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The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics

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Re: The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics

#71

Post by prewett »

shimman wrote: post #30
swatcoder wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what happens if the market settles back down or the leading memory tech pivots away from what you invested all this capital and time chasing? You'd need a very strong, very particular forecast to make such a costly bet. And conversely, it may say something about their internal forecasts that they're not making the bet.

Why should society care about people making profits? Society would greatly benefit from cheap abundant ram than FAANG shares going up. I'm kinda sick about only caring that some billionaire makes more money and would rather you know... actually improve conditions to better society. This is why China is eating the West. Quite easy to start an electronics company when you have such an abundance of suppliers, compare th…

Society should care about people making profits because otherwise those people do something else instead of providing goods and services. What happened in Communism is instructive on this point. Now if you want to argue that the pursuit of maximum profit as an end is a problem, there's a case to be made. The US had something like a marginal tax rate of 90% around the 1940s/1950s, if I recall correctly, and it obviously didn't hurt innovation, but people got paid in perks and corner offices and status instead of just money.

I think people are misled by Marx and derivatives, and misdiagnose the problem. I don't think people are upset by the CEO making lots of money as much as they are by the HBS management style of using people as a tool, or even as interchangeable "resources". However, the philosophical materialism of Marx & Co. pretty much makes this inevitable. (The secular view is also materialism, so you get it on both sides.)

Re: The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics

#72

Post by KnuthIsGod »

richforrester wrote: post #20
LeifCarrotson wrote: post #15

What was most surprising about all this to me was this line: > So modern DRAM manufacturing is an extraordinarily complex and expensive process. Building a single state-of-the-art DRAM fabrication facility, a “fab,” will cost you about $15 to $20 billion; acquiring all the necessary equipment, like lithography tools and etching machines, will cost you another few billion; and then it’ll take you a few years of produc…

Literally the most overwhelming thought, reading this, is "man, capitalism is a mistake" The amounts of money circulating whilst some of us struggle to make rent ... Nothing fair, or just, about this world we live in

China going capitalist ( while remaining authoritarian ) has helped lift 800 million out of desperate poverty.

I hope that India too can emulate this in my lifetime. I was born in Kerala and would love to see Indians live in a country that is as wealthy per capita ( PPP adjusted ) as Singapore or failing that even as wealthy as the USA.

Capitalism has it's problems. But you struggling with rent is entirely your self-inflicted problem...

Re: The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics

#73

Post by Gigachad »

bdangubic wrote: post #58
7thpower wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Farms are failing where? More than usual?

they are not failing, our Socialist President provides billions in handouts for Farmers so they gonna be just fine

He destroys trade relations so the farmers can’t sell their produce, then bails them out by taking on more government debt so farmers can dump soybeans in a ditch.

It’s all such a clown show.

Re: The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics

#74

Post by xbmcuser »

hcurtiss wrote: post #59
shimman wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should society care about people making profits? Society would greatly benefit from cheap abundant ram than FAANG shares going up. I'm kinda sick about only caring that some billionaire makes more money and would rather you know... actually improve conditions to better society. This is why China is eating the West. Quite easy to start an electronics company when you have such an abundance of suppliers, compare th…

You think Chinese businesses aren’t in it for the profits?

While these private companies exist and are in it for the profits, they don't control the government, meaning any potential price gouging is strictly regulated. The Chinese government actively prevents private companies from becoming too powerful or dominating an industry in the public eye. Instead, they foster competition by promoting and building up alternative companies.

A great example of this is how they handled digital payments. While Visa and Mastercard maintain a monopoly in the West, China faced a similar situation when private mobile payment systems began dominating the market. In response, the government stepped in and forced the ecosystem to open up to competitors.

Re: The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics

#75

Post by mr_toad »

shimman wrote: post #30
swatcoder wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what happens if the market settles back down or the leading memory tech pivots away from what you invested all this capital and time chasing? You'd need a very strong, very particular forecast to make such a costly bet. And conversely, it may say something about their internal forecasts that they're not making the bet.

Why should society care about people making profits? Society would greatly benefit from cheap abundant ram than FAANG shares going up. I'm kinda sick about only caring that some billionaire makes more money and would rather you know... actually improve conditions to better society. This is why China is eating the West. Quite easy to start an electronics company when you have such an abundance of suppliers, compare th…

> This is why China is eating the West.

Nothing to do with cheap labour.

Re: The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics

#76

Post by Brybry »

trvz wrote: post #6
mrandish wrote: post #5

The deep dive on memory market dynamics and the LLM bubble distortion is great. But another cause of declining smart phone sales is simply that the devices have matured and aren't improving at nearly the same rate. From 2008 to around 2015, upgrading every two years could make a meaningful difference. From ~2015 to ~2020 upgrading every three years might be worth considering. I just upgraded my top of the line flagsh…

First, the iPhone 17 Pro is a huge improvement. Second, the article doesn’t focus on phones we buy. There won’t be a shortage of those.

Near the end of the article it says:

> We’re already at the point where marginal buyers in the poor world are getting priced out of the smartphone market. We’re rapidly approaching the point where buyers in the rich world feel the same thing.

So it predicts that phones we buy are next.

Re: The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics

#77

Post by hackyhacky »

KnuthIsGod wrote: post #72
richforrester wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Literally the most overwhelming thought, reading this, is "man, capitalism is a mistake" The amounts of money circulating whilst some of us struggle to make rent ... Nothing fair, or just, about this world we live in

China going capitalist ( while remaining authoritarian ) has helped lift 800 million out of desperate poverty. I hope that India too can emulate this in my lifetime. I was born in Kerala and would love to see Indians live in a country that is as wealthy per capita ( PPP adjusted ) as Singapore or failing that even as wealthy as the USA. Capitalism has it's problems. But you struggling with rent is entirely your self-…

> But you struggling with rent is entirely your problem...

Who said anything about struggling with rent? Sounds like you a grasping for a straw man.

> I hope that India too can emulate this in my lifetime

I, too, hope the best things for the people of China and of India. But India, by any metric, is already a capitalist economy, where its wealth is concentrated in the hands of a very few.

To the extent that China has been successful is distributing its wealth among many people, I'd say it's the authoritarianism, rather than the capitalism, that has been instrumental. The state sets agendas, quotas, and salaries specifically to produce that outcome. Top-down government control is not a feature of unbridled capitalism.

So we have two large industrializing economies, both capitalist. One (the authoritarian one) has succeeded in drastically reducing poverty; the other has not. And yet you think that capitalism is the driver of equality?

Capitalism produces wealth. You need some other system to distribute that wealth fairly.

Re: The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics

#78

Post by rationalist »

hackyhacky wrote: post #68
rationalist wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > Thanks to capitalism, I don't have to toil in the fields. > No, that's thanks to commerce not to capitalism. Capitalism benefits those those who hold capital, which is not me. Are you toiling in the fields? It seems to me like your attitude is that "If I can't be rich, then no one should be rich." > The fact that there are more than enough resources for no one to live in poverty should suggest to you that somethi…

> It seems to me like your attitude is that "If I can't be rich, then no one should be rich." The problem with capitalism is not that some people get rich and some people don't. The problem is that of an unfair playing field. Everyone has a body and a mind, and commerce allows us to rent out those features in exchange for pay. People who are smarter or stronger or work harder or work more will be able to benefit more…

> You should really read a bit about the philosophy that you're arguing so vehemently for, apparently without knowing anything about it.

You had a good comment until you wrote that. Don't lower your standards with stupid personal attacks.

> The problem with capitalism is not that some people get rich and some people don't. The problem is that of an unfair playing field.

I would love for things to be fair, but I grew up in the real world and learned that things weren't fair back when I was a kid in primary school.

Instead of lamenting about something that I can't control, I decided to focus my efforts on what I can control. Instead of tearing other people down, I built myself up.

Unless you can change the human characteristic of greed, the world will always be unfair. You can spit into the wind, or you can set a sail.

Re: The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics

#79

Post by skiing_crawling »

stego-tech wrote: post #27

This is the biggest memory repricing cycle I've ever seen in my life; some degree of high price/limited availability and "free RAM with purchase of Doritos" cycle is always expected, but this has been the worst one yet. As other commenters have pointed out but I might have missed in the article, compute maturation is amplifying memory constraints right now and making it worse. Device upgrade cycles are getting longer…

> Even if LLMs fail spectacularly

Haven't they already proven to be extremely useful? In some areas they are definitely here to stay, coding/software and search (retrieve and summarize information). There's a bunch of places where they are surely shoehorned in, overhyped, and don't belong, but there's also equally many places where they might still be transformative but aren't used yet.

But overall I think the technology is well proven.

Re: The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics

#80

Post by crooked-v »

7thpower wrote: post #56
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #46

It's impressive that somehow, as if by coincidence, we're seeing the biggest inflationary drivers for decades, perhaps for centuries, all happening simultaneously. The Iran war is spiking the price of oil and will likely cause shortages of pretty much everything if it isn't ended. The Ukraine war is helping with that by destroying Russian refining capacity. The memory shortage is set to do the same to consumer electr…

Farms are failing where? More than usual?

New Jersey just declared a state of emergency after an unprecedented cold snap wiped out crops across the state, up to 90+% for some farms.
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