As AI gobbles up chips, prices for devices may rise • Hacker News Board

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

#141

Post by PunchyHamster » Mon, Dec 29, 2025, 7:35 AM UTC

walterbell wrote: post #104

999900000999 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fo…

> RAM and SSDs both use NAND flash and are equally affected by wafer hoarding, strategic supply reductions and market price manipulation.

Why on earth you think RAM uses NAND flash ?

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

#142

Post by walterbell » Mon, Dec 29, 2025, 7:38 AM UTC

palmotea wrote: post #139

torginus wrote: post #133

It's somewhat alarming to see that companies (owned by a very small slice of society) producing these AI thingies (whose current economic is questionable value and actual future potential is up to hot debate), can easily price the rest of humanity out of computing goods.

> It's somewhat alarming to see that companies (owned by a very small slice of society) ... can easily price the rest of humanity out of computing goods. If AI lives up to the hype, it's a portent of how things will feel to the common man. Not only will unemployment be a problem, but prices of any resources desired by the AI companies or their founders will rise to unaffordability.

> rise to unaffordability

Or require non-price mechanisms of payment and social contract.

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

#143

Post by 01HNNWZ0MV43FF » Mon, Dec 29, 2025, 7:39 AM UTC

torginus wrote: post #133

It's somewhat alarming to see that companies (owned by a very small slice of society) producing these AI thingies (whose current economic is questionable value and actual future potential is up to hot debate), can easily price the rest of humanity out of computing goods.

Without regulation, money begets money and monopolies will form.

If the American voter base doesn't pull its shit together and revive democracy, we're going to have a bad century. Yesterday I met a man who doesn't vote and I wanted to go ape-shit on him. "My vote doesn't matter". Vote for mayor. Vote for city council. Vote for our House members. Vote for State Senate. Vote for our two Senators.

"Voting doesn't matter, capitalism is doomed anyway" is a self-fulling prophecy and a fed psy-op from the right. I'm so fucking sick of that attitude from my allies.

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

#144

Post by walterbell » Mon, Dec 29, 2025, 7:40 AM UTC

PunchyHamster wrote: post #141

walterbell wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 fo…

> RAM and SSDs both use NAND flash and are equally affected by wafer hoarding, strategic supply reductions and market price manipulation. Why on earth you think RAM uses NAND flash ?

Sorry, still editing long comment, s/NAND flash/memory wafers/.

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

#145

Post by loudandskittish » Mon, Dec 29, 2025, 7:40 AM UTC

Love all the variations of "8GB of RAM should be enough for anybody" in here.

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

#146

Post by elthor89 » Mon, Dec 29, 2025, 7:43 AM UTC

If all manufacturers jump into serving the ai market segment.

Can this not be a opportunity for new entrants to start serving the other market segments?

How hard is it to start and manufacture memory for embedded systems in cars, or pc?

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

#147

Post by walterbell » Mon, Dec 29, 2025, 7:53 AM UTC

loudandskittish wrote: post #145

Love all the variations of "8GB of RAM should be enough for anybody" in here.

AI PacMan eats memory, then promises to eat/write software so we need less memory.

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

#148

Post by irjustin » Mon, Dec 29, 2025, 7:55 AM UTC

01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote: post #143

torginus wrote: post #133

It's somewhat alarming to see that companies (owned by a very small slice of society) producing these AI thingies (whose current economic is questionable value and actual future potential is up to hot debate), can easily price the rest of humanity out of computing goods.

Without regulation, money begets money and monopolies will form. If the American voter base doesn't pull its shit together and revive democracy, we're going to have a bad century. Yesterday I met a man who doesn't vote and I wanted to go ape-shit on him. "My vote doesn't matter". Vote for mayor. Vote for city council. Vote for our House members. Vote for State Senate. Vote for our two Senators. "Voting doesn't matter…

Just so we're clear the current voter base says this is exactly how it should be.

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

#149

Post by iancmceachern » Mon, Dec 29, 2025, 7:58 AM UTC

amiga-workbench wrote: post #81

SXX wrote: 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.

For me it's a necessity to run the software I need to do my work (CAD design)

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

#150

Post by i80and » Mon, Dec 29, 2025, 8:02 AM UTC

irjustin wrote: post #148

01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without regulation, money begets money and monopolies will form. If the American voter base doesn't pull its shit together and revive democracy, we're going to have a bad century. Yesterday I met a man who doesn't vote and I wanted to go ape-shit on him. "My vote doesn't matter". Vote for mayor. Vote for city council. Vote for our House members. Vote for State Senate. Vote for our two Senators. "Voting doesn't matter…

Just so we're clear the current voter base says this is exactly how it should be.

Just so we're clear, the voter base of over a year ago asked for this because they were actively lied to, and were foolish enough to believe said lies.

Current polling however says the current voter base is quite unhappy with how this is