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AWS raises GPU prices 15% on a Saturday, hopes you weren't paying attention

theregister.com

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Re: AWS raises GPU prices 15% on a Saturday, hopes you weren't paying attention

#131

Post by kllrnohj »

nicoburns wrote: post #108
xvxvx wrote: post #12

- GPU prices rising - RAM prices rising - hard drive prices rising Are we looking at a future where home computers are replaced by thin clients and all the power lies in subscription services? ‘You don't need storage space, use our cloud subscription’ ‘You don’t need processing power, stream your games through our subscription service.’ Game publishers have already publicly floated the idea of not selling their games…

> Are we looking at a future where home computers are replaced by thin clients and all the power lies in subscription services? The supply chains for high-end chips are brittle enough that it's a very real possibility we end up with a severe supply crunch such that neither clouds nor individual users can access new chips at anything approaching reasonable prices. TSMC owns 60% of the foundry market. So if China decid…

> TSMC owns 60% of the foundry market. So if China decides to invade Taiwan, that would likely mean ~60% of CPU and GPU manufacturing capacity permanently destroyed at once.

While it would certainly be devastating, do note that TSMC has fabs in places that aren't Taiwan. So their entire production wouldn't immediately go offline, and presumably China would still want to keep selling those products and would have an interest in avoiding destroying those factories.

If China suddenly decides it doesn't want to export electronics, though, then we're all super fucked. After all, what percentage of those TSMC chips flow through China to get mounted onto PCBs or need major supporting components from one of the "Foxconn Cities" in China?

Re: AWS raises GPU prices 15% on a Saturday, hopes you weren't paying attention

#132

Post by ghaff »

steveBK123 wrote: post #94
xvxvx wrote: post #12

- GPU prices rising - RAM prices rising - hard drive prices rising Are we looking at a future where home computers are replaced by thin clients and all the power lies in subscription services? ‘You don't need storage space, use our cloud subscription’ ‘You don’t need processing power, stream your games through our subscription service.’ Game publishers have already publicly floated the idea of not selling their games…

Arguably a lot of non-techie personal computing has moved there. A lot of people are phone+tablet only, no desktop or laptop. As a result they are already living in a thin-ish client with fat server for storage/app/etc from their ecosystem of choice. Not great!

Eh. I have newish Apple Silicon MacBook up in my office that I mostly use for multimedia work.

But I spend the most time on a 10 year old MacBook on my dining room table that I basically use as a web browser because that's mostly what I need.

Re: AWS raises GPU prices 15% on a Saturday, hopes you weren't paying attention

#133

Post by SPICLK2 »

nicoburns wrote: post #108
xvxvx wrote: post #12

- GPU prices rising - RAM prices rising - hard drive prices rising Are we looking at a future where home computers are replaced by thin clients and all the power lies in subscription services? ‘You don't need storage space, use our cloud subscription’ ‘You don’t need processing power, stream your games through our subscription service.’ Game publishers have already publicly floated the idea of not selling their games…

> Are we looking at a future where home computers are replaced by thin clients and all the power lies in subscription services? The supply chains for high-end chips are brittle enough that it's a very real possibility we end up with a severe supply crunch such that neither clouds nor individual users can access new chips at anything approaching reasonable prices. TSMC owns 60% of the foundry market. So if China decid…

It's a one-way journey, unless we can adapt quickly enough to a drastic reduction in the general availability of compute power. IMO, our reliance on bloated tech is an existential risk, and reverting to some reasonable baseline needs addressing as urgently as any other current crisis.

Re: AWS raises GPU prices 15% on a Saturday, hopes you weren't paying attention

#135

Post by dayjaby »

xvxvx wrote: post #12

- GPU prices rising - RAM prices rising - hard drive prices rising Are we looking at a future where home computers are replaced by thin clients and all the power lies in subscription services? ‘You don't need storage space, use our cloud subscription’ ‘You don’t need processing power, stream your games through our subscription service.’ Game publishers have already publicly floated the idea of not selling their games…

> How long before car ownership is replaced with autonomous vehicle car pools?

Click here to subscribe for an activation of your seat heater.

Re: AWS raises GPU prices 15% on a Saturday, hopes you weren't paying attention

#136

Post by SPICLK2 »

kllrnohj wrote: post #131
nicoburns wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are we looking at a future where home computers are replaced by thin clients and all the power lies in subscription services? The supply chains for high-end chips are brittle enough that it's a very real possibility we end up with a severe supply crunch such that neither clouds nor individual users can access new chips at anything approaching reasonable prices. TSMC owns 60% of the foundry market. So if China decid…

> TSMC owns 60% of the foundry market. So if China decides to invade Taiwan, that would likely mean ~60% of CPU and GPU manufacturing capacity permanently destroyed at once. While it would certainly be devastating, do note that TSMC has fabs in places that aren't Taiwan. So their entire production wouldn't immediately go offline, and presumably China would still want to keep selling those products and would have an i…

These supply chains have very non-linear responses. Relatively small fluctuations in demand can have enormous effects on prices and leadtimes.

Re: AWS raises GPU prices 15% on a Saturday, hopes you weren't paying attention

#137

Post by bluGill »

kllrnohj wrote: post #128
TrackerFF wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Difference is that if subscription goes up from $10 to $15, that doesn't seem to bad. But if you want to purchase a new computer, and the price goes from $1000 to $1500, then that's a pretty big deal. (Though in reality, the price of said computer would probably go up even more, minimum double. RAM prices are already up 6-8 fold from summer)

Difference is subscriptions need to support IT staff, data centers, and profit margins. A computer under your desk at home has none of those support costs and it gets price competition from used parts which subscriptions don't have. Cloud (storage, compute, whatever) has so far consistently been more expensive than local compute over even short timeframes (storage especially, I can buy a portable 2TB drive for the eq…

Subscription is still worth it for most people though. Sure it costs more, but your 2TB plan isn't a single harddrive, it is likely across several harddrives with RAID ensuring that when (not if!) they fail no data is lost, plus remote backups. When something breaks the subscription fixes that for no extra charge.

If you know how to admin a computer and have time for it, then doing it yourself is cheaper. However make sure you are comparing the real costs - not just the 2TB, but the backup system (that is tested to work), and all your time.

That said, subscriptions have all too often failed reasonable privacy standards. This is an important part of the cost that is rarely accounted for.

Re: AWS raises GPU prices 15% on a Saturday, hopes you weren't paying attention

#138

Post by SPICLK2 »

steveBK123 wrote: post #94
xvxvx wrote: post #12

- GPU prices rising - RAM prices rising - hard drive prices rising Are we looking at a future where home computers are replaced by thin clients and all the power lies in subscription services? ‘You don't need storage space, use our cloud subscription’ ‘You don’t need processing power, stream your games through our subscription service.’ Game publishers have already publicly floated the idea of not selling their games…

Arguably a lot of non-techie personal computing has moved there. A lot of people are phone+tablet only, no desktop or laptop. As a result they are already living in a thin-ish client with fat server for storage/app/etc from their ecosystem of choice. Not great!

Thin in form factor only! Phones and tablets represent the cutting edge of what humanity can mass-manufacture, and prices and difficulties are only going up.

Re: AWS raises GPU prices 15% on a Saturday, hopes you weren't paying attention

#139

Post by layer8 »

xvxvx wrote: post #12

- GPU prices rising - RAM prices rising - hard drive prices rising Are we looking at a future where home computers are replaced by thin clients and all the power lies in subscription services? ‘You don't need storage space, use our cloud subscription’ ‘You don’t need processing power, stream your games through our subscription service.’ Game publishers have already publicly floated the idea of not selling their games…

I remember the dialup times when you had to pay for internet usage per minute. I hope we won’t revert back to that.

Re: AWS raises GPU prices 15% on a Saturday, hopes you weren't paying attention

#140

Post by conductr »

olyjohn wrote: post #111
nasmorn wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could never afford a hyperscaler size data center. You could always just buy a server and stick it into Colo. it’s just not totally the same thing

I can't afford the ram and storage in the server anymore though. So it kinda is the same thing.

Rent vs own isn’t the issue then. It’s the cost of the underlying asset.
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