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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

#171

Post by lpapez »

testbjjl wrote: post #170
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) producing these AI thingies (whose current economic is questionable value and actual future potential is up to hot debate) Some might conclude the same for funds (hedge funds/private equity) and housing.

Stop right there you terrorist antifa leftie commie scum! You are being arrested for thought crime!

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

#172

Post by GuB-42 »

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 is the result of specs like RAM and CPU no longer being the selling point it once was, except for gaming PCs. Instead people want thin laptops, good battery life, nice screens, premium materials, etc... We have got to the point where RAM and CPU are no longer a limiting factor for most tasks, or at least until software become bloated enough to matter again.

If you want a powerful laptop for cheap, get a gaming PC. The build quality and battery life probably won't be great, but you can't be cheap without making compromises.

Same idea for budget mobiles. A Snapdragon Gen 6 (or something by Mediatek) with UFS2.2 is more than what most people need.

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

#173

Post by koito17 »

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.,…

This is what I find a bit alarming, too. My M3 Max MacBook Pro takes 2 full seconds to boot Slack, a program that used to literally be an IRC client. Many people still believe client-side compute is cheap and worrying about it is premature optimization.

Of course, some performance-focused software (e.g. Zed) does start near-instantly on my MacBook, and it makes other software feel sluggish in comparison. But this is the exception, not the rule.

Even as specs regress, I don't think most people in software will care about performance. In my experience, product managers never act on the occasional "[X part of an app] feels clunky" feedback from clients. I don't expect that to change in the near future.

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

#174

Post by m_mueller »

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.

and if you're unlucky to live close to a datacenter, this could include energy and water? I sure hope regulators are waking up as free markets don't really seem equipped to deal with this kind of concentration of power.

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

#175

Post by zdc1 »

Thankfully we're at a stage where a 4 year old second-hand iPhone is perfectly usable, as are any M-series Macs or most Linux laptops. Sucks for anyone needing something particularly beefy for work; but I feel that a lot of purchases can be delayed for at least a year or two while this plays out.

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

#176

Post by sgerenser »

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…

$400 or $499?

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

#177

Post by [deleted] »

jstanley wrote: post #155
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.

You don't think that as prices go up, the supply might also go up, and the equilibrium price will be maintained? And possibly even a lower equilibrium will be reached due to greater economies of scale.

[deleted]

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

#178

Post by YetAnotherNick »

dandanua wrote: post #164
UltraSane wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Supply should increase as a response to higher prices, this bringing prices down.

in a fairy world

No just stop being cynical. The reason almost every electronic item is cheaper now than 2 decades back is just becuase the demand(and thus supply) is higher.

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

#179

Post by mirsadm »

piskov wrote: post #14
jazzyjackson wrote: post #12

Question: are SoCs with on die memory be effected by this? Looks like the frame.work desktop with Ryzen 128GB is shipping now at same price it was on release, Apple is offering 512GB Mac studios Are snapdragon chips the same way?

Apple secured at least a year-worth supply of memory (not in actual chips but in prices). The bigger the company = longer the contract. However it will eventually catch up even to Apple. It is not prices alone due to demand but the manufacturing redirection from something like lpddr in iphones to hbm and what have you for servers and gpu

Apple charges so much for RAM upgrades that they could probably not even increase prices and still be fine. They won't but they probably could.

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

#180

Post by silon42 »

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.

Same here... I do not wish for a laptop with >65W USB-C power requirements.
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