alt Hacker News> In the future, hardware is only for big companies to own. At least it seems we're heading that way.
China is desperate to sell anything to... everyone. If there's a market, they'll eventually be there to fill it.
It took them decades for cars, but now they did it.
For RAM, CXMT went from 20 000 wafers per month to... 240 000 wafers per month in something like two years. And they're extending capacity massively now. It's a company only 10 years old.
The market is there and China shall flood it: that's how they operate with everything.
At some point they'll probably even come with GPUs that shall do 80% of the job for 20% of the price.
Just like you can buy chinese server motherboards at 1/5th the price of a SuperMicro one today.
So I'm not sure hardware is going to be only for big companies: China is going to put pressure on the OpenAI and Anthropic of this world locking all the RAM / SSDs / chips of this world.
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Can you buy Chinese cars without the Multimedia/GPS computer and "phone home" system?
I think there's a great deal of underestimation of China's manufacturing. Granted, wafers are a totally different thing than any of the other industries they've dominated for cheap, but I certainly wouldn't count them out.
I've recently gotten into fountain pens. Sure, a $7 Jinhao or $15 Hongdian pen isn't going to write quite as nice as a $200+ pen, but they're about 80% of the way there, and you can buy tons of them for the cost of a single more expensive pen. Plus, some models will accept Western nibs just fine which means you're buying a cheap barrel and assembling a much higher quality product for almost pennies on the dollar.
One would do well not to underestimate their ability to fill markets. It may take years, but it will happen.