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Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

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Re: Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

#471

Post by mcdeltat »

abeppu wrote: post #375

So the 1970s oil crisis caused a shift that included fuel efficiency rules. For like, the whole time I've been a software engineer, memory footprints of a lot of software have crept up, even when they aren't really doing more. The memory situation currently is a mess. But ... is it bad enough to get us to _change_ how we build?

It's even more hilarious because all along there has been this complaint, and then people have been like "no no who cares, features are important, dev time is important, just ship ship ship". And now memory is unaffordable and it takes 1GB RAM to display a plaintext file

Re: Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

#472

Post by mcdeltat »

Schnitz wrote: post #384
abeppu wrote: post #375

So the 1970s oil crisis caused a shift that included fuel efficiency rules. For like, the whole time I've been a software engineer, memory footprints of a lot of software have crept up, even when they aren't really doing more. The memory situation currently is a mess. But ... is it bad enough to get us to _change_ how we build?

Or it’ll accelerate the push to the cloud even more making the client even thinner.

1. Make shit inefficient software for basic tasks

2. Say it's infeasible to have enough compute locally to do basic tasks

3. Force usage of centrally controlled, subscription-based cloud software.

4. Capitalism win???!

Re: Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

#473

Post by vachina »

Noaidi wrote: post #121
preg_match wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's probably for the best, the hyperconsumerism around electronics was getting out of hand. Computers are fast and have been fast for a while now. An iPhone 12 is probably more than fine to do iPhone things, if Apple didn't sabotage their old phones with poorly-written poor-performance software.

I have a MacBook M1 and I recently had to downgrade from Tahoe to Sequoia. Why? First of all they force you to download 7 GB of AI training when you’re not even using their AI. And secondly on Tahoe just watching a video with nothing else running off-line my MacBook was asking for 7 W of power. On Sequoia that drops down to 2 W maybe three. It’s sad to think they think of themselves as an environmental company, I don…

Thanks for the honest review. I’m still on Sonoma and will be holding out until the machine dies.

It’s telling the software cycle is a scam, when new major software versions slow perfectly fine machines with zero value added features.

Re: Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

#474

Post by carlosjobim »

HDBaseT wrote: post #385
carlosjobim wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Be so kind then and tell me what a normal citizen would need more than 8GB of RAM for, if it isn't for professional work or a specialized hobby? A Mac with 8GB of RAM is blazingly fast for any task your average person would need for it to do. Which doesn't include gaming, mining crypto, or heavy AI models. Maybe I've missed something? So please tell me exactly what task requires more than 8GB of RAM which is so neces…

A Windows 11 machine with 8GB of memory is borderline unusable. We can go in circles about how developers need to optimize their applications, etc but truth of the matter is that 8GB is considered pretty low for a lot of "average" use cases. MacOS is an exception to the rule and even 8GB on MacOS is limited with multiple Electron apps.

And why should the government and the tax payers be held responsible and be forced to pay for the bad decisions of Microsoft and their customers?

MacOS is not limited in any way for the needs an average citizen has from computers. The average citizen is even fine with an iPad. 8GB is considered "low" by people here, just like a 170 horse power hatchback is considered "low" by muscle car enthusiasts and mining companies looking for dump trucks. But those uses have no bearing on reality for most people.

Re: Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

#475

Post by senderista »

Jensson wrote: post #342
senderista wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At a longer timescale than very temporary supply shocks, I believe what I said is correct. The basic point is that if supply contracts, demand must contract as well, which in a free market happens via price increases and in an unfree market happens via shortages (i.e., the inability of buyers to obtain a good at a market-clearing price). If high barriers to entry are relevant in this context (obviously they very much…

But currently we are in a very temporary supply shock, and its called a shortage. > in a free market happens via price increases and in an unfree market happens via shortages Since people have earmarked purchases in advance the market isn't free, I'm not allowed to buy the ram another person already bought. Its the same how the texas electricity market works, prices reach infinity since there are more consumers that…

Great explanation, thanks.

Re: Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

#476

Post by jmyeet »

zmmmmm wrote: post #463

I wonder if supply chain constraints currently represent an inherent scepticism of manufacturers that demand will last. It feels to me like a side effect of the self-dealing / incestuous financing that is going on is that manufacturers are not willing to bet on it all materialising and therefore are not scaling up capacity nearly as much as they would if they thought it was certain.

It's funny you mention that because this exact same issue has come up in war in Iran and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

What a producer will do now is hedge their risk. They do this by forward-selling their product, in this case oil from an oil well. The peak for spot prices, depending on the particular flavor of oil, peaked at >$170/barrel while future prices (which are the prices we see) didn't really get above $100 while long-dated futures were significantly lower, rarely exceeding $70/barrel by much.

Now this is a problem because there's no incentive to invest in extra production when you can only sell it at $70/barrel, despite the spot price being up to $100/barrel higher. So new wells and new production in general is down despite the supply disruptions and high prices.

I imagine RAM is in a similar position. It takes a long time to bring on more supply and suppliers don't expect those prices to last. Likely a large amount of new supply will probably cause the next crash in the boom-bust cycle.

But there's another problem with all this. A lot of existing manufacturers are switching from DDR5 (and soon DDR6) to HBM because it's way more profitable and there's seemingly insatiable demand for high end GPUs. I expect that in the short-to-medium term we're both going to see no increase in supply and the DDR prices are going to keep rising to the point where in a year we'll probably look back on current prices fondly

All I can say is I'm happy I upgraded my laptop to 64GB (for $200) and my PC to 64GB (also for $200) last year. .

Re: Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

#477

Post by vachina »

seanp2k2 wrote: post #33
datakan wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm saving a ton of money by simply not upgrading. I used to do upgrades every 1-2 years just to keep up on things, pass the old box down to my son or otherwise donate it. Now I intend to keep my current setup for 7+ years. Its 2 years old next month. I may even stay with it longer. I just see no reason to upgrade with things how they are. I considered a Mac Studio a couple months ago. Price was up but might have pul…

There also seems to have been a major shift in strategy from AMD / Intel / Apple / NVidia due to this, as I was used to CPU / GPU / chipset upgrades coming out more regularly with double-digit percentage improvements each year, but that seems to be basically over for the consumer space now that everyone is just trying to build as much AI hardware as fast as possible for enterprise markets. I also used to rebuild my d…

Your upgrade cadence will just exacerbate the crunch because real demand becomes spiky.

The next leap in performance will come with next leap in price tiers.

Re: Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

#478

Post by incrudible »

zmmmmm wrote: post #463

I wonder if supply chain constraints currently represent an inherent scepticism of manufacturers that demand will last. It feels to me like a side effect of the self-dealing / incestuous financing that is going on is that manufacturers are not willing to bet on it all materialising and therefore are not scaling up capacity nearly as much as they would if they thought it was certain.

Manufacturers know demand will last to the extent that big companies are willing to commit to purchases over a given period of time, but supply today is still constrained by capacity built for the pre LLM era. The 500 billion put in by Samsung/SKHynix will increase modern DRAM by roughly 50% but it wont be fully online until 2030.

Re: Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

#479

Post by karolist »

davkan wrote: post #46
seanp2k2 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've worked in and around datacenters for a few decades now and I've seen pretty much everything fail, but power supplies in particular do so at a higher rate than I expected. I've had one literally start smoking in my home office recently too. Luckily, it didn't damage any components, but it was pretty dramatic and abrupt -- just powered on my desktop and got nothing but a fog machine coming out of the rear fan unti…

My evga 1000w has been going strong for 11 years now. Cheaper power supplies fail often but if you buy quality and oversized they’ll outlast all your other components as they don’t become outdated.

I have a Zalman ZM-1000 from 2007 that's still working, my coworker at my first job lost interest in desktop PCs and gave it away to me. https://www.techpowerup.com/review/zalman-zm1000-hp/2.html

Re: Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

#480

Post by porkpieshoe »

zmmmmm wrote: post #463

I wonder if supply chain constraints currently represent an inherent scepticism of manufacturers that demand will last. It feels to me like a side effect of the self-dealing / incestuous financing that is going on is that manufacturers are not willing to bet on it all materialising and therefore are not scaling up capacity nearly as much as they would if they thought it was certain.

Counterpoint: I drove past TSMC in Surprise AZ and I counted at least 18 large construction cranes on that single site.
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