: the performance was a little better right here and there.
Speaker 4: So like it's hard for you know, a memory supplier
Speaker 4: to significantly differentiate their products compared to their competitor. Right,
Speaker 4: So essentially, what's the what's the things that will compete
Speaker 4: in M will be in the market prices? Right, And
Speaker 4: then if you are selling the similar products and you
Speaker 4: are talking in similar audience. Right, that's sort of like
Speaker 4: other commodity you know, sort of semic adopt the commodity
Speaker 4: products to me, and I think those are the two
Speaker 4: man characteristics I'm saying for DRAM, and I think that's
Speaker 4: a little a little different for HBM.
Speaker 2: Tell me explain this. So there's commodity d RAM and
Speaker 2: then there's HBM. What HBM is a type of d RAM?
Speaker 2: Is that what you're saying? Yes, can you explain this
Speaker 2: further and like sort of yeah, walk us through what
Speaker 2: the commodity version and why there is this thing called
Speaker 2: HBM High bandwidth memory what that's all about.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Yeah, So essentially the emergence of HPN is really
Speaker 4: go down to the kind of model layer, because you know,
Speaker 4: this is when you like try to scale and stary
Speaker 4: scaling your AM model. Right, your thoughts, your followsing increasing
Speaker 4: significantly every single year, right, because your compute was increased
Speaker 4: lat faster, but your memory bandwidth was actually sort of
Speaker 4: it's increasing, but it's very limited, especially if you are
Speaker 4: using the memory from kind of traditional commodity dan that
Speaker 4: the bandwidth is actually mare limited. So from a memory supply,
Speaker 4: they're thinking, hey, like how can we expand the bandwidth
Speaker 4: to supporting the memory. They're going to scale the AI, right,
Speaker 4: so let's consoles HBM, so the way they do hBN.
Speaker 4: It's so they are stacking multiply eight were told for
Speaker 4: even in the future sixteen DR and dies together, right,
Speaker 4: So that making you you have like essentially having higher
Speaker 4: bandwidth and have enough capacity to support AI developments over
Speaker 4: the past few years and in the next few years.
Speaker 4: And let's very different, right, you are stacking all this
Speaker 4: dies together compared to a Hey, I would just we
Speaker 4: just have like one DRM products as a chip.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: And also that also comes down to the point that
Speaker 4: HP and manufacturing also the packaging, both front end and
Speaker 4: back in there's a lot more complex compared to commodity
Speaker 4: d REM. And that's why I say commodity DRM is
Speaker 4: more like commoditize, but I think HP is less so
Speaker 4: because it's lumbo complex, right. And for supplier you can
Speaker 4: actually differentiate either from the front end or back end technology.
Speaker 4: And when you you know it's better, right, it gives
Speaker 4: you a better margin, better ability to compare compete with
Speaker 4: your competitor. Right, you know, stuff like thermal things like
Speaker 4: that is the thing that will really stand out right,
Speaker 4: and let's marry different commodity.
Speaker 3: D rem getting more and more layers on HBM. It
Speaker 3: kind of reminds me of the Razor Wars, where like,
Speaker 3: you know, Gillett would unveil a three blade thing and
Speaker 3: then the next day someone has like twelve or whatever.
Speaker 3: So if I'm a company like Nintendo, how am I
Speaker 3: actually purchasing chips? Because I think this is going to
Speaker 3: be important when we talk about what's going on right now.
Speaker 3: But do I have like a forward contract with a
Speaker 3: major supplier, or do I have I don't know, a
Speaker 3: warehouse full of chips that I bought previously. How do
Speaker 3: they actually manage that?
Speaker 4: So there's a couple of ways they do it, right.
Speaker 4: They will they will do it in in terms of
Speaker 4: like kind of they will do a different way like
Speaker 4: different environments and also different vendors, right, So it's hard
Speaker 4: to say like, hey, this is exactly exactly the way
Speaker 4: they do it. But typically I think you can think
Speaker 4: about like, hey, this is amount of the chips we're
Speaker 4: gonna purchase in the next four months, and this is
Speaker 4: a month we're going to commit, right, and we're gonna
Speaker 4: sign a counter partly saying whether this term will be
Speaker 4: four months or for the LTA, you can go to
Speaker 4: like as long as like to a year or even
Speaker 4: two years. Right, So let's see the people the way
Speaker 4: you think about it. But people you will be like, hey,
Speaker 4: we signed this country for four months, right and by
Speaker 4: the end, sorry for three months for a quarter. So
Speaker 4: by the end of the quarter, you negotiate a new
Speaker 4: country pricing for the next quarter. So that's typically the
Speaker 4: way it works. But you know the problem for right
Speaker 4: now is for consumer and toronic, it's like the pricing
Speaker 4: prob is sort of I would say secondary, because if
Speaker 4: you couldn't secure value, you couldn't even make any money, right,
Speaker 4: So number one is secure in value, whether that you know,
Speaker 4: make sure that fits to the demand all look, you
Speaker 4: are same two. It's whether you can negotia the best
Speaker 4: pricing you can. But given the overall pricing environment was slow, volatile,
Speaker 4: was so ascanting so much, it's hard to like not
Speaker 4: taking some kinds of marching impacts because essentially, you know,
Speaker 4: you try to get the chips right and you cannot
Speaker 4: just you know, get too much away from your vendors.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I want to get more into the demand destruction
Speaker 2: because I think This is very important to think about
Speaker 2: where the e globrium is going, just to clarify what
Speaker 2: is it about AI specifically? Is it in the training,
Speaker 2: is it in the inference? Where specifically in the process
Speaker 2: of building out AI services does this voracious demand for
Speaker 2: DRAM come from?
Speaker 4: So honestly, is to be up, very honest, I think
Speaker 4: is everywhere, Like, right, you know AI training you need
Speaker 4: to council HPM. That's just everyone, no, right, you also
Speaker 4: need a lot of the CPU d RM and that's
Speaker 4: LP d d R and a DDR that going to
Speaker 4: the server. You also need HPN, right, So let's on
Speaker 4: a training part. In an inferencing you also need HPM, right,
Speaker 4: and you also need the CPU DR and the ghost
Speaker 4: loss vocal right, But you know the main one will
Speaker 4: be the HPM and even the inferencing right right now
Speaker 4: they are separating to pre fill and dec and you know,
Speaker 4: I think eighty percent I think right now, like the
Speaker 4: most important thing will be to code, right, and the
Speaker 4: CO is super super like memory bound and memory intensive
Speaker 4: and HPN and memory importance of their will just will
Speaker 4: only increase to my understanding, especially given the long contest
Speaker 4: window continue to expand and the inference usage. You know,
Speaker 4: douctions continue to going up, right, So I think those
Speaker 4: are typical way I will think about those, right. And
Speaker 4: the last thing is I think a lot of people
Speaker 4: talk about these dates is about argentic AI, right, agentic AI.
Speaker 4: You want to power those? You need a lot of CPU.
Speaker 4: You're not a lot of CPU based server, right, So
Speaker 4: what's what's including in the CPU server? There's a lot
Speaker 4: of d R in there, right, and a lot of
Speaker 4: urgentic world law also mean you need a lot of
Speaker 4: inference as well, right, And then go back to my
Speaker 4: previous point, you need a lot of XP and d REN. Right,
Speaker 4: So I would say like kind of d RN and
Speaker 4: I get HP and d R and kind of everywhere,
Speaker 4: and we have to talk about storage bout storage or
Speaker 4: so everywhere. You know, in doing this process.
Speaker 3: I have a basic question, but why does AI need
Speaker 3: a lot of memory at all? So you just explained,
Speaker 3: you know, it's important for inference, it's important for training whatever,
Speaker 3: but like why Yeah, I think.
Speaker 4: I think this this needs to like goes down to
Speaker 4: the to the model later, right, because essentially when you
Speaker 4: try to train, uh, let's say you want to train
Speaker 4: the model, right, and then you need. You just need
Speaker 4: the pure tons of data. You need to write tons
Speaker 4: of data there to train your model. And then for
Speaker 4: the influencing partline, you need one data after another to
Speaker 4: kind of compute one after another, sort of the chain
Speaker 4: of salts. Right, yeah, So to to do that process,
Speaker 4: how can you keep the previous data on your process
Speaker 4: to keep it in there and the process to another
Speaker 4: data that's coming out after right, So that's why you
Speaker 4: need not of memory and go back to my previous point. Right.
Speaker 4: The colon context window basically means like when you're when
Speaker 4: the things that your process is longer and longer, right, like,
Speaker 4: how can you how can you have enough memory to
Speaker 4: process those? Right? And you know, one for a good example,
Speaker 4: if you use TGBT, you guys definitely remember right, you
Speaker 4: know back togbts, which starts coming out people just like hey,
Speaker 4: like what's the weather?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 4: Like marriage poems people right now? Is or nastier people
Speaker 4: are doing like hey, can you write a twenty page
Speaker 4: of poor? How canser it can happen on people?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 4: For example? Then will give twenty page of poor and
Speaker 4: they were wait like five minutes, right, And so if
Speaker 4: you think about the process like they do all the calculation,
Speaker 4: all the researches, and also give you the output tokens
Speaker 4: that the answer you get from your prompts, that's significant,
Speaker 4: way longer than the proms that you are given, right,
Speaker 4: And that's also a lot longer response that you are
Speaker 4: getting when you call back to the GPD three. And
Speaker 4: remember the usage we know back to GPD three was
Speaker 4: it was the U kind of the monthly daily users,
Speaker 4: but right now it was I think the user for
Speaker 4: GGPT was eight hundred million, right, and we are not
Speaker 4: included the users for the Germini, for clud for XAI. Right,
Speaker 4: So you think you multiply those effects. I think the
Speaker 4: memory they management significant and it's very clear to me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really interesting. I saw someone people were talking
Speaker 2: about this, but it really strikes me in my own
Speaker 2: usage of AI just basically how much more use it
Speaker 2: as capabilities have grown. Like it was sort of cute
Speaker 2: in late twenty twenty two. It's like, oh, get it
Speaker 2: to write a poem about this, and it's like okay.
Speaker 2: Then I would go, you know, several weeks sometimes without
Speaker 2: having anything to query, and then you know, these days
Speaker 2: like I'm using it all the time, like trying to
Speaker 2: do things with code or scrape data, et cetera. So
Speaker 2: overall token consumption has grown massively with increased capabilities. All right,
Speaker 2: let's talk about the demand destruction element. Any commodity is
Speaker 2: going to be the price is going to be a
Speaker 2: function of supply and demand, and eventually prices get high
Speaker 2: enough such that certain forms of demand just are no
Speaker 2: longer economical. And it's like, you know what, We're just
Speaker 2: not going to make as many video games or cameras
Speaker 2: or whatever else uses a memory. Are we starting to
Speaker 2: see any of that yet such that certain uses and
Speaker 2: consumption of memories.
Speaker 3: Joe doesn't have to buy switch for his son, Yeah,
Speaker 3: that's right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I actually both have switched RAC So the price
Speaker 4: you should resell it?
Speaker 2: Are you going to resell it?
Speaker 4: I don't know. We'll see it up hol the opts
Speaker 4: rocks there works. But yeah, I think I think we're
Speaker 4: already seeing a lot of impacts. Actually, but kind of
Speaker 4: you kind of vary in different types of products, right
Speaker 4: right in p you are showing seeing that thell non
Speaker 4: noble answer sous. They are all having a price tip
Speaker 4: for kind of different their problems, right, and you know,
Speaker 4: on the kind of demand side. You're also seeing that.
Speaker 4: I think for the Chinese small phone market. Right, a
Speaker 4: lot of the analysts, a lot of the research firm, right,
Speaker 4: a lot of the company was saying, like they are
Speaker 4: cutting off their small phone outook a full example. I
Speaker 4: think media attacked recently left for Arniest. Right, they're saying
Speaker 4: they're cutting off the mobile to I think it was
Speaker 4: twelve for ten to fifteen percent of the twenty twenty
Speaker 4: six outlook. That's mere significant.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: You're saying this year is supposed to be a hundred million,
Speaker 4: but you will essentially go to a nineteen million. Right,
Speaker 4: that's mere significant. So I think we are already seeing that,
Speaker 4: but you kind of vary different places. Right. Apple will
Speaker 4: be a great example here because they're saying, hey, like, hey,
Speaker 4: we have all the price TI like, right, but we
Speaker 4: actually managed to put it well. Uh, they are saying
Speaker 4: the real sort of for marketing impact will actually show
Speaker 4: up in the second half twenty twenty six instead of
Speaker 4: like the first quarter or second quarter. I think those
Speaker 4: of at of the things I'm seeing, So it's definitely
Speaker 4: already showing out in the market. Right. I think what
Speaker 4: you can expect this sphere will be two things one
Speaker 4: is sort of demand destruction in PCs right, the border
Speaker 4: consumer and astronics or the dispect whether it's the memory
Speaker 4: displce Le's merri straightforward. But also the camera right, the
Speaker 4: camera is also very important. I'm hearing in some of
Speaker 4: the display on the camera as well. And you know
Speaker 4: also on the sort of what we call it delayed launch,
Speaker 4: right because you don't want to launch your new products
Speaker 4: that have higher price than initially stalled, which will impact
Speaker 4: your new launch performance. Who's usually the new new lunch
Speaker 4: product have better asp, better margin compared to your previous
Speaker 4: generation products.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: I think those other things we're going to say in
Speaker 4: the coming months, in the coming quarters, I think will
Speaker 4: show impacts and people will start feeling it.
Speaker 3: Joe, do you think we're going to get people like
Speaker 3: stripping all newtendos for memory hips? Like remember how during
Speaker 3: the commodity super cycle in like the early twenty tens.
Speaker 3: I guess there are all those stories about people like
Speaker 3: stealing electricity wires going to get.
Speaker 2: Twenty twenty one. Yeah, I think, yeah, we might. We
Speaker 2: might get some of that.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 3: Actually, on that note, is there like a short term
Speaker 3: fix for this problem either in terms of design, maybe
Speaker 3: you can make the products more efficient in some ways
Speaker 3: so that it needs less memory or recycling old memory chips.
Speaker 4: I don't know, yeah, I think you know from the
Speaker 4: dement side, it's a lot difficult, right from an in perspective, right,
Speaker 4: there's only that much you can do, right. You can dispect, right,
Speaker 4: but I don't think that addresses to the fundamental issues. Right,
Speaker 4: you are just dispect your products and so you can ship.
Speaker 4: But that there are this double age word right when
Speaker 4: you downgade your products that actually look back compared to
Speaker 4: some of your peers who doesn't dispect right, and Mengro
Speaker 4: product less competitive that impact your final sort of the
Speaker 4: totally or annual shipment. I think what's need to be
Speaker 4: address where what can be done is probably on the
Speaker 4: supply side, right, So supply side we mainly talk about
Speaker 4: a couple of vendors right, the micro and high in
Speaker 4: eight Samson and for legacy ones. Right you have windbound
Speaker 4: and China like CSMT and JHIICC right most people, So
Speaker 4: I think the most right way right now this year
Speaker 4: because this year the really challenges there's a clean room constraint.
Speaker 4: So clean room country is basically you have limited space
Speaker 4: that you can put those increments and start marifaction chips
Speaker 4: in the vat right, so you have clean room shortage
Speaker 4: in all three major memory makers. Right, so your incremental
Speaker 4: waver capacity coming online for twenty twenty six will actually
Speaker 4: be quite limited. So in that sense, how can you
Speaker 4: produce more bits, more different bits while having only limited
Speaker 4: incremental waver capacity. The only thing you can do it
Speaker 4: is non migration. So in deer processes, now you have
Speaker 4: the most advances right now it's one C right, going down,
Speaker 4: have one B, one A and one X ball. But
Speaker 4: right know, I think why now they are trying to
Speaker 4: do its migra as much as they can to one
Speaker 4: B and one C, which on the same way for
Speaker 4: basis you have produced a lot more chip, a lot
Speaker 4: more bits of compared to the legacy not right, so
Speaker 4: do doing that way on the same wave for pass
Speaker 4: you can produce more bits. So that should produce more
Speaker 4: supply even though your wave capacities constrained. But the challenge
Speaker 4: is two things. One how fast you can m about
Speaker 4: this non migration? Right? No migration is typically difficult. Well
Speaker 4: I always say difficult is you know it takes time
Speaker 4: right for to go into the most events now, right,
Speaker 4: you need EUV machine, right, you need all different kinds
Speaker 4: of manufaction processes, right, and not every fact can already
Speaker 4: prepare to doing that, right, so it will take time
Speaker 4: to m about all those productions for the new events
Speaker 4: not Also you are having the challenge to like, hey, okay,
Speaker 4: I want to do that migration, right, But how we're
Speaker 4: going to balance the capacity with HPN Again, that's another issue.
Speaker 4: You want to kind of think about it, right, because
Speaker 4: some of the HPN processed not uh it's actually using
Speaker 4: for hidings, are using one BEE so that's actually the
Speaker 4: events processing all right, So even you're including one bee
Speaker 4: by Edison, I want to do more ESPN, So like
Speaker 4: that increase years actually quite limited. So I think also
Speaker 4: the way it can potentially fix the issue. But you know,
Speaker 4: from our house view, right, even we factor all those in,
Speaker 4: I think this year we're still going to have ce
Speaker 4: press significant shortage.
Speaker 2: One of the themes that comes up when we talk
Speaker 2: about any commodities supercycle is that sure, higher prices will
Speaker 2: eventually elicit more production more supply, but in the meantime,
Speaker 2: you know, there's a sweet spot for the existing producers,
Speaker 2: especially when you have just a small number of producers
Speaker 2: that can produce at scale, they enjoy massive profits, right,
Speaker 2: and they're sort of going to be reluctant to build
Speaker 2: out new fabs because that's money going out the door.
Speaker 2: It also means lower prices, So there's always this sort
Speaker 2: of goldilocks period for them before the supply comes online
Speaker 2: where there's just raking in profits. What do we see
Speaker 2: is the industries in paul to invest And I'm curious,
Speaker 2: like you know, whether it's Chinese producers. Are they in
Speaker 2: a position to potentially undercut the profits of the Korean makers?
Speaker 2: Are the Korean makers seeing themselves as having a long
Speaker 2: window where they can enjoy large profits before they have
Speaker 2: to invest? Like what is the thinking on the supply
Speaker 2: side about those big capital outlets?
Speaker 4: Yeah, and that's a very good like strategic question. And
Speaker 4: I think you know, every management or public give you
Speaker 4: so no different answer or and kind of on the
Speaker 4: high level, probably same by the in general, right, Like
Speaker 4: you know, you know, look at like historical cycle. It's like,
Speaker 4: you know, if we are seeing quite sustainable demand in
Speaker 4: the next few years and then clearly the capacity couldn't
Speaker 4: catch on the demand, they are going to expand the
Speaker 4: capacity in some time. Right, It's probably not going to
Speaker 4: be like hey were announcing twenty twenty six the topacit
Speaker 4: they do it currently online and meaningfully it's probably twenty
Speaker 4: twenty eight, so they will I think they will still announce, right,
Speaker 4: and we are seeing that from micro Right. Micron is
Speaker 4: announcing a new non fab in Singapore.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: They are expanding they and they have two fabs currently
Speaker 4: it's on the construction in you right, also doing tons
Speaker 4: of a non migration and recently acquire the new fat
Speaker 4: from PSMC, which is a Taiwanese stream maker, and then
Speaker 4: all those movie You are already seeing some side of
Speaker 4: that and another side you are saying. It's the Capex, Right,
Speaker 4: both the Heene's, Samsung and Microne there during Capex is
Speaker 4: actually increased quite significant this year and expects similar train
Speaker 4: in twenty twenty and seven. Given I think you know,
Speaker 4: they're gonna probably try to expand more capacity and invests
Speaker 4: more in both HPN as well as the equipments that
Speaker 4: go to events equipment. Right, that goes back to the
Speaker 4: point I was talking about the non migration. If you
Speaker 4: want non migration, you need to use more advanced equipment
Speaker 4: to produce more advanced chips.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it really does remind me of the oil industry, right,
Speaker 3: where like there's a bust in the underlying commodity price
Speaker 3: and everyone starts talking about being disciplined, punkapex bend and
Speaker 3: so it takes a while to ramp up. I wanted
Speaker 3: to ask about, I guess the balance between HBM and
Speaker 3: other types of dram How are people or how are
Speaker 3: the actual chip makers thinking about that? And is there
Speaker 3: is there a chance that because HBM my understanding is
Speaker 3: that it has higher profit margins, is there a chance
Speaker 3: that everyone just pours into HBM and kind of leaves
Speaker 3: the more basic stuff in the dust.
Speaker 4: Yeah. So, actually, you know, it's very interesting. I think
Speaker 4: what probably things folk when you ruled about this for
Speaker 4: our institutional client, it's that, you know, not the margin. Well,
Speaker 4: typically we think hBN has higher margin, right, which is
Speaker 4: which is definitely true. But what's happening you know, we
Speaker 4: see all this like spot prize country price going out
Speaker 4: so much, right, the margin of the commodity d RN
Speaker 4: right now is actually higher than hBN. So here that
Speaker 4: created a real dynamo that tracy that you talk about
Speaker 4: it because when your marginal command is actually going higher,
Speaker 4: why would you make more hBN? Like why?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 4: But I think if you really think about like a
Speaker 4: long term perspective, form a memory supplier right before the
Speaker 4: old air bloom, your demand is really driving from couple
Speaker 4: a market right, PC, mobile, automotive, industrial, blah blah blah. Right,
Speaker 4: hBN right now is search as a new growth driver
Speaker 4: for the company, which we believe will last for the
Speaker 4: next few years.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: And for the memory supported I'm thinking the same. And
Speaker 4: if you are now continue to push your capacity, push
Speaker 4: your technology. When you're lacking behind, it's hard to coming back.
Speaker 4: And they go back to my previous point that this
Speaker 4: is an area that's relatively easier to differentiate your products
Speaker 4: to get more market share more meaningfully. Right, So I
Speaker 4: think three memory makers are mermer value HPM even though
Speaker 4: right now on the margin of commodity r is higher. Right,
Speaker 4: they will, I think they will still invest quite a
Speaker 4: lot on HPM, uh, and they will do their best
Speaker 4: to sort of balance the commodity dream market. But I think,
Speaker 4: you know, I think this year, at least the number
Speaker 4: I'm saying, it's still quiet significant.
Speaker 2: Short, how do the Chinese producers compare to the Korean producers.
Speaker 2: Is there a Is there a gap?
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, I think there's definitely the gap. I think,
Speaker 4: like you know, if you look at the memory in general,
Speaker 4: I think it's probably three years, say yeah, it's probably
Speaker 4: four years. I will say that this is merely like
Speaker 4: you know, time list that kind of today. You know,
Speaker 4: who knows about happen in the future. But I think,
Speaker 4: you know, there's definitely gap. You know, when I think
Speaker 4: about the competition pressure from Chinese memory makers, we always
Speaker 4: want to kind of separate the Chinese market and also
Speaker 4: the x China market. Let's also the memory supply was
Speaker 4: looking at it, right, So Chinese market is probably about
Speaker 4: twenty five percent of the global deuring dement. So really
Speaker 4: the competition is happening in China because for the leading
Speaker 4: Chinese memory supplier like CSNT for example, I believe like
Speaker 4: or ninety five percent of revenue is coming from China
Speaker 4: and Hong Kong. So meaning you know, most of the
Speaker 4: DRA is really compaying Chinese market, competing with micro Hinings
Speaker 4: and Samsung. I think I won't say that right now.
Speaker 4: On the events on the high end, right, I think
Speaker 4: it was still dominated by three memory makers, but CSMD
Speaker 4: getting to momento and why, and they are probably getting
Speaker 4: sort of law and mem products. And they are also
Speaker 4: benefited by Chinese Commons policy in terms of the self
Speaker 4: sufficiency drive to you know, whether it's for the commodity there.
Speaker 4: And also right now they're pushing for hBN developments that
Speaker 4: support Chinese AI harware.
Speaker 3: So if there's a shortage, and it seems like the
Speaker 3: shortage is going to be with us for some time,
Speaker 3: how are the chip makers actually allocating what supply they have.
Speaker 3: Does it go to, you know, the company that I
Speaker 3: think is going to be really big and important in
Speaker 3: the future, like I don't know, an Open AI or something,
Speaker 3: or does it go to an existing customer that's been
Speaker 3: buying in volume from me for years?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think there's no doubt to me that you know,
Speaker 4: sounds the highest highest tier customer will get a value
Speaker 4: for sure. Of course there are the more complex pricing
Speaker 4: negotiation behind. But I will I will say, like the
Speaker 4: value would be still be the most important thing, and uh,
Speaker 4: I think that's probably what they gonna do, right And
Speaker 4: you know, besides thinking about like a buy customer, I
Speaker 4: will think about kind of bisector. I will say the
Speaker 4: server durent and HPN two things together will be the top,
Speaker 4: top priority because you know, if for the whole a
Speaker 4: marketing deal we are seeing actually HPN and Server duren together,
Speaker 4: it's probably like more it's more than half of the
Speaker 4: durrent market, right, and that's important, and it's going so fast, right,
Speaker 4: and it's unlike the mobile, right, mobile is kind of flat.
Speaker 4: The mobile demand is really driven by the increased different
Speaker 4: contents in the mobile, which is Crian Dimater right, if
Speaker 4: you buy iPhone over the past, you know, like they
Speaker 4: are actually crane demating on their deferent content increase. So
Speaker 4: I think, I think, you know, loads are the top
Speaker 4: two parody for the memory company to focus on in
Speaker 4: the next two two years. And we'll see what happened,
Speaker 4: you know, after like second half of twenty twenty seven
Speaker 4: or twenty twenty if there is some structural change. But
Speaker 4: I think Server Durent HPM will be the top parties.
Speaker 2: You know, the other day, I was very lazy, it
Speaker 2: was not just one day, and I used claud code.
Speaker 2: You know, I have a bunch of screenshots on the
Speaker 2: desktop of my computer and it sort of makes my
Speaker 2: desktop look like a mass and I can't see folders,
Speaker 2: so I like drag and drop them and put them
Speaker 2: in the recycling then and it was very lazy, and
Speaker 2: I put it to claud Code. I said, clean up
Speaker 2: my desktop. Clean up my desktop. And I was like,
Speaker 2: this is so insane. I'm using you know, anthropics computers
Speaker 2: wherever they are on the other side of the country
Speaker 2: to clean up my own computer's desktop. Why do I
Speaker 2: even have my own A good job, of course, yeah,
Speaker 2: it did great, And I was like, why do I
Speaker 2: even have my own computer? At this point I started wondering,
Speaker 2: you know, I'm like, use, what why do I even
Speaker 2: have a computer? Could it so related to this sort
Speaker 2: of dram question. Could we just get into a situation
Speaker 2: in which people don't really have their own compute on
Speaker 2: their own device, because more that, like anthropics, brain is
Speaker 2: sort of or open the eyes, brain is sort of
Speaker 2: controlling the things we use. Why not just have a
Speaker 2: very low spec computer or low spec phone or whatever,
Speaker 2: or you know, low memory whatever, because I'm already using
Speaker 2: their computers, et cetera. And are we just going to
Speaker 2: see whether memory or elsewhere the sort of migration or
Speaker 2: all of the interesting stuff and all of the memory
Speaker 2: and all of the compute happens elsewhere and my phone
Speaker 2: just becomes a sort of you know, or my computer
Speaker 2: just becomes a screen with an Internet access.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean I do. I don't know of all
Speaker 4: the idea, like you know, not having the personal devices.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I might like have a physical device, but it
Speaker 2: just sort of seems similar, like over time, does it
Speaker 2: make sense for me to have all of this actual
Speaker 2: compute inside my house when I'm just like I might
Speaker 2: as well let them have it all.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I will say it depends on what's your purpose
Speaker 4: y you know, for example, laptop for example, right, Like,
Speaker 4: if you're doing like media editing merment heavy, right, you
Speaker 4: probably still a loft. You probably still need quite a
Speaker 4: lofty DRN right. If you're just you know, doing like
Speaker 4: you know, document work right talk cold depends on how
Speaker 4: are you going to use it. If I'm using like
Speaker 4: super intensively, I think you still need a quite good DRENT,
Speaker 4: especially you're like pulling all different API from different places, right.
Speaker 4: So I will say it just really depends on the
Speaker 4: m purpose. I don't think like you know, at least
Speaker 4: at least I haven't seen like you know, there will
Speaker 4: be like kind of structural uh sort of theorem destruction
Speaker 4: in the devices from five genting AI.
Speaker 3: So, going back to the beginning of this conversation and
Speaker 3: the cyclicality of the industry, people have been throwing around
Speaker 3: the term super cycle again very commodities ask is this
Speaker 3: just a super cycle, you know, maybe bigger than a
Speaker 3: previous turns that we've seen throughout history, or do you
Speaker 3: think something structural has shifted here? Perhaps given and the
Speaker 3: rise of AI and the fact that Joe is you know,
Speaker 3: using Claude to clean up his desktop, this.
Speaker 4: Is an actually very dangerous question to real You are
Speaker 4: basically asking, right, whether this time is different?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 4: I think, like, you know, I think there's a couple
Speaker 4: of things that it actually runs with the history, right,
Speaker 4: the non migration, fair capacity, right, those things. But I
Speaker 4: was like, you know, there's some kind of difference I'm seeing, right,
Speaker 4: because we really see in a sort of supercycle, that
Speaker 4: there's a new demand driver coming online. It's not only
Speaker 4: constrain the demand, this thing is also constrained to supply, right,
Speaker 4: because we know, for example, in twenty twenty ten to
Speaker 4: twenty twelve, there's a supercycle driven by mobile. Right. So
Speaker 4: mobile is basically, hey, we have a new part of
Speaker 4: coming online and it require a lot of DRA and
Speaker 4: let's let's and our capacity couldn't catch up. But right
Speaker 4: now for h men, and it's like, hey, okay, we
Speaker 4: need to do HPN, but your SHPN is actually constraining
Speaker 4: your commodity de ran capacity. So I think this is
Speaker 4: the key difference that we are saying for this, right,
Speaker 4: and apparently the demand accelerations it's also last quite long, right,
Speaker 4: if you really starting counting the sort of I would
Speaker 4: say the air acceleration in terms of demand probably let's
Speaker 4: say second half of twenty twenty straight when a VIDIA
Speaker 4: really start kind of emerging in people's attention. Let's to
Speaker 4: now it's almost probably like let's say three years, right,
Speaker 4: two year a half, two three years, and we are
Speaker 4: looking at this cycle to last until let's say safely
Speaker 4: to say like second half of twenty seven, right, So
Speaker 4: we are looking at like kind of four year cycle
Speaker 4: that's quite rare in the history. The usually like the
Speaker 4: cycle if you look at historically for the memory is
Speaker 4: probably like fifteen months, like the probably longest like eighteen
Speaker 4: months from start to its peak. But right now we
Speaker 4: are going to an area that was like, hey, the
Speaker 4: demand was going up, not a price directly. But the
Speaker 4: demand at least was growing quite significantly over the past
Speaker 4: few years, right, and the pricing impact is happening right
Speaker 4: now starting from probably Q two twenty twenty five.
Speaker 2: Well, what is it when you say, okay, the cycle
Speaker 2: could end by twenty twenty seven or the second half
Speaker 2: of twenty twenty seven, what are the ingredients for it
Speaker 2: to slow down? Is it the more production capacity? Is
Speaker 2: it a slow down in act total demand? Like what
Speaker 2: what do you see potentially happening in twenty twenty seven
Speaker 2: that brings applying demand more into balance?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so I will say that it will end. I
Speaker 4: will say, like, it's a more tricky area to because
Speaker 4: you know, based on the number you know I'm modeling,
Speaker 4: we are seeing here the demand is actually going higher
Speaker 4: and the shortage is actually going to worse. And the
Speaker 4: power of that is because a media ad server, their
Speaker 4: dealer in contents is going to three acts compared to Gregwell, right,
Speaker 4: and the video server lubin two hundred. Yeah, okay, I'm sorry,
Speaker 4: looping out, Sorry looping out our looping three hundred okay?
Speaker 4: And if that's okay, and the demand will continue to
Speaker 4: be that strong, right, you're actually being shortage to even
Speaker 4: be worse compared to twenty six, and your dealer should
Speaker 4: go to the go worse, right because the Murmer record
Speaker 4: is gonna try to make more HPN waifer right, and
Speaker 4: that kind of conting out more on commodity dram. I
Speaker 4: think the reason I say it's more tricky because two
Speaker 4: things I mentioned about a lot of migration. It's actually
Speaker 4: happened this year, It's also going to happen in twenty
Speaker 4: ninety seven, right, So towns of la migration are going
Speaker 4: to come in online and being completed, so then will
Speaker 4: add a lot of additional bits for the memory supplier. Additionally,
Speaker 4: the wafer should have a lot more coming online by
Speaker 4: the end of twenty six and for you know, throughout
Speaker 4: twenty ninety seven. Right. So I think those are two
Speaker 4: variables that you want to factor it in from what
Speaker 4: I'm saying, at least I think like twenty twenty seven
Speaker 4: therein going to still be storateaged.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we need a strategic memory to preserve put a
Speaker 3: floor on prices in the cycle. Actually, on that note,
Speaker 3: do you see a lot of stockpiling in the market
Speaker 3: or panic buying right now where people are seeing these
Speaker 3: forecasts and they're freaking out and just buying whatever they can.
Speaker 2: How you get a ball whip perfect, that's right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's hard to say no, right, Like one of
Speaker 4: the good I think the signal you've seen a tiny
Speaker 4: sampsone and microt during an inventory was dropping every single
Speaker 4: quarter see setting Q Street twenty twenty five. And that's
Speaker 4: that's one of the things that you are not just
Speaker 4: you know, buying the sort of products on the shelf, right,
Speaker 4: and the products are coming online in that quarter, You're
Speaker 4: also buying the products that in their inventory, right, You'll
Speaker 4: try to get as much of the product as you can,
Speaker 4: and you know, and you know, given the older demands
Speaker 4: and how AI has developed so fast, like by month
Speaker 4: monthly basis, it's hard to say, like, hey, there's no
Speaker 4: pre entitive purchasing behavior happening, right, And especially when the
Speaker 4: hyperskillers and the leading labs, they are competing each with
Speaker 4: each other very intensively. Securing capacity on the hardware is
Speaker 4: sort of the baseline, right. You want to get the
Speaker 4: best equipment that you can compete, right.
Speaker 2: So obviously if I'm buying a Nintendo Switch, if I'm
Speaker 2: buying a PC or maybe some sort of consumer device,
Speaker 2: then the increased memory cost is a meaningful driver of that.
Speaker 2: And maybe you know, the company you have to raise prices,
Speaker 2: maybe I won't buy it or whatever, and you might
Speaker 2: get this. What about like for the big hyperscalers, when
Speaker 2: we see these huge capital expenditure numbers from the likes
Speaker 2: of a Microsoft or an Amazon, do these prices changes
Speaker 2: move the dial at these levels in terms of do
Speaker 2: they affect anything when we're talking about these buyers.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't think you know number one, for sure,
Speaker 4: I think the tapex is not really well, the tapex
Speaker 4: increases not because of the dealerent price increase, Sure, deer
Speaker 4: price increase does gonna have some kinds of impacts to
Speaker 4: their purchases of memory, right, assuming the hyperscialers are a
Speaker 4: direct buyer of the memory, which you know is not
Speaker 4: necessarily the case in a different locations. Right, So if
Speaker 4: they assumeing they're the direct buyers of your memory for sure? Right,
Speaker 4: if you know, if your initial call was using a
Speaker 4: hundred million to buyas set amount of memory, right now,
Speaker 4: probably you need to do some this calendar for sure,
Speaker 4: especially this thing that's probably gonna that there's going to
Speaker 4: be more and more in the coming quarter, right, So
Speaker 4: one of the things that I'll try it, and they
Speaker 4: are hopefully they are trying to do, but they it's
Speaker 4: still very difficult. It's like they try to have a
Speaker 4: long term agreement, right to commit large value for the
Speaker 4: year basis and to hopefully to have bene pricing, but
Speaker 4: it's really hard to you know, to achieve that because
Speaker 4: why the memory supply. I want to do that, right,
Speaker 4: we can you know, ne negotiat of pricing in a
Speaker 4: coding basis. We can actually get more money, right, and
Speaker 4: especially given the current pricing and supply demand environments.
Speaker 2: Wong, thank you so much for coming on Odd Lives.
Speaker 2: Really the perfect guest. Let's us stay in touch and
Speaker 2: maybe we'll revisit it in twenty twenty seven to see
Speaker 2: if things have eased.
Speaker 4: Yeah, hopefully all right, Thanks than care, take care of it.
Speaker 5: That was great, Take care, Thank you, Tracy.
Speaker 2: That was fun. I do feel like there's a lot
Speaker 2: of moving pieces there, but just from AI in general,
Speaker 2: the crowding out effect is such a big part of
Speaker 2: the story. When when you saw those big capital expenditure
Speaker 2: plans for twenty twenty seven, like these are real macro drivers.
Speaker 2: They're going to show up at CPI, et cetera like that,
Speaker 2: and because it's like, you know, maybe we'll get a
Speaker 2: lot of productivity gains in the future, but right now
Speaker 2: that pace of spending is so furious. It is like
Speaker 2: a fiscal boom. Yeah, I meant stimulus.
Speaker 3: This is what happens when some of the world's biggest
Speaker 3: companies and most cash rich companies decide that this is
Speaker 3: an existential threat. Right there's no upward limit on how
Speaker 3: much they're willing to spend in order to survive, and
Speaker 3: so you could just throw money at HBM chips, I guess,
Speaker 3: and then you get the chip makers going well, actually,
Speaker 3: like we want to produce a bunch of HBM like
Speaker 3: forget about track all that stuff.
Speaker 2: I do think like, yeah, you know, when it comes
Speaker 2: to some of the data center and energy stuff, it's
Speaker 2: a little ambiguous how much it's affecting energy prices right now,
Speaker 2: but already the politics of that, yeah, very fraud. And
Speaker 2: then you're going to start upsetting the gamer community because
Speaker 2: they can't get act. You know, Nvidia has talked about
Speaker 2: critiquing mistake, and then they're going to upset my son
Speaker 2: because he can't get a Nintendo switch et cetera. People
Speaker 2: are just going to start feeling it more and more,
Speaker 2: the sort of visceral reality that various resources that they
Speaker 2: thought they could get abundantly. It's like, nope, we've switched
Speaker 2: this line over to the data centers, over to AI,
Speaker 2: and it's going to become more This crowding out effect
Speaker 2: is going to become more and more real to people directly, which.
Speaker 3: Is so ironic because when you think about AI, you know,
Speaker 3: it's this thing that exists in the ether, right, but
Speaker 3: at the same time it has this huge physical impact
Speaker 3: in the real world. It's kind of funny, and I guess, like,
Speaker 3: not what a lot of people would have expected.
Speaker 2: No, I suppose not the DRAM people. If anyone who
Speaker 2: has a terminal or just should just look up DRAM prices,
Speaker 2: because this is.
Speaker 3: I thought you were going to say, anyone who has
Speaker 3: a terminal should start stripping out.
Speaker 2: Terminal, should just unscrew the back and pull out the DRAM. No,
Speaker 2: but if you had people should just look at the chart,
Speaker 2: because really, here's this thing that's very sleepy. I mean,
Speaker 2: this was true commoditized to you know, this was the
Speaker 2: low end in terms of what people were excited about
Speaker 2: in chips and so forth, and it is great mentioned
Speaker 2: in the beginning, you know, costs generally around this downward
Speaker 2: trend and so forth, because growth was modest and technology
Speaker 2: continues to improve. And then it literally just looks like
Speaker 2: an l really in like the last four months, just
Speaker 2: gone completely nuts. And so yeah, kind of a fascinating
Speaker 2: spot to watch it. And it's just interesting to the
Speaker 2: point that you were making how much it really is
Speaker 2: like a commodity supercycle. Yeah, commodity cycle.
Speaker 3: Well, I guess in twenty twenty seven, maybe we'll find out.
Speaker 2: We'll see if it balances out.
Speaker 3: Shall we leave it there?
Speaker 2: Let's leave it there?
Speaker 3: All right? This has been another episode of the Odd
Speaker 3: Lots Podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at
Speaker 3: Tracy Alloway.
Speaker 2: And I'm Jill Wisenthal. You can follow me at the Stalwart.
Speaker 2: Follow our guest Bray Wong. He's at r Wong seven.
Speaker 2: Follow our producers Carmen Rodriguez at Carman armand dash Ol
Speaker 2: Bennett at Dashbot at Kelbrooks at Kelbrooks. And from our
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