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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

#61

Post by callc »

bigbadfeline wrote: post #53
appreciatorBus wrote: post #46

[flagged]

> has more demand than forecast Nah. The demand is driven by corporations that hoard hardware in datacenters, starving the market and increasing prices in the process - otherwise known as scalping . Then they sell you back that same hardware, in the form of cloud services, for even higher prices. More explanations here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46416934

Gosh. This sounds a lot like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_Thursday with extra steps

A bunch of problems pop up when a handful of super wealthy corporations can control markets.

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

#62

Post by Insanity »

deadbabe wrote: post #60
vee-kay wrote: post #38

For last 2 years, I've noticed a worrying trend: the typical budget PCs (especially Laptops) are being sold at higher prices with lower RAM (just 8GB) and lower-end CPUs (and no dedicated GPUs). Industry mandate should have become 16GB RAM for PCs and 8GB for mobile, since years ago, but instead it is as if computing/IT industry is regressing. New budget mobiles are being launched with lower-end specs as well (e.g.,…

I think it will be a good thing actually. Engineers, no longer having the luxury of assuming that users have high end system specs, will be forced to actually write fast and efficient software. No more bloated programs eating up RAM for no reason.

I'm not optimistic that this would be the outcome. You likely will just have poor running software instead. After all, a significant part of the world is already running lower powered devices on terrible connection speeds (such as many parts of Africa).

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

#63

Post by bigbadfeline »

appreciatorBus wrote: post #54
bigbadfeline wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> has more demand than forecast Nah. The demand is driven by corporations that hoard hardware in datacenters, starving the market and increasing prices in the process - otherwise known as scalping . Then they sell you back that same hardware, in the form of cloud services, for even higher prices. More explanations here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46416934

If it’s that easy to make infinite money, maybe the govt should could just do that too so we’d have enough for healthcare and other programs?

The government can't, and doesn't, make infinite money. Govt debt can't grow to infinity either, so if revenue is not increased, unpredictable and unpleasant events will follow. However, the taxation issue is so hopelessly misrepresented and misunderstood that I'm not going to discuss it here.

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

#64

Post by squibonpig »

vittore wrote: post #9

I've been ruminating on this past two years, with life before AI most of the compute staying cheap and pretty much 90% idle , we are finally getting to the point of using all of this compute. We probably will find more algorithms to improve efficiency of all the matrix computations, and with AI bubble same thing will happen that happened with telecom bubble and all the fiber optic stuff that turned out to be drastica…

Except it's still sitting idle in warehouses while datacenters get built. They aren't running yet. Unlike with fiber, GPUs degrade rapidly with use, and for now datacenters need to be practically rebuilt to fit new generations, so we shouldn't expect much reusable hardware to come from this

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

#65

Post by plagiarist »

pixelpoet wrote: post #18
addaon wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Are your two chips in Framework Desktops, or some other package? I'm interested in a unified memory setup and curious about the options.

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

#66

Post by rurp »

deadbabe wrote: post #60
vee-kay wrote: post #38

For last 2 years, I've noticed a worrying trend: the typical budget PCs (especially Laptops) are being sold at higher prices with lower RAM (just 8GB) and lower-end CPUs (and no dedicated GPUs). Industry mandate should have become 16GB RAM for PCs and 8GB for mobile, since years ago, but instead it is as if computing/IT industry is regressing. New budget mobiles are being launched with lower-end specs as well (e.g.,…

I think it will be a good thing actually. Engineers, no longer having the luxury of assuming that users have high end system specs, will be forced to actually write fast and efficient software. No more bloated programs eating up RAM for no reason.

The problem is that higher performing devices will still exist. Those engineers will probably keep using performant devices and their managers will certainly keep buying them.

We'll probably end up in an even more bifurcated world where the well off have access to lot of great products and services that most of humanity is increasingly unable to access.

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

#67

Post by thatguy0900 »

deadbabe wrote: post #60
vee-kay wrote: post #38

For last 2 years, I've noticed a worrying trend: the typical budget PCs (especially Laptops) are being sold at higher prices with lower RAM (just 8GB) and lower-end CPUs (and no dedicated GPUs). Industry mandate should have become 16GB RAM for PCs and 8GB for mobile, since years ago, but instead it is as if computing/IT industry is regressing. New budget mobiles are being launched with lower-end specs as well (e.g.,…

I think it will be a good thing actually. Engineers, no longer having the luxury of assuming that users have high end system specs, will be forced to actually write fast and efficient software. No more bloated programs eating up RAM for no reason.

I think the actual outcome is they will expect you to rent servers to conduct all your computing on and your phone and pc will be a dumb terminal.

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

#68

Post by thatguy0900 »

Saris wrote: post #43
linguae wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder what we can do to preserve personal computing, where users, not vendors, control their computers? I’m tired of the control Microsoft, Apple, Google, OpenAI, and some other big players have over the entire industry. The software has increasingly become enshittified, and now we’re about to be priced out of hardware upgrades. The problem is coming up with a viable business model for providing hardware and softw…

Run a lightweight Linux distro on older hardware maybe?

Exclusively using a ever dwindling stock of old hardware is not really a practical solution to preserving hardware rights in the long term

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

#69

Post by derekdahmer »

bigbadfeline wrote: post #53
appreciatorBus wrote: post #46

[flagged]

> has more demand than forecast Nah. The demand is driven by corporations that hoard hardware in datacenters, starving the market and increasing prices in the process - otherwise known as scalping . Then they sell you back that same hardware, in the form of cloud services, for even higher prices. More explanations here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46416934

Well that’s one interpretation.

Another way to think about it is a good that we once bought for private use where it sat around underutilized the majority of the time is instead being allocated in data centers where we rent slices of it, allowing RAM to be more efficiently allocated and used.

Yes it sucks that demand for RAM has led to scarcity and higher prices but those resources moving to data centers is a natural consequence of a shareable resource becoming expensive. It doesn’t have to be a conspiracy.

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