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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

#431

Post by hackyhacky »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #399
hackyhacky wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For all of your rah-rah capitalist boosterism, you failed to address the actual content of my argument, which is that the reason during the last 50 years that the China has had decreasing poverty, while the US has had increasing poverty, has nothing to do with capitalism, and everything to do with restrictions on capitalism (or their absence).

As others have pointed out, that's a naïve and frankly incorrect reading of Chinese history, but it's also not something that can be addressed here.

It evidently can be addressed here, as you yourself mentioned. No one has yet pointed out to me why my reading is "naive and frankly incorrect," so feel free to be the first.

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

#432

Post by state_less »

Analemma_ wrote: post #407
MichaelZuo wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t that the point? Everyone knows the commodity market (outside HBM) is going to be margin crushed within a few years… by CXMT, demand swings, and so on. So nobody cares to fully meet the demand today. They are perfectly happy telling customers (those not willing to sign a 10 year contract paying up front at least) to go pound sand. They don’t even need an OPEC like arrangement. They are effectively perfectly coor…

Yes, there are a bunch of bizarre comments in here. "Why aren't they rushing to make more fabs? Don't they know China is using this moment to the enter the market in a big way?" Yes, they do! And building more fabs would make that worse. The last thing you want to do before a state-backed player enters the market in a boom cycle is load up on debt to produce more capacity just before the bust.

It's a bit surprising many here are referencing the memory supply cycles without mentioning this revolutionary new application for memory people call AI. It'd be like talking about weather cycles and climate without mentioning global warming. Just like the planet is not going to get colder on average than it was for the foreseeable future, we're not going to need less memory for the foreseeable future.

China is trying to be vertically integrated, completely independent of outside influences and own the future supply/means of production. Memory and chips are piece of their larger plan. In any event, whatever China brings online will be absorbed - imagine a future where people's home computer has 100 to 1000GB of RAM in one variety or another. Folks are going to want better chips and more memory for years to come, supply will be absorbed.

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

#433

Post by Scoundreller »

xnorswap wrote: post #389
Aerroon wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if this is actually true in the long-term though. If they were to flood the market with lots of high capacity memory, then I think our programs would start using more memory too. As a result we might end up needing more memory faster compared to if they keep demand unmet. Just consider that a chat application today takes more memory than a full 3D game with thousands of users (including chat) + the operating…

I think that Slack's memory usage is "not bad" at ~300MB just because Discord exists, and somehow that seems to get into the gigabytes before even looking at a message.

Too much of IRC has been lost to Discord :(

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

#434

Post by giobox »

Aerroon wrote: post #376
gblargg wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This also put a lot into perspective: > these memory makers have learned a very particular lesson from the unforgiving history [deep drops in demand] of their industry: always leave demand unmet I can't blame them for keeping some reserve demand ready so they keep having customers over the years.

I wonder if this is actually true in the long-term though. If they were to flood the market with lots of high capacity memory, then I think our programs would start using more memory too. As a result we might end up needing more memory faster compared to if they keep demand unmet. Just consider that a chat application today takes more memory than a full 3D game with thousands of users (including chat) + the operating…

For older hacker news readers who have lived through multiple RAM price spikes - it has held true for decades so far. Making memory is one of the most vicious tech markets to compete in.

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

#435

Post by egypturnash »

prewett wrote: post #71
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…

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 obvious…

> 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".

How about both? Both are pretty terrible for society IMHO. Some shithead's making 6000x of what average worker at their company because they're on top and they're treating everyone under them as interchangable tools with zero compassion. If they were limited to only making like 3x then they'd be on a much more equitable place with their underlings and might even be more likely to see them as fellow humans instead of disposable work units.

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

#436

Post by crazygringo »

pjdesno wrote: post #427

Jatin Malek on Twitter had perhaps the best explanation of the DRAM crunch: "The reason why RAM has become four times more expensive is that a huge amount of RAM that has not yet been produced was purchased with non-existent money to be installed in GPUs that also have not yet been produced, in order to place them in data centers that have not yet been built, powered by infrastructure that may never appear, to satisf…

That's just a snarky way to describe all business investment that requires purchasing things made in the future. It's entirely normal.

You could literally rewrite the quote to be about iron and about building railroads for trains and passengers that don't exist yet. See how silly that would be?

Except the "profit that is mathematically impossible" part. That's just made up and false. It's entirely possible that we are actually underestimating demand, and there is going to be tons of profit. Nobody knows for sure, but profit is very, very, very possible.

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

#437

Post by ilaksh »

Surely some significant fraction of the billions and billions are being spent on intensive R&D to for example increase scale of MRAM modules or radical new paradigms like nitrides-based ferroelectric compute-in-memory?

I think there's a reason that University of Michigan researcher jumped after that ferroelectric breakthrough.

I am hopeful that some of this massive pressure is going to push us into the next paradigm, which is likely some kind of "true" compute-in-memory system. That may increase performance and efficiency for AI by up to 100 X.

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

#438

Post by d3rockk »

crazygringo wrote: post #436
pjdesno wrote: post #427

Jatin Malek on Twitter had perhaps the best explanation of the DRAM crunch: "The reason why RAM has become four times more expensive is that a huge amount of RAM that has not yet been produced was purchased with non-existent money to be installed in GPUs that also have not yet been produced, in order to place them in data centers that have not yet been built, powered by infrastructure that may never appear, to satisf…

That's just a snarky way to describe all business investment that requires purchasing things made in the future. It's entirely normal. You could literally rewrite the quote to be about iron and about building railroads for trains and passengers that don't exist yet. See how silly that would be? Except the "profit that is mathematically impossible" part. That's just made up and false. It's entirely possible that we ar…

>Except the "profit that is mathematically impossible" part. That's just made up and false. It's entirely possible that we are actually underestimating demand, and there is going to be tons of profit.

JP Morgan says $650 billion in annual revenue required to deliver mere 10% return on AI buildout is equivalent to $35 payment from every iPhone user, or $180 from every Netflix subscriber 'in perpetuity.'

Very, very, very unlikely it makes profit, which why AI keeps getting overhyped by CEOs.

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

#439

Post by anthonypasq »

d3rockk wrote: post #438
crazygringo wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just a snarky way to describe all business investment that requires purchasing things made in the future. It's entirely normal. You could literally rewrite the quote to be about iron and about building railroads for trains and passengers that don't exist yet. See how silly that would be? Except the "profit that is mathematically impossible" part. That's just made up and false. It's entirely possible that we ar…

>Except the "profit that is mathematically impossible" part. That's just made up and false. It's entirely possible that we are actually underestimating demand, and there is going to be tons of profit. JP Morgan says $650 billion in annual revenue required to deliver mere 10% return on AI buildout is equivalent to $35 payment from every iPhone user, or $180 from every Netflix subscriber 'in perpetuity.' Very, very, ve…

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

#440

Post by einpoklum »

azan_ wrote: post #342
Hackbraten wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm sure you tell homeless people on the street that their demand for housing will in the end increase availability for everyone, like it always does, so everything is fine.
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