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  • Hurr Durr - Saturday, February 24, 2018 - link

    I`d say where they fab it is much more important than what exact procerss is being used. Should we expect DDR4 price to getr back in sane areas now?
  • JamesUK - Saturday, February 24, 2018 - link

    Any competition is good. I'm pretty sure the current major players are cooperating in price fixing DDR4, as one never seems to undercut the others do they? I think it's very suspicious.
  • haukionkannel - Saturday, February 24, 2018 - link

    Chinese made phones are cheaper, so it is possible that these are cheaper than other memory modules, when they come to the market.
    I would expect that high end memory will stay very expensive, but bulk ddr4 with not so great timing has to become down because of competition.
  • FullmetalTitan - Saturday, February 24, 2018 - link

    It's not so much price fixing as impossibly high demand across all memory devices.
    From what we know, Samsung at least shifted production towards the highest profit margin items in their portfolio to take advantage of the demands (leading edge VNAND and high performance memory for datacenters).
    This leaves the consumer market under-supplied, which means prices to retailers don't decay over time as they would in a market in equilibrium, there is no motive force pushing anyone to lower prices from the launch price. That just carries over to consumers. And with other component markets in flux, what is normally a variation in the bottom line for retailers is now passed directly to consumers (gold went up? guess those gold interconnects cost more, 8GB modules jump $5, etc.)
  • FullmetalTitan - Saturday, February 24, 2018 - link

    Incidentally, this is a major factor in video card supply chains. No GDDR5X/GDDR6/HBM2 means no capacity increases are possible from AMD/NVIDIA.

    Just look at the newest Samsung announcement of a SAS drive for data centers with 40TB of NAND and 40GB of DRAM. My over under on that item is ~$20k per unit.
  • jimjamjamie - Saturday, February 24, 2018 - link

    It's finally happening boys

    pls china save us
  • WorldWithoutMadness - Sunday, February 25, 2018 - link

    "Xi’an UniIC’s DDR4 lineup includes 4 GB and 8 GB SO-DIMMs, 4 GB and 8 GB UDIMMs as well as a 4 GB UDIMM with ECC, all rated for data transfer rate of 2133 MT/s with CL15 15-15 timings at 1.2 V"

    Only for those with tight money. Enthusiast or performance market is still get thick rod shoved up to their back hole
  • Ahnilated - Wednesday, February 28, 2018 - link

    If you have a black hole, you might want to see a doctor.
  • ElishaBentzi - Wednesday, April 25, 2018 - link

    Amen
  • Anymoore - Saturday, February 24, 2018 - link

    UnilC doesn’t make 4Gb chips but 1Gb which can be combined into 4GB or 8GB parts, just like advanced 4Gb chips.
  • Anymoore - Saturday, February 24, 2018 - link

    Sorry that is DDR. They don’t list DDR4 yet, it could include 4Gb. Could it be sourced from outside China?
  • yuhong - Monday, February 26, 2018 - link

    In general, there is no DDR4 below 4Gbit BTW.
  • xrror - Saturday, February 24, 2018 - link

    If they can offer modules up to the DDR4 2966 with CL16 - I think that would be the inflection point where it gets serious for home builders. It's also what AMD (Ryzen) also needs - especially APUs.

    But 2400 is good enough for bulk volume OEM Intel boxes. Which I suspect is where the money is and the target for this venture.
  • ET - Sunday, February 25, 2018 - link

    I'd say that 2400 is good enough for home builders, just not enthusiasts getting highest end parts. I'd say that even if only 2133 was available for $70 per 16GB, as it was in mid-2016, and the rest were at current prices or close to that, i.e., more than double that, most people would buy 2133 and be done with it.
  • Alexvrb - Sunday, February 25, 2018 - link

    2400 is good enough for big OEMs and penny pinching system builders, at any rate. Who can blame them? Margins are thin. But home builders, as in people who build machines for themselves and family? Who wouldn't spent a few more dollars on faster RAM on their own personal rig? People act like it's a massive price difference... it's not. When comparing like-to-like (same brand, quality, etc) It is quite literally a few dollars between 2400 and 3000.

    Even looking at non-fair comparisons the difference isn't much. On Newegg right now the cheapest Team Elite DDR4 2400 16GB 2 x 8 kit with CRAP timings is $159.99. Meanwhile a decent GeIL or G.SKILL DDR4 3000 2 x 8 kit with *better timings* (DESPITE the higher clocks!) run around $166-170. So even an unfair comparison pegs you at $7-10 more for vastly superior RAM.

    So yeah... DDR4 2133, 2400, whatever. Great for OEMs. Not worth the "savings" for homebuilt. It's a no-brainer.
  • yuhong - Monday, February 26, 2018 - link

    There is also the distinction between 1.2V and 1.35V that consumers more power.
  • piroroadkill - Sunday, February 25, 2018 - link

    Nah, the most important chips are 2133 - the volume is in phones these days. If China can make enough RAM chips for Chinese produced smartphones, Samsung's mature fabs can supply the enthusiast market.
  • Alexvrb - Sunday, February 25, 2018 - link

    Phones use LPDDR. Are they producing LPDDR? Didn't sound like it from the article.
  • piroroadkill - Monday, February 26, 2018 - link

    Sincere apologies. It seems you are correct.
  • zodiacfml - Saturday, February 24, 2018 - link

    Their presence is not felt. Bought some 8GB DDR4 sticks recently and couldn't believe the price. It should have been a 16GB for the price.
  • jbwhite99 - Saturday, February 24, 2018 - link

    The most expensive part of making memory is not the silicon (sand) - it is building the fab. So when demand is low, the price plummets, as Micron, Hynix, and Samsung need to keep running their fabs to cover the enormous fixed costs.

    More supply is good - this will reduce the price at the bottom of the market first - then we will see the upper half of the market slowly drop in price. Can you explain why I need LEDs and fancy heatsinks in my memory?
  • Scholzpdx - Tuesday, February 27, 2018 - link

    LEDs cost practically nothing these days and I'm not complaining about good heatsinks. I got tired real quick of putting on my own.
  • StrangerGuy - Sunday, February 25, 2018 - link

    The memory cartel has fought tooth and nail for years to prevent China from acquiring memory manufacturing capabilities, and thankfully they failed.

    Now that the floodgates are open, there is nothing holding China on memory, like what they did previously to utterly dominate LCD and Li-ion production.
  • Alexvrb - Sunday, February 25, 2018 - link

    You mean the flood of crap LCD panels (on the low end, thankfully) and crappy dangerous batteries? I agree that the RAM shortage is a serious problem that affects all us of, but I wouldn't cheer China's state-run industry so vigorously. I'd rather they kept to the low end of the market.
  • yuhong - Monday, February 26, 2018 - link

    It is unlikely that they would be able to sell really crappy or unreliable DRAM to PC OEM.
  • MrSpadge - Sunday, February 25, 2018 - link

    I'd say the most intersting question is the production capacity and plans to scale it up. Seems to be a good time to enter this business seriously, but it's got to happen quickly.
  • Scholzpdx - Tuesday, February 27, 2018 - link

    I'm interested in their process and facility. Any info on that?
  • iwod - Sunday, February 25, 2018 - link

    I dont see this posted anywhere including from Uni and Xi. There was some news last December claiming they started shipping DDR4. And turns out it was fake news.
  • jjj - Friday, March 2, 2018 - link

    It seems the modules actually use Hynix DDR4.
  • Adramtech - Sunday, May 6, 2018 - link

    Everyone here is forgetting that lesser technology chips are more expensive to make and more expensive to buy than newer tech. China has to start a the high-end of the industry to have a chance to compete.

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