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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

#101

Post by dottjt »

999900000999 wrote: post #93
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.,…

Or, we can expect better from software. Maybe someone can fork Firefox and make it run better, hard cap how much a browser window can use. The pattern of lazy almost non existent optimization combined with blaming consumers for having weak hardware, needs to stop. On my 16GB ram lunar lake budget laptop CachyOS( Arch) runs so much smoother than Windows. This is very unscientific, but using htop , running Chrome/YouTu…

That's not happening though, hence why we need more ram.

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

#102

Post by chzblck »

arjie wrote: post #97

DRAM spot prices are something like what they were 4 years ago. Having RAM for cheap is nice. But it doesn't cost an extraordinary amount. I recently needed some RAM and was able to pick up 16x32 DDR4 for $1600. That's about twice as expensive as it used to be but $1600 is pretty cheap for 512 GiB of RAM. A 16 GiB M4 Mac Mini is $400 right now. That covers any essential use-case which means this is mostly hitting hob…

you running a server or local llms with a need for 512?

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

#103

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

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

Wow, this is an economics-free take if I've ever heard one. And calling it scalping feels laughable.

There are multiple RAM providers. Datacenters, many competing ones, are gobbling up RAM because there is currently a huge demand. And, unlike actual ticket scalpers, datacenters perform a very valuable service beyond just reselling the RAM. After all, end users could buy up RAM and GPUs themselves and build their own systems (which is basically what everybody did as recently as the early 00s), but they'd rather rent it because it's much less risky with much less capex.

This is simply run-of-the-mill supply and demand. You might convince me there was something nefarious if there was widespread collusion or monopoly abuse, and while some of the circular dealing is worrisome, it's still a robust market with multiple suppliers and multiple competitors in the datacenter space.

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

#104

Post by walterbell »

999900000999 wrote: post #93
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.,…

Or, we can expect better from software. Maybe someone can fork Firefox and make it run better, hard cap how much a browser window can use. The pattern of lazy almost non existent optimization combined with blaming consumers for having weak hardware, needs to stop. On my 16GB ram lunar lake budget laptop CachyOS( Arch) runs so much smoother than Windows. This is very unscientific, but using htop , running Chrome/YouTu…

> hopes this pushes Microsoft to at least create a low ram mode

Windows OS and Surface (CoPilot AI-optimized) hardware have been combined in the "Windows + Devices" division.

> We don't *need* more ram

RAM and SSDs both use memory wafers and are equally affected by wafer hoarding, strategic supply reductions and market price manipulation.

Nvidia is re-inventing Optane for AI storage with higher IOPS, and paid $20B for Groq LPUs using SRAM for high memory bandwidth.

The architectural road ahead has tiers of memory, storage and high-speed networking, which could benefit AI & many other workloads. How will industry use the "peace dividend" of the AI wars? https://www.forbes.com/sites/robtoews/2020/08/30/the-peace-d...

  The rapid growth of the mobile market in the late 2000s and early 2010s led to a burst of technological progress..  core technologies like GPS, cameras, microprocessors, batteries, sensors and memory became dramatically cheaper, smaller and better-performing.. This wave of innovation has had tremendous second-order impacts on the economy. Over the past decade, these technologies have spilled over from the smartphone market to transform industries from satellites to wearables, from drones to electric vehicles.

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

#105

Post by arjie »

chzblck wrote: post #102
arjie wrote: post #97

DRAM spot prices are something like what they were 4 years ago. Having RAM for cheap is nice. But it doesn't cost an extraordinary amount. I recently needed some RAM and was able to pick up 16x32 DDR4 for $1600. That's about twice as expensive as it used to be but $1600 is pretty cheap for 512 GiB of RAM. A 16 GiB M4 Mac Mini is $400 right now. That covers any essential use-case which means this is mostly hitting hob…

you running a server or local llms with a need for 512?

Server stuff. Nothing interesting. Supermicro H11 + Epyc 7xxx + RAM. I have a 6x4090 setup for local LLMs and I got myself a 128 GB M4 Max laptop thinking I'd do that, but if I'm being honest I need to get rid of that hardware. It's sitting idle because the SOTA ones are so much better for what I want.

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

#106

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

yoyohello13 wrote: post #91
kortilla wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not scalping. These companies are not selling nor renting back the memory.

Azure/GCP/AWS and all the AI companies are selling compute. That’s renting back hardware.

And in the process of doing so they're providing a hugely valuable service by building these complex systems out of lots different components, and people and companies find a lot of value in that service.

Calling this "scalping" is just economically illiterate conspiracy theorizing.

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

#107

Post by anigbrowl »

rurp wrote: post #66
deadbabe wrote: post #60

Earlier 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.

Have the laws of supply and demand been suspended? Capital is gonna pour into memory fabrication over the next year or two, and there will probably be a glut 2-3 years from now, followed by retrenchment and wails that innovation has come to a halt because demand has stalled.

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

#108

Post by anigbrowl »

compounding_it wrote: post #85

Software has gotten bad over the last decade. Electron apps were the start but these days everything seems to be so bloated, right from the operating systems to browsers. There was a time when apple was hesitant to add more ram to its iPhones and app developers would have to work hard to make apps efficient. Last few years have shown Apple going from 6gb to 12gb so easily for their 'AI' while I consistently see the q…

Fair. I installed a MIDI composition app recently that was 1.2 GB! Now, it does have some internal synthesis that like uses samples, but only a limited selection of sounds so I think 95% of the bulk is from Electron.

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

#109

Post by laterium »

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.

Why are you celebrating compute becoming more expensive? Do you actually think it will be good?

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

#110

Post by viccis »

999900000999 wrote: post #93
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.,…

Or, we can expect better from software. Maybe someone can fork Firefox and make it run better, hard cap how much a browser window can use. The pattern of lazy almost non existent optimization combined with blaming consumers for having weak hardware, needs to stop. On my 16GB ram lunar lake budget laptop CachyOS( Arch) runs so much smoother than Windows. This is very unscientific, but using htop , running Chrome/YouTu…

Yeah I'm sure that will happen, just like prices will go back down when the stupid tariffs are gone.
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