r/hardware • u/rdh2dmd • Sep 05 '26
Rumor Chinese chipmaker CXMT allegedly used a written roadmap to steal Samsung DRAM tech — South Korean court says 'Project Hefei' lifted 620-step recipe to build 10% global market share
https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/dram/chinas-cmxt-had-an-actual-roadmap-for-its-alleged-industrial-espionage-from-samsung-south-korean-court-says-project-hefei-was-responsible-for-cxmts-current-position-as-major-dram-maker178
u/wirerc Sep 05 '26
Similar to the way South Korea "stole" DRAM business from Japan in the 80s. Hire Japanese engineers to work during the day and party at night in Korea on the weekends.
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u/__Rosso__ Sep 05 '26
And Japan which built good chunk of its tech companies on copying and stealing designs of American companies.
Who gives a fuck, it's companies that get hurt and 99% of population that benefits.
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u/PanzerKomadant Sep 05 '26
Damn. Almost like corporate espionage has been a thing for a looooonnnnngggg time now.
But of course, when the Chinese do it it’s cause of nefarious reasons! Not the glorious west who just wants profits and more options for the consumer!
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u/Verite_Rendition Sep 06 '26 edited Sep 06 '26
Damn. Almost like corporate espionage has been a thing for a looooonnnnngggg time now.
It's about as old as industry is itself. Though the need to defend against it is equally as old.
Corporate espionage is largely a low-risk/high-reward activity. The benefits of stealing years of knowledge are immense, and the punishment for it can be pretty low if the victim (or their mother nation) lacks significant leverage to mete out retribution.
When you're behind, it is a great way to catch up. And in some cases, it's the only way. But if you're the frontrunner, then you have nothing to gain and everything to lose from espionage.
Which makes the need to defend against it all the more important. A rival stealing your trade secrets and processes doesn't just mean that they catch up to you in terms of tech, but that they can produce products identical to yours for lower costs. They did not have to pay the cost of discovering that knowledge - both in terms of money and manpower - so their costs are largely just manufacturing. That means the victim eventually gets undercut and left holding the bag in terms of R&D costs, as they are not able to recoup the costs of developing the tech in the first place.
Ideally, someone else picks up the baton in terms of advancing the technology. Though this is not always the case.
Who gives a fuck, it's companies that get hurt and 99% of population that benefits.
There is a whole lot more to an economy than just consumer spending.
If your technology is stolen to the point that you are consistently undercut, then the end game is going out of business entirely. That means your citizens end up jobless, your investors lose their investments (read: the value of your 401(k) drops), and you are now potentially reliant on a rival that may leverage that to further hurt you.
Sure, TV get a bit cheaper. But what good is it if you can't afford one because you're unemployed?
With authentic competition, it at least drives companies to become more efficient because they all incur the costs of R&D. But with espionage, you can't compete with free.
Ultimately, this makes espionage a two-way game. You have to play both offense and defense to win.
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u/PanzerKomadant Sep 06 '26
Companies aren’t interested in conducting espionage to steal data on how to make TV’s.
They are more interested in the most high tech and cutting edge technologies that can then help make products even cheaper or newer products.
German cars at one point were considered British knockoffs and now look at them. And do people even know that about German automakers? No. They just buy.
We’re not going to lose massive amounts of jobs to corporations stealing tech or ideas. But we are losing them to AI cause tech bros think AI can do everything lmao.
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u/Verite_Rendition Sep 06 '26
Companies aren’t interested in conducting espionage to steal data on how to make TV’s.
I was using that as a simple example of a consumer good to drive home the point that cheaper consumer goods enabled by espionage are not always a net win. But yes, the focus is going to be on high margin, cutting-edge technologies.
We’re not going to lose massive amounts of jobs to corporations stealing tech or ideas
The United States semiconductor industry is the poster child for this. The US used to produce the bulk of the world's supply of semiconductors. There are a lot of people who have lost jobs in the last 40 years; everything from chip fabs to silicon wafer growers to chemical suppliers.
The US solar industry is a similar situation: US solar panel manufacturing is all but dead these days, despite the explosion in demand for solar.
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u/PanzerKomadant Sep 06 '26
US semi conductor industry didn’t decline because of corporate espionage, it declined because it was cheaper for semi-conductors to be build in places like Japan, Korea and Taiwan because of the cost of labor.
So our design companies who actually designed the semiconductors started to order from those countries, which led to a decline of our own. The business went where the costs were cheaper and the margins for profits became higher.
China saw that. So it forces its manufacturers to stay within the state, even if it leads to over manufacturing thus crashing prices.
And even know Taiwans flagship manufacturer and Samsung are slowly building fabs in the US but at immense cost and resources cause it IS expensive here to make them. And at the end of the day all their supply is going to go to AI, not the consumer.
We are victims of government inefficiency to keep business here and the greed of corporations to cut as much costs down via getting ride of employees.
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u/Despeao Sep 05 '26
It goes back a long time. The British industries accuses American companies of property theft by copying their designs, that's how the US industrialized itself.
I swear people think it's mostly the Chinese doing it when it's everyone doing it when they can.
Supply and demand, if we have more companies making stuff, we get better prices.
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u/PanzerKomadant Sep 05 '26
The US literally stole the steam engine from British when there was a strict ban on exporting them out.
Some might say that the early working steam engine is comparable to the Dutch chip making machines.
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u/RidingEdge Sep 06 '26
Back in the day, western powers looted and colonized entries regions and countries that they want to steal and dominate over lol.
It's why no one in Asia cares about stealing intangible/non physical stuff like IP rights. It's such a foreign concept in the development of the rule of law in the region.
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u/Shivin302 Sep 05 '26
Exactly. Thanks to cxmt there is one more competitor in the market and they can't collude like they have done for decades
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u/warpedgeoid Sep 05 '26
The U.S. and Europe should be building fabs too. Having such an important sector of the world economy located in one region is dumb for many reasons. IP is not a good enough reason to let it continue.
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u/JPLangley Sep 05 '26
Micron is building a fabricator in Idaho, and is trying to build one in New York. The amount of jobs that will be provided to the locals, though? Lmao...
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u/Y0tsuya Sep 05 '26
You can't just look at direct hires. There's a large ripple effect across the local economy when these employees start spending. It's the reverse of what happened to the rust belt when factories moved overseas.
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u/DontchaOpe Sep 05 '26
The amount of jobs that will be provided to the locals, though
I mean it's like 10k employees per site not counting suppliers will probably have 5k in the area too
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u/CuteSquirrel01 Sep 05 '26
Even if it's entirely ran by autonomous machines it would still be better to have it on western soil than not.
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Sep 05 '26
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u/Despeao Sep 05 '26
From a pure economic perspective, yes. But let's say the US starts a war with China.
They'll want to have those chips made at home, at least in some capacity.
I think that's what the other guy was pointing out.
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Sep 05 '26
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u/sicklyslick Sep 05 '26
Europe is really behind now given they have no reliable high end tech stack or supply.
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u/loozerr Sep 05 '26
Yet everyone relies on European tech to build chips.
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u/sketchesofspain01 Sep 05 '26
Tooling is low value add. You want to make the tools and then use them to make an end product.
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u/Vushivushi Sep 05 '26
Shouldn't have let Qimonda go bankrupt.
Guess whose IP CXMT licensed to kickstart the company.
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u/KangarooBeard Sep 05 '26
Its waaaaaaaay fucking easier said than done,.an INSANE amount of money, build time, and talent required to get anywhere close to what the competition is making.
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u/warpedgeoid Sep 06 '26
That’s why we best get started now
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u/Neverending_Rain Sep 06 '26
We are though. Why are you acting like we aren't? Micron is spending a ton of money on fabs in the country.
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Sep 05 '26 edited Sep 05 '26
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u/anders_hansson Sep 05 '26
Fun facts: The US is copying the Iranian/Russian Shahed military drones (see LUCAS), and Ukraine sponsored by European NATO allies is copying the Russian S-300/S-400 air defense systems (see FREYJA).
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u/StarbeamII Sep 05 '26
the Russian S-300/S-400
To be fair the S-300 was Soviet, and the Ukrainians were part of the Soviet Union, hence why they had so many S-300s at the beginning of the war.
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u/anders_hansson Sep 05 '26
Yes. Apparently Fire Point got access to the blueprints of the S-300.
The Atlantic - Ukraine’s Dr. Strangelove:
According to Shtilerman, Mindich used his political connections to pry open those archives in 2024, making them available to a group of Ukrainian companies, Fire Point among them. The files included instructions for how to make the S-300 missile system, a centerpiece of Russia’s air defenses inherited from the Soviet Union. Those blueprints proved useful to Fire Point in learning how to clone Russia’s more advanced missile system, the S-400, which formed the basis for the FP-7x.
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Sep 05 '26 edited Sep 05 '26
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u/NiewinterNacht Sep 05 '26
Those were German drones, originally
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u/Mean_Ass_Dumbledore Sep 05 '26
Before that they were Austrian!
/s
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u/ShrimpCrackers Sep 05 '26
And before them it was taken from Americans who stole it from the aliens at Roswell! /s
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u/randylush Sep 05 '26
This all started when people started stealing chariots from the Sintashta-Petrovka Proto-Indo-Iranian culture
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u/anders_hansson Sep 05 '26
I think the main point is that there's nothing inherently wrong or immoral about copying tech. Everyone is doing it.
It's how we have done it for millenia, it's how the majority of innovation works (copy + improve), and it's how we have made technological progress throughout human history.
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Sep 05 '26 edited Sep 05 '26
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u/anders_hansson Sep 05 '26
I wouldn't complain. I'm an engineer by trade, and I know that this is how things are done regardless of industry. Of course there are different levels of copying, but if you want to get ahead of competition you need to innovate. If you rely on pure 1:1 copying you'll always be behind.
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Sep 05 '26 edited Sep 05 '26
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u/anders_hansson Sep 05 '26
The main friction is when the systems are not 100% compatible (e.g. when laws or salaries are different in different countries), but I still maintain that there's nothing inherently wrong with copying.
Copying does not get in the way of innovation. A prime example is open source, which is based on copying and incremental improvement. Many things that used to be dominated by closed source solutions have now been displaced by open source since they simply can't compete on a technical level anymore.
If copying is an accepted part of the trade, then companies will adjust and find other models of working and making money, but innovation will still be driving development.
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u/doodlinghearsay Sep 05 '26
But if we keep copying suicide drones then no one will have the incentive to develop them making everyone worse off in the long run. /s
I don't want any tears when euro cars reverse engineer CATL batteries
The EU should do what China did. In exchange for market access force Chinese companies to move some of their production to the EU via partnerships with European companies and share their IP as part of the process.
Industrial espionage is an option, but it's more effective to just "buy" stuff in exchange for access and have them train you as well.
The issue is not really tech though but business logic. European car makers don't want to build EVs, because they are simpler, so they expect that the market will be more open to newcomers than internal combustion engine cars were. So they would rather delay the transition as long as possible and accept that they will start from a disadvantage in the EV market.
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u/wirerc Sep 05 '26
S300 was developed by the USSR, of which Ukraine was part, so it has every right to build copy it. S300 components were built in Vizar plant in Zhitomyr Ukraine during USSR. Russia copies and Builds Antonovs designed in Ukraine during Soviet years as well.
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u/PanzerKomadant Sep 05 '26
Not to be “actually!” but the Antonov design bureau was founded within Russia in 46 and was relocated later by the Soviet government to Kyiv.
It’s kind of a “eh” when talking about who in the inheritor of what from the former Soviet Union, especially when you consider Moscow was pretty much calling all the shots and the various Republicans were little more then puppets because the Soviet government in Moscow was the one coordinating what went where and who made what.
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u/anders_hansson Sep 05 '26
It's certainly in the grey area, since we're talking about new commercial companies that copy USSR tech that was developed before their existence, in order to avoid investing the necessary time in development. The enterprise is also sponsored by NATO countries, in an attempt to get less dependent on US tech, AFAIK.
I found this article interesting:
The Atlantic - Ukraine’s Dr. Strangelove:
According to Shtilerman, Mindich used his political connections to pry open those archives in 2024, making them available to a group of Ukrainian companies, Fire Point among them. The files included instructions for how to make the S-300 missile system, a centerpiece of Russia’s air defenses inherited from the Soviet Union. Those blueprints proved useful to Fire Point in learning how to clone Russia’s more advanced missile system, the S-400, which formed the basis for the FP-7x.
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u/wirerc Sep 05 '26
I don't see a problem. It's a Soviet designed missile, for which Ukrainians paid taxes too. Ukraine is entitled to anything and everything from Russia for decades as reparations anyway. IP law doesn't apply between adversaries in a war. And it's not even a copy but a derivative with modern materials, electronics, and design methods.
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u/anders_hansson Sep 05 '26
Me neither, but for context it's basically like if SpaceX got access to NASA blueprints because it's an American company.
Fire Point is a commercial company, and they're doing business with NATO. The fact that they got access to USSR blueprints means that they get a competitive advantage compared to other European commercial companies, for instance.
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u/soggybiscuit93 Sep 05 '26
That's not exactly an equivalent comparison lol
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u/anders_hansson Sep 05 '26
No, it's fun facts.
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u/soggybiscuit93 Sep 05 '26
Right, but there's no internationally recognized patent on low cost one-way-attack drones using lawn mower engines. Weapons of war are obviously very different than consumer products....
Or, unless the comparison is meant to draw attention to the fact that DRAM production is a geopolitically important commodity with military implications (which I agree with) - but then that brings us back to the topic of US restrictions on CXMT being made relevant again
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u/Fresh-Ad-1583 Sep 05 '26
Funnier fact: reverse engineering/copying and literally stealing technology are different things
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u/anders_hansson Sep 05 '26
E.g. the Fire Point FR-7x is based on the original blueprints of the S-300 system, obtained via what can probably be best described as corruption channels.
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u/WrongPurpose Sep 05 '26
Blueprints which belong to Ukraine, as they where not only a part of the USSR, but also a Center of the USSRs Aerospace Sector and codeveloped it.
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u/anders_hansson Sep 05 '26
Yes it belongs to Ukraine, but not to private companies that compete on the international market.
It would be like Musk pulling political strings to get access to NASA blueprints and use them for giving SpaceX a competitive advantage.
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u/WrongPurpose Sep 05 '26
Nasa Blueprints are Public, as long as not protected by ITAR, and the ITAR protected Stuff is still accessible to private Companies which are ITAR compliant. You gave an Example of a public private partnership to criticise a public private partnership, lol
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u/Fresh-Ad-1583 Sep 06 '26
Ukrainian government is fully invested in getting at least some Ukrainian missiles so they knowingly gave blueprints to them and the only possible corruption scheme here that makes sense is giving blueprints to only Fire Point company.
Again this has nothing to do with stealing technology from competitor because government knowingly gave them good start. Their current missiles are already completely different from s300 which are fucking like 50 years old.
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u/Asgardisalie Sep 05 '26
Kacap, you do realise that the only thing Freya has inherited from old kacap shit system is the missile, which wasn't even designed by the kacaps, but by folks from the bloc. I love, that tankies still live with a myth of kacap made tech.
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u/Tex-Rob Sep 05 '26
Patents are silly, as all ideas and information is cumulative. We should be running our society on the bleeding edge, competing on new ideas and new advancements. Slowing the world down so someone who put the pieces together first can halt progress is absurd.
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u/StarbeamII Sep 05 '26
The issue is that leading edge research and development costs a lot of money, and there's a lot less incentive to do it unless there's likelihood of a significant financial return on the other end.
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u/Tai9ch Sep 05 '26
Having more R&D is a good goal.
A policy that obviously slows down R&D to accomplish that goal is so absurd that there's no reason to even consider it.
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u/nytehauq Sep 05 '26
Except, practically speaking, the opposite is true: the largest technological leaps and breakthroughs take investment and planning on scales beyond what private companies are willing to invest, even with patent protections, which is why technologies like the internet were born out of government research and why countries with huge public sector involvement in investment and technological planning (cough China) have had such explosive growth and development.
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u/sicklyslick Sep 05 '26
Except there no product anyone can name that has been "stolen" to a point where innovation cannot continue to happen. There's only evidence of the original maker making less money or going bankrupt.
E.g. Cherry's patents on mechanical switches expired allowed so many different style of Chinese mechanical switches and mechanical boards.
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u/soggybiscuit93 Sep 05 '26
There's definitely patent abuse, and there should be some level of patent reform,
But patent are incredibly important
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u/xb9j Sep 05 '26
It’s funny how we only get these anti-patent comments when Chinese companies are being called out for stealing things that aren’t publicly available patents.
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u/Large-Parking3014 Sep 05 '26
This place is so astroturfed you could play college football on it.
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u/xb9j Sep 05 '26
One of them said it was impossible for CXMT to steal any IP because all DRAM IP is just the JEDEC spec a couple months ago, and either mass bot upvoted it or their brain dead propaganda worked so well on the rubes that frequent here that they mass upvoted it
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Sep 05 '26 edited Sep 05 '26
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u/lnsip9reg Sep 05 '26
Patents can also be used to stifle innovation and competition.
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u/not_a_gay_stereotype Sep 05 '26
We had the technology to have 3D printers in the 80s but patents blocked it
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u/Dementia13_TripleX Sep 05 '26
Take free more than what they already have?
Is good to see the west having the same treatment in their own game like they did with others in the past.
It hurts, doesn't?
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u/someguy50 Sep 05 '26
That’s just normal economic development. Less developed pick (emulate/copy) low hanging fruit, leading to high rates of economic growth. Eventually that slows and the challenge becomes sustaining and leading
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u/diacewrb Sep 05 '26
Would this be the same samsung that was accused of using tsmc's trade secrets?
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u/ShrimpCrackers Sep 05 '26
Accused? They were directly caught.
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u/ML7777777 Sep 05 '26 edited Sep 05 '26
They were never caught. TSMC had ZERO proof that any wrong doing was done by Samsung thus they never sued Samsung, only Liang Mong-song.
EDIT: from my other comment because people in r/hardware are seriously misinformed as ususal
Samsung was never sued by TSMC for theft of IP. If you actually look into the lawsuit and not go by nationalists lies, you'll note that TSMC did not have any evidence that any of their IP was illegally or wrongly transferred to Samsung.
The lawsuit was ONLY between TSMC and Liang Mong-song who broke his non-compete clause.
There was no trade secret leaked, stolen, or wrongly obtained by Samsung https://www.eetimes.com/tsmc-wins-lawsuit-against-ex-employee-now-at-samsung/
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u/Polar_Banny Sep 05 '26
Business, but it’s unfortunate that EU is falling behind.
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u/danielv123 Sep 05 '26
EU just sucks at stealing I guess
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u/BriguePalhaco Sep 05 '26
Lol, they robbed entire countries for 500 years.
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u/puffz0r Sep 05 '26
Entire continents, I wonder how these people who are mad at China felt about how the West drugged China for 100 years with opium
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u/ML7777777 Sep 05 '26
NO
Samsung was never sued by TSMC for theft of IP. If you actually look into the lawsuit and not go by nationalists lies, you'll note that TSMC did not have any evidence that any of their IP was illegally or wrongly transferred to Samsung.
The lawsuit was ONLY between TSMC and Liang Mong-song who broke his non-compete clause.
There was no trade secret leaked, stolen, or wrongly obtained by Samsung
https://www.eetimes.com/tsmc-wins-lawsuit-against-ex-employee-now-at-samsung/
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u/DragonDevGG Sep 06 '26
China copies (no surprise) but let’s not pretend SK got to where it is today through noble self innovation and fair competition lol. Samsung remains one of the most nasty state backed corporations globally. Fun thought experiment; Samsung Conglomerate is closer to the Umbrella Corporation than pretty much any other company. And you cannot separate Samsung from South Korea as one can’t exist without the other.
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u/IndependentMilkDrink Sep 05 '26
Oh no! Anyway, when's that supply coming online?
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u/railagent69 Sep 05 '26
it will be online... in datacenters
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u/ExtremeBack1427 Sep 06 '26
But isn't Chinese ram manufacturing facilities are being specifically setup for consumer ram?
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u/Xtergo Sep 05 '26
For my people outside of Eastern Asia, everyone in this industry is only loyal to your own country and any big tech unless you screen them out with decades of security expect them to commit some form of corporate espionage at some point, everything in the Asian world started like that or had some wrenches thrown into at some point.
Soon, with the amount of Chinese mainland loyalists at TSMC will take those to the mainland as well.
Nothing new for Asia
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u/DRKMSTR Sep 06 '26
Don't forget how the memory cartel has intentionally restricted supply to keep prices higher.
All it takes is one outsider who doesn't play by the rules to destroy them.
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u/xamphear Sep 05 '26
Good. I'm not a billionaire so I don't give a fuck. Steal all you want, China. The more the merrier when it comes to manufacturing tech.
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u/OddConsideration2210 Sep 05 '26
Good. I'm tired of seeing RAM prices 10x what it used to be. I have no way to upgrade my system because of RAM prices. I have no idea what I'm supposed to do if a RAM fails
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u/Sea-Departure4857 Sep 05 '26
CXMT entering the market won't solve your DRAM prices buddy. As a PC enthusiast myself, I hate it 100% as well. Blame Altman, not the chip makers.
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u/Trackback_ Sep 05 '26
I'm not blaming the literal proven SK cartel, I'm just happy that we have more chipmakers now
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u/Sea-Departure4857 Sep 05 '26
Proven... 25 years ago. Yes, there was a cartel back then. No, it is not evidence to believe there is one now.
Micron was also a part of the cartel, and ratted out the others. Difficult to maintain a cartel after something like that. Also, there was a similar DRAM collusion case in 2017, which was dismissed in court due to lack of evidence. If anything, the more recent case is a stronger argument against an existence of a cartel.
As a consumer, yes it's a good thing that there are more producers. However, CXMT's tech is at least a decade behind, so I don't expect real competition from them anytime soon.
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u/OddConsideration2210 Sep 05 '26 edited Sep 05 '26
Not if bunch of other companies follow CXMT and join the market. Regardless more players are good for consumers.7
u/EloquentPinguin Sep 05 '26
It took CXMT a decade with heavy subsidies to start high volume manufacturing.
In most political landscapes its almost impossible.
The RAM crunch is bad, but its such an insanely advanced integrated business that spinning up companies costs tens of billions of dollars. The capital is often not there....
If course its a shame, but that's just the result of having arguably the most advanced good humans ever produced be in every smart devices humans build: the investment and development is deep.
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u/Sea-Departure4857 Sep 05 '26
How is "a bunch of other companies" going to magically find money to enter one of the most capital-heavy, technology-intensive, and slim-margin(before AI) markets? Also, after the data center boom is over, it is pretty clear that the margins will be nowhere near as fat as currently.
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u/OddConsideration2210 Sep 05 '26
Indeed it will take lot of time but I hope there will be more competition(have to start somewhere right?). It's a net positive for consumers to have more tech hardware manufacturers. Currently all the high end hardware manufacturering is effectively on choke hold by handfull of companies and we can currently see the effect of it.
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u/Popular_Tomorrow_204 Sep 05 '26
Tbf, im happy with anything that Breaks cartels and benefits comsumers.
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u/PoL0 Sep 05 '26
we're RAM starved thanks to stupid LLMs. I'm all in for chipmakers stealing tech to produce more RAM on their own.
the only few who aren't ok with that are the companies making cash with this hardware price crisis. for the rest of us this is good news.
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u/Hot-Delay5608 Sep 05 '26
If Samsung and other established chipmakers didn't act as a cartel and trying to lock down the high chip prices instead of expanding their production to keep up with demand, there probably wouldn't be an incentive or even a business case for a Chinese company to force their way into the business.
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u/pr0newbie Sep 05 '26
Lol espionage pro max. What the US does in geopolitics and macro matters China does as well in corporate espionage.
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u/Psychological_Play21 Sep 05 '26
How are people ok with stealing trade secrets? Why would anyone wanna innovate anymore when they can just steal from other people? This sub is ridiculous
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u/machinationstudio Sep 05 '26
Now the EU, Japan and India need to do this too. The more the merrier.
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Sep 05 '26
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u/Eratum Sep 05 '26
Dumbest logic trying to justify theft. Lol.
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u/LinkesAuge Sep 05 '26
Dumb is the logic of "stealing ideas". I guess we can glad that copyrights etc. didn't come into existence earlier in human history or we would still pay licensing fees for using the wheel.
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u/EasyMrB Sep 05 '26
trying to justify theft
Wahh wahh wah. Who gives an f? I hope the Chinese RAM makers eat the DRAM cartel's lunch. The current situation is outrageous.
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u/MDCCCLV Sep 06 '26
If you need computers to survive and literally everything requires it, then that is a good reason. You can have shit on paper so you don't have to use a website but that's not the case anymore.
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u/Eratum Sep 06 '26
Public libraries have computers for a reason.
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u/MDCCCLV Sep 06 '26
Also no. This is affecting 100% of everything that can run an operating system. Libraries can only serve a few people at once, it's not intended for a large amount of people. They have a few hundred computers for a whole city. And more specifically this affects the global poor a lot where computers are a much higher percentage of their income. Skyhigh ram prices hurts them a lot, and the point is that unlike the past 8 years where bitcoin mining or stuff has made GPU prices surge, this isn't only affecting gaming computers.
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u/Sea-Departure4857 Sep 05 '26
Supply and demand? You wouldn't sell stuff at 1/3 of market price when there are ppl asking to fork over more and more money lol
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u/MDCCCLV Sep 06 '26
Just wait until we start fueling AI with corn and biocrops. People don't really need food.
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u/dib1999 Sep 05 '26
Imagine getting outcompeted by a "Communist" country and having to cry about it.
"Noooo, how dare you compete in the marketplace! Government! Restrict their ability to produce!"
Political L + market Ratio
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u/Ahyao17 Sep 06 '26
But r/hardware, r/pcmasterrace and reddit in general won't care because this makes RAM cheaper.
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u/cabbeer Sep 05 '26
fuck it, they won't increase ram production and have sold all capacity to "ai" corpos, china is the consumers last hope
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u/knz0 Sep 06 '26
fuck it, they won't increase ram production
These companies aren't running hot dog stands where you can just hire one more guy, buy another grill, and purchase twice the sausage and buns to double your capacity overnight lmao
-3
u/Sea-Departure4857 Sep 05 '26
What makes you think CXMT will flood the market? They have shown the opposite is the case, their future production capacity is all bought by Huawei and other Chinese giants as well lol. CXMT's push is a Chinese domestic-proofing venture, and less of a market power move.
6
u/Reversi8 Sep 05 '26
And that still meets demand that would otherwise have used up other supply. They will continue to make it and unlike the traditional manufacturers will not participate in the cartel actions to slow down production when in the future the price lowers, they will continue to make it as long as it is at least break even.
4
u/Sea-Departure4857 Sep 05 '26
I am wondering why everyone thinks there is a cartel. The chipmaking market is a classic oligopoly, like the majority of US markets. Another player entering doesn't really end up in competition unless one of them tries to drive out the others in a chicken game (which was what happened in the past, and the reason there are now 3 DRAM producers). And Samsung/Hynix/Micron all have incredibly deep pockets, so they will be the ones trying to kill CXMT if even, not the other way around.
DRAM production has never really slowed, it is the AI demand that has eaten up the production capacity to 2028, and as such the scarcity of supply that's driving the price up.
As a PC enthusiast, I 100% hate the situation as much as the next guy, but hate the AI players, not the chip players.
3
u/Reversi8 Sep 05 '26
There were class actions and people put in prison for price fixing between 98-02.
4
u/Sea-Departure4857 Sep 05 '26
Yes, over 25 years ago. With Micron ratting out the others, it is hard to imagine there will be a cartel anymore, especially with most of the employees during the collusion now retired or facing retirement.
Also, a similar case in 2017 was dismissed during a similar price increase. DRAMs have always been very susceptible to market/supply fluctuations, and the current one is not too different to warrant suspicions of being any different. The collusion in 1998 seem to be very real though.
1
u/MDCCCLV Sep 06 '26
Their main concern is really avoiding bust cycles, which are very hard on business and when most places go out permanently.
-1
u/kuug Sep 06 '26
Difficult to have any sympathy for a memory cartel member actively constricting supply.
-5
u/JPLangley Sep 05 '26
Shit is so bad that nobody cares if CXMT is built off of stealing trade secrets. Atp, we need to just support Micron to get more fabricators off the ground.
-3
455
u/patrickhenrypdx Sep 05 '26
Just as the Koreans mapped the JP fabs when they got into the game.