sleepydragon

My first real job was a 9-month internship with Quantum, a disk drive manufacturer that had since bankrupted (i think the remaining pieces sold to WDC, but not sure). So i think i know a bit about disk drives. Even back then, 20’years ago, seagate is the leader in technology. I remembered no matter what we do, we cant beat seagate in term of “disk seeking speed” (which is how fast the disk head find a data on the disk and read it). In terms of stx vs wdc, the thesis of HDD is they are not spending more money to expand factories. Instead, more capacity will come from per disk density. As stx sells more HAMR drives , price per drive also goes up. There are some YouTube video about how these hamr drive works. Very cool. And a lot of existing drives will get upgraded over time — more cash for stx without additional factories. STX’s hamr technology is very unique and wdc cant do it. Wdc’s current method of increasing density per disk is just adding more disk platters. They are years behind. as the AI being used by more individuals, people already start buying CPU stocks because more cpus will be needed per user. But i think storage will explode too. U need to store those context from everyone’s projects. And Flash memory is so expensive, HDD will be used more (solvable though software optimizations to use flash more efficiently and move more stuffs to HDD)

Bought more stx today

And bought NBIS too

Added to TSM and STX

I’ve been through 2000. But I don’t think this is a bubble that will burst soon. Might just be the beginning

Tsm

Yesterday STX today MU

This probably is good for AI supply chain? These country will need host their own data centers running their own models , which means more chips and chip equipments

but isn’t klac also has ebeam inspection product now… probably not as good/dominant as ASML’s one? Thanks’

I think not being able to raise prices applies to all semi equipment suppliers -- they can increase their revenues by providing additional service or products, but not easy to raise prices on existing products -- they all largely sell to TSM , who is a cheap a** I guess! Also, I think KLAC is probably as close as 100% monopoly like ASML? AMAT is less but maybe it has bigger revenue upside because it has so many different products/services.

There’s something to dislike about asml for sure— they take a whole year to make like 50 machines.. it’s very hard for them to scale up production . That’s why i think klac/amat/lrcx might be better?

If buying call, u know they are going to announce safty data by 6/30. That’s a fixed announced date. though options are very expensive now.

you are joking right? they pick who they want to sell to

it’s all sold out for the next few years. They just have to deliver them. pretty the entire chip making is these little “mini factory “/machine of asml. There’s no one else. even Depart of Defense/war buy from them, and can only afford the refurbished machines

besides ASML, another company with almost equal monopoly power is KLAC — i heard this from an ASML engineer. But i am a bit hesitant to buy more because all these semi equipment have 25-40% revenue exposure to china. (ASML is a bit better because they are banned from selling their most expensive machines to china.) still biting my nails on KLAC (and also slightly less moaty lrcx and amat)