alt Hacker NewsMarket cap is not capital. AMD's cash-on-hand is $13b, which is considerable, and they could very well bring external funding to such a project on attractive terms, but it's not pittance. And for what, an historically low-margin commodity like DRAM? Let the boys play it out.
If anyone should do that, though, it's Apple. They have the money, the easy to predict need, the vertical integration in manufacturing. It could open all sorts of avenues for proprietary SoC to RAM interfaces. It makes a lot of sense for them to do.
> Market cap is not capital.
Market cap is de facto capital because companies can issue their own shares.
> And for what, an historically low-margin commodity like DRAM?
How are they enjoying paying the "low" margins to the incumbents right now?
> They have the money, the easy to predict need, the vertical integration in manufacturing. It could open all sorts of avenues for proprietary SoC to RAM interfaces. It makes a lot of sense for them to do.
Which of those is supposed to not apply to AMD or Nvidia or, for that matter, Amazon or Google who are massive DRAM customers and also make the likes of Graviton and Axion?
And "proprietary interfaces" are essentially nonsense in this context. When a company comes up with a better way to connect DRAM to processors, the industry is more than happy to put it in the next version of the standard, which is what you want because it allows you to source the industry standard components in the event that your own facilities can't meet demand for any reason.
The primary reason companies use proprietary interfaces for things like this is when they're trying to capture the upgrade market, even then they're still typically using standard chips with a purposely incompatible connector, and Apple solders everything now anyway.