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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

#341

Post by coldtea »

hagbard_c wrote: post #302
coldtea wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

1920's: Hard times create strong men. 1950's: Strong men create good times. 1980's: Good times create weak men. 2010's: Weak men create hard times. There you are, wishing for hard times. May I suggest finding yourself the socialist paradise where they do as you wish and move there? You should be happier and we will be as well as long as your wishes don't come true.

>May I suggest finding yourself the socialist paradise where they do as you wish and move there?

If you promise not to sanction and bomb it and fund and arm far-right wing dictator thugs there, I'm game!

But you got it backwards: it's your "strongmen" and your "elite human capital" that has created hard times, destroyed strong working and middle class men's livelihood, pivoted the economy to financial betting games, outsourcing, and rent-seeking, and enshittified everything.

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

#342

Post by azan_ »

Hackbraten wrote: post #237
azan_ wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the worst critique of AI I've ever heard, and I've heard a lot of it.

Care to share your constructive rebuttal with us?

Increased demand will result in more money for new hardware investments and will in the end decrease prices and provide better technology for everyone. Like it always has.

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

#343

Post by fakedang »

Gareth321 wrote: post #156
autoexec wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're losing a lot of workers. Some might consider that a good thing if they hate the idea of a large exploited underclass (or just people of a certain skin color), but it could be a problem for farms if there aren't enough hands to harvest in time.

Let us hope this results in farms offering Americans better wages for working on farms. Only 1% of the retail cost of produce is due to labour. Farms could double wages to workers and it would barely move the needle on inflation.

Farmers don't see your retail cost in their gains either. That's captured by huge middlemen corporations.

Unless of course the farmers are themselves working for a huge vertically-integrated corpo.

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

#344

Post by giwook »

sokoloff wrote: post #261
spockz wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only reason I can see Apple do this is if it enables them to sell entry level devices with vastly more ram than the competition can afford. Say entry level MacBook Pro with 256GiB ram to facilitate running frontier level local models. If that is an edge they want to have.

In what world would 256GB of RAM be “entry level”?

That is the timeline I want to live in. Probably.

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

#345

Post by sokoloff »

ethbr1 wrote: post #340
sokoloff wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would they sell a device with 256GB of RAM as the lowest-spec device rather than making 8 32GB or 16 16GB machines as their entry-level? Apple’s not exactly famous for their low pricing on spec upgrades nor competing based on being the price leader…

If 256GB of RAM enables them to run on-device AI models that (for reasons) are a key feature differentiator? Personally, I think there's no way memory heavy inference moves on-device (vs cloud) due to the economics, but it's not impossible technology + platforms go that way for currently unforeseeable reasons.

Right. I’m not arguing that Apple wouldn’t offer a 256GB model if they could make money doing it; I’m puzzled as to why they wouldn’t offer several lower-spec models as the entry-level into and then progressive upgrades within that line, since only some people need that 256GB feature differentiator of running frontier-level models on their MacBook Pro.

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

#346

Post by zozbot234 »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #294
heisenbit wrote: post #286

We always knew the limits to Moore‘s Law are first and foremost economic. Given an industry used over decades to predictable lowering of price per compute function and thus swallowed any advance for new user functions and overhead when the limits are reached there is going to be a squeeze. AI scaled up at the time the production capacity became more inelastic. Maybe it is time not just shrink transistors but also sof…

AI data centers are eating like 80% of memory. Making user space applications more memory efficient is not even going to be a rounding error on memory demand. I am with you that it needs to happen, but it's not going to solve a memory shortage.

That's newly fabbed memory vs. an existing stock. The stock is quite massive, so optimizing existing use and enabling it to be repurposed can be meaningful.

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

#347

Post by zozbot234 »

H8crilA wrote: post #312
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI data centers are eating like 80% of memory. Making user space applications more memory efficient is not even going to be a rounding error on memory demand. I am with you that it needs to happen, but it's not going to solve a memory shortage.

It would make memory-poor phones more viable. Like why can't we have a 512MB, or even 256MB RAM phone. Although I doubt that the software effort would be cheaper than just buying the extra RAM. It's definitely much more uncertain.

Those exist, they're just feature phones. Smartphones have to run general purpose apps and that takes RAM.

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

#348

Post by duskdozer »

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 shouldn't. But it's not society making that decision, it's the corporations and people with lots of wealth that want to get even more wealth.

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

#349

Post by frm88 »

_--__--__ wrote: post #14
blehn wrote: post #12

But aren't there plenty of used expensive phones from the last 5-7 years that are more or less equivalent replacements for new cheap phones? Apple alone sells 250 million phones a year.

The article takes a while to get there, but it is focusing on a set of companies I hadn't heard of ("Transsion, Oppo, Vivo, and Lava") that buy components from last gen smartphones to make cheap devices to sell in the African and South(/east) Asian markets. Presumably the supply of 5+ year old used phones that fully work is not enough to meet that demand, which is why these frankenstein Android companies exist.

You are underestimating these phones. Transsion is in the top 5 smartphone shippers worldwide together with Samsung, Apple, Oppo and Xiaomi. There is nothing Frankenstein about them: https://techeconomy.ng/transsion-ranks-in-top-5-worldwide-sm...

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

#350

Post by fireflash38 »

inglor_cz wrote: post #244
eecc wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps it’s not capitalism that’s the problem but the unboundedness of the greed of a few, with respect to the other needs of humanity. Also Adam Smith implied that unbounded avarice is irrational and disruptive to society. The assumption is that morality survives grotesque wealth accumulation, we see many examples proving otherwise

"unboundedness of the greed of a few" Lots of people claim "greed", but the stereotypical Tech billionaire doesn't simply roll around in gold like Scrooge McDuck, doing nothing and demanding more. They invest and reinvest it into new enterprises. Of all the ways of dealing with massive wealth, this is probably the second least disruptive one. (The first one would be just giving it to honorable causes.)

They claim greed because they always choose the path that makes them more money even if it has clear, evidence-based proof of societal harm.

Ya know, just like the Sacklers and pushing oxycontin.

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