the first stages of the world being turned into computronium. next stage is paving everything with solar panels.
Solar freaking roadways reborn!
As AI gobbles up chips, prices for devices may rise
71–80 of 536 posts
Re: As AI gobbles up chips, prices for devices may rise
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is this glofo's time to shine?
Do they make DRAM? I thought they made compute chips mostly. If I recall correctly, RAM is even more niche and specialized than the (already quite specialized) general chip manufacturing. The structure is super-duper regular, just a big grid of cells, so it is super-duper optimized.
They (GF) do not make DRAM. They might have an eDRAM process inherited from IBM, but it would not be competitive.
You’re correct that DRAM is a very specialized process. The bit cell capacitors are a trench type that is uncommon in the general industry, so the major logic fabs would have a fairly uphill battle to become competitive (they also have no desire to enter the DRAM market in general).
Re: As AI gobbles up chips, prices for devices may rise
#73[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
That’s not scalping. These companies are not selling nor renting back the memory.
Re: As AI gobbles up chips, prices for devices may rise
#74I now consider this a mafia that aims to milk us for more money. This includes all AI companies but also manufacturers who happily benefit from this. It is a de-facto monopoly. Governments need to stop allowing this milking scheme to happen.
"Monopoly" means one seller, so you can't say multiple X makes a monopoly and make sense. You probably mean collusion. If demand exceeds supply, either prices rise or supply falls, causing shortages. Directly controlling sellers (prices) or buyers (rationing) results in black markets unless enforcement has enough strength and integrity. The required strength and integrity seems to scale exponentially with the value o…
> If everyone wants chips, semiconductor manufacturing supply should be increased. Governments should subsidize domestic semiconductor industries and the conditions for them to thrive (education, etc.) to meet both goals of domestic and economic security, and do it in a way that works.
If there is already demand at this inflated price, shouldn’t we ask why more capacity is not coming online naturally first?
Re: As AI gobbles up chips, prices for devices may rise
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Can confirm, I'm currently requesting as much RAM as can fit in the chassis and permission to install an OS not too divorced from what we run in prod.
On the bright side, I'm not responsible for the UI abominations people seem to complain about WRT laptop specs.
Re: As AI gobbles up chips, prices for devices may rise
#76I now consider this a mafia that aims to milk us for more money. This includes all AI companies but also manufacturers who happily benefit from this. It is a de-facto monopoly. Governments need to stop allowing this milking scheme to happen.
There is no monopoly in AI. I can name at least 10 big actors worldwide.
If they collude on pricing and restrict new entrants, that's what the Sherman anti trust laws are about.
Re: As AI gobbles up chips, prices for devices may rise
#77the first stages of the world being turned into computronium. next stage is paving everything with solar panels.
[deleted]
Re: As AI gobbles up chips, prices for devices may rise
#78I now consider this a mafia that aims to milk us for more money. This includes all AI companies but also manufacturers who happily benefit from this. It is a de-facto monopoly. Governments need to stop allowing this milking scheme to happen.
I mean, if you were the Micron CEO, would you bet the company on demand sustaining from AI? It seems like it could all go belly up very fast.
Re: As AI gobbles up chips, prices for devices may rise
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is no monopoly in AI. I can name at least 10 big actors worldwide.
If they collude on pricing and restrict new entrants, that's what the Sherman anti trust laws are about.
the fines that would be levied via potential sherman law violations would negligible so that is for sure not a deterrent
Re: As AI gobbles up chips, prices for devices may rise
#80For 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.,…
No dedicated GPU is certainly unrelated to whatever been happening for last two years.
It's just in last 5 years integrated GPUs become good enough even for mid-tier gaming let alone running browser and hw accel in few work apps.
And even before 5 years ago majority of dedicated GPUs in relatively cheap laptops was garbage barely better than intrgrated one. Manufacturers mostly put them in there for marketing of having e.g Nvidia dGPU.