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As AI gobbles up chips, prices for devices may rise

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Re: As AI gobbles up chips, prices for devices may rise

#11
post #2

"May rise"? Prices are already through the roof... https://www.tomsguide.com/news/live/ram-price-crisis-updates

Asus is ramping up production of ram... So lets see if they might "save us"

Asus doesn't operate fabs and has denied the rumor

https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/dram/no-asus-isnt...

Re: As AI gobbles up chips, prices for devices may rise

#13

Positive downstream effect: The way software is built will need to be rethought and improved to utilize efficiencies for stagnating hardware compute. Think of how staggering the step from the start of a console generation to the end used to be. Native-compiled languages have made bounding leaps that might be worth pursuing again.

Alternatively, we'll see a drop in deployment diversity, with more and more functionality shifted to centralised providers that have economies of scale and the resources to optimise.

E.g. IDEs could continue to demand lots of CPU/RAM, and cloud providers are able to deliver that cheaper than a mostly idle desktop.

If that happens, more and more of its functionality will come to rely on having low datacenter latencies, making use on desktops less viable.

Who will realistically be optimising build times for usecases that don't have sub-ms access to build caches, and when those build caches are available, what will stop the median program from having even larger dependency graphs.

Re: As AI gobbles up chips, prices for devices may rise

#14

Question: are SoCs with on die memory be effected by this? Looks like the frame.work desktop with Ryzen 128GB is shipping now at same price it was on release, Apple is offering 512GB Mac studios Are snapdragon chips the same way?

Apple secured at least a year-worth supply of memory (not in actual chips but in prices).

The bigger the company = longer the contract.

However it will eventually catch up even to Apple.

It is not prices alone due to demand but the manufacturing redirection from something like lpddr in iphones to hbm and what have you for servers and gpu

Re: As AI gobbles up chips, prices for devices may rise

#15

Question: are SoCs with on die memory be effected by this? Looks like the frame.work desktop with Ryzen 128GB is shipping now at same price it was on release, Apple is offering 512GB Mac studios Are snapdragon chips the same way?

> Question: are SoCs with on die memory be effected by this?

SoCs with on-die memory (which is, these days, exclusively SRAM, since I don't think IBM's eDRAM process for mixing DRAM with logic is still in production) will not be effected. SiPs with on-package DRAM, including Apple's A and M series SiPs and Qualcomm's Snapdragon, will be effected -- they use the same DRAM dice as everyone else.

Re: As AI gobbles up chips, prices for devices may rise

#16
post #5

Well thank th FSM that the article opens right up with buy now! No thanks, I'm kind of burnt out on mindless consumerism, I'll go pot some plants or something.

I didn't see any of that. I highly recommend disabling javascript in your browser. Yes, it makes many sites "look funny", or maybe you have to scroll past a bunch of screen sized "faceplant" "twitverse" and "instamonetize" icons, but, there are far fewer ads (like none). And of course some sites won't work at all. That's OK too, I just don't read them. If it's a news article, its almost always available on another si…

I whole-heartedly agree with your recommendation and join in encouraging more adopters of this philosophy and practice.

Life online without javascript is just better. I've noticed an increase in sites that are useful (readable) with javascript disabled. Better than 10 years ago, when broken sites were rampant. Though there are still the lazy ones that are just blank pages without their javascript crutch.

Maybe the hardware/resource austerity that seems to be upon us now will result in people and projects refactoring, losing some glitter and glam, getting lean. We can resolve to slim down, drop a few megs of bloat, use less ram and bandwidth. It's not a problem; it's an opportunity!

In any case, Happy New Year! [alpha preview release]

Re: As AI gobbles up chips, prices for devices may rise

#17
post #2

"May rise"? Prices are already through the roof... https://www.tomsguide.com/news/live/ram-price-crisis-updates

Big companies secure long-term pricing (multi-year), so iPhones probably won’t feel this in 2026 (or even 2027).

2028 is another story depending on whether this frenzy continues / fabs being built (don’t know whether they are as hard as cpu)

Re: As AI gobbles up chips, prices for devices may rise

#18
post #15

Question: are SoCs with on die memory be effected by this? Looks like the frame.work desktop with Ryzen 128GB is shipping now at same price it was on release, Apple is offering 512GB Mac studios Are snapdragon chips the same way?

> Question: are SoCs with on die memory be effected by this? SoCs with on-die memory (which is, these days, exclusively SRAM, since I don't think IBM's eDRAM process for mixing DRAM with logic is still in production) will not be effected. SiPs with on-package DRAM, including Apple's A and M series SiPs and Qualcomm's Snapdragon, will be effected -- they use the same DRAM dice as everyone else.

The aforementioned Ryzen AI chip is exactly what you describe, with 128 GB on-package LPDDR5X. I have two of them.

To answer the original question: the Framework Desktop is indeed still at the (pretty inflated) price, but for example the Bosgame mini PC with the same chip has gone up in price.

Re: As AI gobbles up chips, prices for devices may rise

#20

Positive downstream effect: The way software is built will need to be rethought and improved to utilize efficiencies for stagnating hardware compute. Think of how staggering the step from the start of a console generation to the end used to be. Native-compiled languages have made bounding leaps that might be worth pursuing again.

Some Soviet humor will help you understand the true course of events:

A dad comes home and tells his kid, “Hey, vodka’s more expensive now.” “So you’re gonna drink less?” “Nope. You’re gonna eat less.”

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