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RAM now represents 35 percent of bill of materials for HP PCs

arstechnica.com

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Re: RAM now represents 35 percent of bill of materials for HP PCs

#111

Post by seanmcdirmid »

fulafel wrote: post #83
travisgriggs wrote: post #50

I had my formative years in programming when memory usage was something you still worried about as a programmer. And then memory expanded so much that all kinds of “optimal” patterns for programming just become nearly irrelevant. Will we start to actually consider this in software solutions again as a result?

You're right in terms of fitting your program to memory, so that it can run in the first place. But in performance work, the relative speed of RAM relative to computation has dropped such that it's a common wisdom to treat today's cache as RAM of old (and today's RAM as disk of old, etc). In software performance work it's been all about hitting the cache for a long time. LLMs aren't too amenable to caching though.

LLMs need memory bandwidth to stream lots of data through quickly, not so much caching. Well, this is basically the same way that a GPU uses memory.

Re: RAM now represents 35 percent of bill of materials for HP PCs

#112

Post by bee_rider »

wlesieutre wrote: post #85
tehlike wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect game development will be similar - game companies will optimize their games given customer cards are not going to be released for a while or will be too expensive.

Not really new, Nvidia's GTX 1070 launched in 2016 with 8 GB of VRAM and they've been slow walking VRAM increases for the last decade. Today's RTX 5060 has 8 GB for basically the same price that the 1070 did. For $650 you can go up to 12 GB in the 5070, if you want 16 GB it's $1000 for the 5070 Ti, or hundreds more than that for the 5080. I know there's inflation and $380 in 2016 was more money than it is today, but…

1060 6GB here. Figured the headroom would get me a couple extra years out of it. At this rate I’m wondering if the card is going to outlast the concept of owning graphics cards. Partly because, as you mention, maybe NVIDIA will stop selling them. Partly because, maybe APUs will get good enough…

Re: RAM now represents 35 percent of bill of materials for HP PCs

#113

Post by rasz »

Tade0 wrote: post #108
Aerroon wrote: post #9

I think Europe should invest into manufacturing RAM. RAM isn't going anywhere, all of modern compute uses it. This would be an opportunity to create domestic supply of it.

There exists domestic supply, it's just not scaled up: https://www.goodram.com/en/ You don't see their products in stores too often as they're focused on B2B - particularly the automotive sector. That being said I have a 128GB memory stick from this manufacturer and I hope they make the most out of this windfall.

Thats assembly, couple lanes of PCB Reflow ovens. They have been at this since mid nineties, always offering lifetime ram warranty too. Ram and SSD pretty commonly seen in retail.

Re: RAM now represents 35 percent of bill of materials for HP PCs

#114

Post by seanmcdirmid »

NooneAtAll3 wrote: post #92
travisgriggs wrote: post #50

I had my formative years in programming when memory usage was something you still worried about as a programmer. And then memory expanded so much that all kinds of “optimal” patterns for programming just become nearly irrelevant. Will we start to actually consider this in software solutions again as a result?

most likely in a couple years this bubble will pop, just like 8 years and 16 years ago it's just a cartel cycle of gaining profits while soon eliminating all investments into competitors when flood of cheap ram "suddenly" appears

Eventually new capacity will come online, and the money the DRAM companies are making are going to accelerate even ,ore new capacity. If you can get your new capacity going before your competitors, maybe you can avoid a bubble burst. If you don’t build new capacity, your competitors will, etc, etc…

Re: RAM now represents 35 percent of bill of materials for HP PCs

#115

Post by ReedorReed »

travisgriggs wrote: post #50

I had my formative years in programming when memory usage was something you still worried about as a programmer. And then memory expanded so much that all kinds of “optimal” patterns for programming just become nearly irrelevant. Will we start to actually consider this in software solutions again as a result?

I just heard in a podcast, they talked about how powerful our devices are today but do not feel faster than they did 15 years ago and that it's because of what you write here.

Re: RAM now represents 35 percent of bill of materials for HP PCs

#116

Post by makapuf »

fulafel wrote: post #83
travisgriggs wrote: post #50

I had my formative years in programming when memory usage was something you still worried about as a programmer. And then memory expanded so much that all kinds of “optimal” patterns for programming just become nearly irrelevant. Will we start to actually consider this in software solutions again as a result?

You're right in terms of fitting your program to memory, so that it can run in the first place. But in performance work, the relative speed of RAM relative to computation has dropped such that it's a common wisdom to treat today's cache as RAM of old (and today's RAM as disk of old, etc). In software performance work it's been all about hitting the cache for a long time. LLMs aren't too amenable to caching though.

AFAIK, you can't explicitly allocate cache like you allocate RAM however. A bit like if you could only work on files and ram was used for cache. Maybe I am mistaken ? (Edit: typo)

Re: RAM now represents 35 percent of bill of materials for HP PCs

#117

Post by [deleted] »

raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #107
rTX5CMRXIfFG wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never really bought in to the anti-Leetcode crowd’s sentiment that it’s irrelevant. It has always mattered as a competitive edge, against other job candidates if you’re an employee or the competition of you’re a company. It only looked irrelevant because opportunities were everywhere during ZIRP, but good times never last.

Most developers work at banks, insurance companies and other “enterprise” jobs. Even most developers at BigTech and who are working “at scale” are building on top of scalable infrastructure and aren’t worrying about reversing a btree on a whiteboard.

[deleted]

Re: RAM now represents 35 percent of bill of materials for HP PCs

#118

Post by chii »

josephg wrote: post #73
dijit wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a few things to note here: 1) Prices aren't returning to "normal". The only way they will is if the hyperscalers and AI companies start to implode -- which will kill a huge portion of the US economy and lead to global recession, so, cheap RAM but nobody can afford it 2) By building up capacity you influence the outcome. If someone else enters the DRAM space, the duopoly has to actually start thinking about co…

> The only way they will is if the hyperscalers and AI companies start to implode -- which will kill a huge portion of the US economy and lead to global recession, so, cheap RAM but nobody can afford it I disagree. Modern RAM is made in fabs, which are ridiculously expensive to manufacture. Modern EUV lithography machines cost around 500M each. They're manufactured by hand. Only one company in the world knows how to…

> In 5-10 years

and waiting for 5-10 yrs for a lower price is a long wait for consumers.

If food prices were high, would you say to the starving person to wait for 5-10yrs for food?

Re: RAM now represents 35 percent of bill of materials for HP PCs

#119

Post by phoronixrly »

Gigachad wrote: post #57
dijit wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a few things to note here: 1) Prices aren't returning to "normal". The only way they will is if the hyperscalers and AI companies start to implode -- which will kill a huge portion of the US economy and lead to global recession, so, cheap RAM but nobody can afford it 2) By building up capacity you influence the outcome. If someone else enters the DRAM space, the duopoly has to actually start thinking about co…

Your first point highlights the huge unmitigated risk. There is no guarantee that this won't all implode, triggering a huge recession. And even if no one can afford the ram after, they especially won't be able to afford the more expensive European ram. Really the only way it could work is if the government declares it it a national security issue and will promise to subsidize it. Because in just a free market, it's m…

It's been a headscratcher for me... The EU and the US have an issue with CCP-subsidised tech giants, but their sole reaction is banning them in some form or other? In the EU it is from public tenders, in the US it's from dealing with US companies.

This does not really help EU and US businesses to be competitive though, neither does it stop consumers going for the cheapest option...

Re: RAM now represents 35 percent of bill of materials for HP PCs

#120

Post by orthoxerox »

josephg wrote: post #73
dijit wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a few things to note here: 1) Prices aren't returning to "normal". The only way they will is if the hyperscalers and AI companies start to implode -- which will kill a huge portion of the US economy and lead to global recession, so, cheap RAM but nobody can afford it 2) By building up capacity you influence the outcome. If someone else enters the DRAM space, the duopoly has to actually start thinking about co…

> The only way they will is if the hyperscalers and AI companies start to implode -- which will kill a huge portion of the US economy and lead to global recession, so, cheap RAM but nobody can afford it I disagree. Modern RAM is made in fabs, which are ridiculously expensive to manufacture. Modern EUV lithography machines cost around 500M each. They're manufactured by hand. Only one company in the world knows how to…

> Only one company in the world knows how to manufacture them right now.

And that company is in Europe, isn't it? The EU has a great opportunity to enter the market: it's a high-tech manufacturing job, not something that requires lots of cheap labor.

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