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The RAM shortage comes for us all

jeffgeerling.com

131–140 of 416 posts

Re: The RAM shortage comes for us all

#132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Undoubtably the cost would go up, but nobody is building out datacenters full of DDR4, either, so I don't figure it would go up nearly as much as DDR5 is right now.

https://pcpartpicker.com/trends/price/memory/ You can see the cost rise of DDR4 here.

Awesome charts, thanks! I think it bears out that the multiplier for older hardware isn't as extreme as the newer hardware, right?

Re: The RAM shortage comes for us all

#133

This is ultimately the first stage of human economic obsolescence and extinction. This https://cdna.pcpartpicker.com/static/forever/images/trends/2... will happen to every class of thing (once it hits energy, everything is downstream of energy).

If your argument is that value produced per-cpu will increase so significantly that the value produced by AGI/ASI per unit cost exceeds what humans can produce for their upkeep in food and shelter, then yes that seems to be one of the significant risks long term if governments don't intervene. If the argument is that prices will skyrocket simply because of long-term AI demand, I think that ignores the fact that manuf…

>the value produced by AGI/ASI per unit cost exceeds what humans can produce for their upkeep in food and shelter

The value of AGI/ASI is not only defined by its practical use, It is also bounded by the purchasing power of potential consumers.

If humans aren’t worth paying, those humans won’t be paying anyone either. No business can function without customers, no matter how good the product.

Re: The RAM shortage comes for us all

#134
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone with no skills in the space, no money, and lives near Ottawa: I'd love to help start a fab in Ontario.

Right on, partner. I think there's a ton of demand for it tbh I'll do the engineering so we're good on that front. Just need investors.

I think I have a few dollars left on a Starbucks gift card. I'm in!

Re: The RAM shortage comes for us all

#135
I wonder if these RAM shortages are going to cause the Steam Machine to be dead on arrival. Valve is probably not a big enough player to have secured production guarantees like Sony or Nintendo would have. If they try to launch with a price tag over $750, they're probably not going sell a lot.

Re: The RAM shortage comes for us all

#136
post #13

I think the OpenAI deal to lock wafers was a wonderful coup. OpenAI is more and more losing ground against the regularity[0] of the improvements coming from Anthropic, Google and even the open weights models. By creating a chock point at the hardware level, OpenAI can prevent the competition from increasing their reach because of the lack of hardware. [0]: For me this is really an important part of working with Claud…

Could this generate pressure to produce less memory hungry models?

Of course and then watch those companies reined in.

Re: The RAM shortage comes for us all

#137
anybody care to speculate on how long this is likely to last? is this a blip that will resolve itself in six months, or is this demand sustainable and we are talking years to build up new manufacturing facilities to meet demand?

Re: The RAM shortage comes for us all

#138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

16GB is more than fine if you're not doing high-end gaming, or heavy production workloads. No need for debloating. But it doesn't matter either way, because both 16 and 32GB have what, doubled, tripled? It's nuts. Even if you say "just buy less memory", now is a horrible time to be building a system.

I found web browser tabs eating too much memory when you only have 16GB

That's strange. How many tabs are we talking? Are they running something intense or just ordinary webpages?
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