Comment by ksec
11 hours ago
$20B a single Fab. And you don't just have one Fab. You need multiple. And again I have to state this every time, the most expensive Fab is empty Fab. You need to fill it, and you need to fill constant and consistently for years.
>but it seems they'd be a prime candidate to spin up their own memory fab.
They will be the prime candidate to work with memory makers for additional capacity. Not to start their own one. Here is a $20B cheque and 5 years guarantee of orders. Go and make me some memory for his price.
I mean this is the same story for iPod and NAND. It seems we are repeating what we should have learned.
You needed to fill it constantly in the “old times” when memory was ubiquitous and cheap to justify the finance payments on the debt you incurred to build it.
When you’re Apple and can build it with cash, and ram is currently so insane it saves you a decade of memory price gouging in a single year, the math changes quickly.