Join the discussion

Write your take first — we'll ask for email only when you're ready to publish.

  • Hacker News
  • Better spend it now, people won’t need greater than 1.5tr parameter models

    and battery powered consumer devices will be able to run those and lower sufficiently capable models by then, distributing the need for compute away from capital projects

    the glut will be enormous

    yes, immortalize this phrase just like the 640kb ram phrase, I’ll stand by it

  • > “Semiconductors, physical AI, and AI data centers are the triple axis for a great leap forward.”

    Not the best wording... I wonder how serious this announcement is.

  • >The most costly of the megaprojects involves a commitment by Samsung and SK Hynix of $585 billion to build new chip fabrication plants..... The government’s goal is to double South Korea’s production of dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) within five years.

    "Double"

    I was wondering about that $585B number only to read they plan to Double the capacity. The two firm together is nearly 70% of the current DRAM market supply. I guess we are really going into an era where future Phone and PC will have 16GB as minimum, possibly more.

    Even if the market are back to normal, that is doubling the revenue. The current AI scale and Cloud infrastructure buildout is simply beyond what I could comprehend.

    by ksec
  • South Korea is facing a serious demographic crisis, in the not too distant future it'll be a country of mostly elderly folk. I'd be interested to know if this investment has anything to do with this, since robots may be needed in the absence of young able bodied folk.

    More info: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ufmu1WD2TSk

  • Why humanoid? Surely there must be a superior physical form factor than one mimicking human anatomy. Is it just supposed to be more psychologically acceptable?
  • > $585B on new fabs,

    This is how overcapacity happens in a commodity. The is a rush to expand capacity to meet demand, and there will be overshoot. I hope these factories are built quickly so the memory crunch eases.

  • I wonder how Germany missed the semi manufacturing train? They had literally everything: universities, manufacturing culture, expertise and supporting supply chains, cash.

    I forgot, they also had ASML, freaking next door!

  • The title sounds to me like: I am going to spend $1000 in groceries and dance lessons. That is, two very different things lumped together.

    Memory chips are like groceries, essential commodity parts, a no-nonsense investment. Humanoid robots are like dance lessons, it is cool, it is sexy, and it may pay off in the future, but the value is much less certain.

Explore Birbla archives

South Korea to spend $1T on more memory chip production and humanoid robots · Birbla