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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

#122
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If "performant" devices are not widespread then telemetry will reveal that the app is performing poorly for most users. If a new festure uses more memory and sugnificantly increases the crash rate, it will be disabled. Apps are optimized for the install base, not for the engineer's own hardware.

What is the point of telemetry if your IDE launching in under 10s is considered the pinnacle of optimization?

That's like 100B+ instructions on a single core of your average superscalar CPU.

I can't wait for maps loading times being measured in percentage of trip time.

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

#123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Hey sorry, I didn't knew that. I had watched the short form content (https://www.youtube.com/shorts/eSnlgBlgMp8) [Asus is going to save gaming] and I didn't knew that It was a rumour.

My bad

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

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The majority of these companies have long term purchase agreements for hardware at prices far lower than the market prices today, that's front-running the hardware market, the same as scalpers buying up GPU's to restrict supply and then sell at higher prices.

> And in the process of doing so they're providing a hugely valuable service

The value is in the hardware itself, the added services aren't essential - just packaging. The GPU scalpers also sell "a hugely valuable" product, but that has nothing to do with anything, manipulating supply for a price differential is what matters.

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

Scalping is not a conspiracy, it's a well known fact observed since antiquity. Conspiracy or the lack of it thereof aren't among my concerns, the economic fundamentals enabling that phenomenon are.

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

#126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this more easily explained by supply-demand? Supply can't quickly scale, and so with increased demand there will be increased prices.

Imagine someone goes to the supermarket and buys all the tomatoes. Then supermarket owner says I don’t know, he bought all at once so it is a better sale. And he sells the remaining 10% of tomatoes at a huge markup

I think it is better compared to Dutch folks buying all the tulip bulbs. And the price skyrocketed.

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

#127
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 havi…

I'm gonna be honest thats not my experience at all. I got a laptop with a modern ryzen 5 CPU four years ago that had an iGPU because "its good enough for even mid-tier gaming!" and it was so bad that I couldn't play 1440p on youtube without it skipping frames. Tried parsec to my desktop PC and it was failing that as well. I returned it and bought a laptop with a nvidia dGPU (low end still, I think it was like a 1050-…

What processor are we talking about?

Your experience is extremely weird

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

#128
post #80
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.,…

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 havi…

Yea mid-tier is a stretch. Maybe low-end gaming

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

#129
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Have the laws of supply and demand been suspended?

There is the law of uncertainty override it eg trade wars, tariffs , etc.

No 1 is going all in with new capacity.

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

#130
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 havi…

A dedicated GPU is a red flag for me in a laptop. I do not want the extra power draw or the hybrid graphics sillyness. The Radeon Vega in my ThinkPad is surprisingly capable.

Yea I agree it's not worth it to have a igpu a dedicated. If I'm correct in what you are talking about. There's always issues with that setup in laptops. But I'd stay away from all laptops at this point until we get an Adminstration that enforces anti trust. All manufactures have been cutting so many corners, your likely to have hardware problems within a year unless it's a MacBook or a business class laptop.
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