The beginning of scarcity in AI

It seems very possible that we have at least five years of real limitations on compute coming up. Maybe ten, depending on ASML. I wonder what an overshoot looks like. I also wonder if there might be room for new entrants in a compute-scarce environment.

For instance, at some point, could Coreweave field a frontier team as it holds back 10% of its allocations over time? Pretty unusual situation.

Re: The beginning of scarcity in AI

#7

Post by mattas » Thu, Apr 16, 2026, 9:36 PM UTC

This notion that "we don't have enough compute" does not cleanly reconcile with the fact that labs are burning cash faster than any cohort of companies in history.

If I am a grocery store that pays $1 for oranges and sells them for $0.50, I can't say, "I don't have enough oranges."

Re: The beginning of scarcity in AI

#8

Post by vessenes » Thu, Apr 16, 2026, 9:38 PM UTC

stupefy wrote: post #3

What limits LLM inference accelerators? I heard about Groq ( https://groq.com/ ) not sure how much it pushes away the problem.

ASML only makes a certain number of machines a year that can do extreme ultra-violet lithography.

Also - turbine blades limit power, according to Elon.

Between them - we cannot chip fabs past a certain rate, and we cannot stand up the datacenter to run these desired chips past a certain rate. Different people believe one or the other is the 'true' current bottleneck. The turbine supply chain scaling looks much more tractable -- EUV is essentially the most complicated production process humans have ever devised.

Re: The beginning of scarcity in AI

#9

Post by earthnail » Thu, Apr 16, 2026, 9:40 PM UTC

mattas wrote: post #7

This notion that "we don't have enough compute" does not cleanly reconcile with the fact that labs are burning cash faster than any cohort of companies in history. If I am a grocery store that pays $1 for oranges and sells them for $0.50, I can't say, "I don't have enough oranges."

If there were more oranges you’d pay less to buy them and your economics would work out.

Re: The beginning of scarcity in AI

#10

Post by ls612 » Thu, Apr 16, 2026, 9:41 PM UTC

vessenes wrote: post #8

stupefy wrote: post #3

What limits LLM inference accelerators? I heard about Groq ( https://groq.com/ ) not sure how much it pushes away the problem.

ASML only makes a certain number of machines a year that can do extreme ultra-violet lithography. Also - turbine blades limit power, according to Elon. Between them - we cannot chip fabs past a certain rate, and we cannot stand up the datacenter to run these desired chips past a certain rate. Different people believe one or the other is the 'true' current bottleneck. The turbine supply chain scaling looks much more t…

Presumably ASML can increase production if demand is high enough the question is over what time frame. 5 years seems plausible to me but I honestly don't know what that number is.