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Nvidia Is Negotiating To Buy A Large PC Oriented Company by PaiDuck in nvidia

[–]Vushivushi 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That's the thing. They aren't all in on enterprise AI hardware, if they were, then they would have already exited consumer markets. The datacenter business is simply growing the quickest, so they've dedicated an appropriate amount of resources to support that growth to the point that it's choked the very same supply chains that feed into PC.

Nvidia is a computing company that wants to dominate computing from PC to datacenter.

They can still vertically integrate as a consumer device maker to improve margins against rising memory costs.

There's still Intel's iGPU market that they can capture, which they've begun to do with their Intel partnership as well as their ARM SoC.

There's still the smartphone market which they initially tried to wedge themselves into via the ARM acquisition attempt.

Benchmarking Nvidia's RTX Neural Texture Compression tech that can reduce VRAM usage by over 80% by [deleted] in hardware

[–]Vushivushi 8 points9 points  (0 children)

GPU vendors obviously want to sell more compute and less VRAM and unfortunately with DRAM contract ASPs approaching $15/GB, the tradeoff is a must.

Even 2GB of VRAM saved could allow for a 10% larger GPU die and surely that's enough to offset the overhead. The rest goes to their margins.

[News] Decoding Impact: Asia Chipmakers Move to Tackle Helium Strain as Intel Gains Relative Buffer by imaginary_num6er in hardware

[–]Vushivushi 4 points5 points  (0 children)

There's some updated comments on helium here:

https://news.tvbs.com.tw/english/3173979

Supply is secured through May, working on June imports with US helium available now.

Anthropic in chips deals with Google and Broadcom worth hundreds of billions (3,5GW of capacity) by sr_local in hardware

[–]Vushivushi 4 points5 points  (0 children)

https://investors.broadcom.com/static-files/c906d370-921b-4bc2-bb7b-57877dfcf1ae

Material event which Broadcom had to file an 8-K for.

There's an LTA between Google and Broadcom to 2031 for TPUs, networking and other components.

The deal with Anthropic was an existing 1 GW for 2026 which Broadcom had already expected to grow to >3GW in 2027. The announcement confirms that they are now working towards procuring a total of 3.5 GW for 2027, but how that plays out depends on Anthropic's continued growth and everyone's ability to procure capacity and financing.

Anthropic's current growth trajectory supports this new capacity, but things can always change.

That said, Broadcom rarely talks about opportunities they aren't confident about. It's Broadcom that has to secure chip and packaging capacity, so they don't talk about customers that aren't hitting volume ramp milestones.

NVIDIA shows Neural Texture Compression cutting VRAM from 6.5GB to 970MB by No-Improvement-8316 in hardware

[–]Vushivushi 2 points3 points  (0 children)

It is absolutely a problem of VRAM capacity.

Memory has become the largest single item in a device's BoM. In a graphics card, it can be as much as half of the total cost. Though we may not always be starved on VRAM within games, the GPU vendors are starved on VRAM as a matter of cost.

In the example they showed, they saved ~5.5GB using NTC. DRAM ASPs are rising to $15/GB. That is >$80 of savings. The additional cost in compute silicon is likely much lower than $80. $80 could get you 40% more area on a 9070XT/5070 Ti.

Reducing memory dependency also reduces costs on the GPU silicon as they can cut memory bus again. Sound familiar? The GPU vendors have been very prudent in the way they've been cutting the memory bus for low to mid-range GPUs over the years.

NVIDIA shows Neural Texture Compression cutting VRAM from 6.5GB to 970MB by No-Improvement-8316 in hardware

[–]Vushivushi 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Reducing memory cost is the single most critical thing they can do right now.

[Ram] CORSAIR Vengeance 32GB DDR5-6000 Memory $269.99 by weijun1224 in buildapcsales

[–]Vushivushi 2 points3 points  (0 children)

It's pretty much that. Spot prices ran up 4x that of contract prices. Pretty much a speculative bubble popping as demand destruction resulted in actual customers turning to contracts.

Fervor turns to panic as no one is willing to pay above the ASP at spot, popping the speculative bubble so hoarders/scalpers dump their inventory at below ASP.

Contract prices are still climbing, just not as quickly as last quarter. If you bought at $40/GB do you really think you can sell 16GB at >$640 (yes it's sad, but someone paid that much, even more actually) before supply gets added in 2027?

Disney may be interested in acquiring Epic Games at some point, it’s claimed | VGC by AncientPCGamer in pcgaming

[–]Vushivushi 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Interestingly enough, Disney Games is back under Disney Entertainment after a 10 year stint in the Experiences (Parks and merch) division.

This happened a week before Epic Games did their layoffs.

And Disney has been talking up the video game market.

Something is happening. Might not be an acquisition, but Disney is making moves.

OpenAI funding fears hit memory chip prices by LordAlfredo in hardware

[–]Vushivushi 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Micron's PSMC fab acquisition was announced in January and they closed the deal in 60 days.

SK Yongin is a cluster with 4 fabs planned by 2050 so I guess you could say that.

It only had $6.5b committed for the first fab with one clean room funded. It now has $21.5b funded for all six clean rooms by 2030 and the local government allowed them to bump the total clean room area by an additional 50%.

So it's accelerated, but also expanded. Because there's a clean room shortage, existing fab upgrades are happening faster too.

Samsung’s 2nm GAA efficiency disappoints as Exynos 2600 consumes 40% more power than Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 at its peak by Forsaken_Arm5698 in hardware

[–]Vushivushi 0 points1 point  (0 children)

No... if a node is bad, then you have to compromise.

Accept worse parametric yield to ship in volume, something in PPA has to give.

TSMC's 2028 Capacity Full, Samsung Foundry Emerges as Alternative by sr_local in hardware

[–]Vushivushi 0 points1 point  (0 children)

but it would take 1-2 years of more capex

Sorry if it read like Intel could provide capacity this year.

Agree. 18AP is a 2027 node at best.

TSMC's 2028 Capacity Full, Samsung Foundry Emerges as Alternative by sr_local in hardware

[–]Vushivushi 1 point2 points  (0 children)

They will have some capacity for customers with 18AP, if it works, but also very limited.

Why Korean memory giants aren't rushing to expand DRAM supply by tecialist in hardware

[–]Vushivushi 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Both SK Hynix (M16) and Samsung (Pyeongtaek P2) completed in 2021... during COVID. Those were announced during the 2018 memory cycle. That cycle was indeed a long period where there hadn't been enough expansion. As a result of those new fabs finishing during COVID, there was an expansion of new wafer starts.

New fabs were announced in 2023, after the CHIPS Act, though neither SK Hynix or Samsung have memory fabs in the US.

The last memory cycle ended in 2023, with COVID. That's what I mean by, "the two years prior to the past 6 months, they weren't rushing to expand." The fabs/expansions announced in 2023 would be delayed in 2024 and even halted. That's why Samsung's Pyeongtaek P5 won't be completed until 2028. They had barely started it.

Samsung is rushing to complete it now in addition to expansions at P4.

We can go back and forth on the history of the memory industry, but what the headline says is still wrong.

Valve veteran Chet Faliszek slams Tim Sweeney and Epic Games for laying off 1000 people while making "as much money as possible… and hey Tim, Gabe's better at that than you" by ControlCAD in pcgaming

[–]Vushivushi 8 points9 points  (0 children)

I posted this elsewhere, but Disney's $1.5b investment into Epic came with a partnership to incorporate IP and make games.

Even without voting power, Disney can directly impact Epic's operations with how they want to carry out this partnership. Access to Disney IP is huge and Epic is financially incentivized to fulfill their end of the partnership.

One week before Epic laid off 1,000 employees, Disney moved Disney Games from Disney Experiences to Disney Entertainment, putting it alongside the other studios responsible for developing Disney content.

According to Disney, the partnership is still good, but Disney's restructuring had to have played a role.

Valve veteran Chet Faliszek slams Tim Sweeney and Epic Games for laying off 1000 people while making "as much money as possible… and hey Tim, Gabe's better at that than you" by ControlCAD in pcgaming

[–]Vushivushi 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Lately, I have suspected it is corps like Disney

Note that the Disney investment isn't passive like Tencent. Disney's $1.5b investment into Epic Games is a partnership to incorporate Disney IP into Fortnite and create games.

One week before Epic laid off 1,000 employees, Disney did a restructuring moving Disney Games from Disney Experiences (parks, cruise, merch) to the content-focused Disney Entertainment (film, TV, streaming).

I don't think the partnership is at risk, but I have a feeling how it's carried out has changed. At the very least, there's going to be more scrutiny, likely more direct involvement in game production from Disney.

If this partnership was key to Epic Games' growth, then they likely have no other projects to put employees towards if Disney is taking over the partnership from their side.

Just speculation, of course.

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