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The RAM shortage could last years

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Re: The RAM shortage could last years

#131

Post by david-gpu »

righthand wrote: post #124
rekabis wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think this will smack the hands of developers who don’t manage RAM well And hopefully kill Electron. I have never seen the point of spinning up a 300+Mb app just to display something that ought to need only 500Kb to paint onto the screen.

The point is you can be lazy and write the app in html and js. Then you dont need to write c, even though c syntax is similar to js syntax and most gui apps wont require needing advanced c features if the gui framework is generous enough. Now that everyone who cant be bothered, vibe codes, and electron apps are the overevangelized norm… People will probably not even worry about writing js and electron will be here to…

Syntax ain't the problem. The semantics of C and JS could not be more different.

Re: The RAM shortage could last years

#132

Post by pron »

zozbot234 wrote: post #127
pron wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RAM throughput and RAM footprint are only weakly related. The throughput is governed by the cache locality of access patterns. A program with a 50MB footprint could put more pressure on the RAM bus than one with a 5GB footprint.

You're absolutely right? I don't really disagree with anything you're saying there, that's why I said "generally" and "in practice".

Reducing your RAM consumption is not the best approach to reducing your RAM throughput is my point. It could be effective in some specific situations, but I would definitely not say that those situations are more common than the other ones.

Re: The RAM shortage could last years

#133

Post by pron »

dehrmann wrote: post #128
pron wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using a lot less RAM often implies using more CPU, so even with inflated RAM prices, it's not a good tradeoff (at least not in general).

You're thinking an algorithmic tradeoff, but this is an abstraction tradeoff.

Some of the algorithms are built deep into the runtime. E.g. languages that rely on malloc/free allocators (which require maintaining free lists) are making a pretty significnant tradoff of wasting CPU to save on RAM as opposed to languages using moving collectors.

Re: The RAM shortage could last years

#134

Post by pron »

zamadatix wrote: post #117
pron wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using a lot less RAM often implies using more CPU, so even with inflated RAM prices, it's not a good tradeoff (at least not in general).

The tradeoff has almost exclusively been development time vs resource efficiency. Very few devs are graced with enough time to optimize something to the point of dealing with theoretical tradeoff balances of near optimal implementations.

That's fine, but I was responding to a comment that said that RAM prices would put pressure to optimise footprint. Optimising footprint could often lead to wasting more CPU, even if your starting point was optimising for neither.

Re: The RAM shortage could last years

#135

Post by righthand »

david-gpu wrote: post #131
righthand wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is you can be lazy and write the app in html and js. Then you dont need to write c, even though c syntax is similar to js syntax and most gui apps wont require needing advanced c features if the gui framework is generous enough. Now that everyone who cant be bothered, vibe codes, and electron apps are the overevangelized norm… People will probably not even worry about writing js and electron will be here to…

Syntax ain't the problem. The semantics of C and JS could not be more different.

But the point isn’t that they’re more different than alike. The point is that learning c is not really that hard it’s just that corporations don’t want you building apps with a stack they don’t control.

If a js dev really wanted to it wouldn’t be a huge uphill climb to code a c app because the syntax and concepts are similar enough.

Re: The RAM shortage could last years

#136

Post by CamperBob2 »

nostrademons wrote: post #89
stuxnet79 wrote: post #11

Ok so Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron do not have the capacity to meet demand. Also, what little capacity they do have they are allocating to HBM over DRAM. Based on my limited knowledge HBM can not be easily repurposed for consumer electronics. Translation: main street is cooked for the next 3-4 years. It doesn't stop there though. OpenAI is currently mired in a capital crunch. Their last round just about sucked all th…

What kind of consumer electronics can you build with HBM? That's the startup you should be founding...

HBM is just normal DDR RAM that's been packaged with (much) wider-than-usual data buses. That's where the high bandwidth comes from, not from high clock rates or any other innovation or improvement in core specifications.

Very few applications other than GPUs need HBM.

Re: The RAM shortage could last years

#137

Post by michaelt »

necovek wrote: post #17
Renaud wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think RAM shortages would be the least of our problems… Assuming China takes TSMC in one piece (unlikely without internal sabotage in the best case scenario), it would still probably take years before it produces another high end GPU or CPU. We would probably be stuck with the existing inventory of equipment for a long time…

I am surprised we consider TSMC like a natural resource: isn't it really a combination of know-how and build-out according to that know-how? If smarts leave the country, perhaps this moves with them. The risk with China taking over Taiwan is that they mostly expedite their own production research by a couple of years.

> I am surprised we consider TSMC like a natural resource: isn't it really a combination of know-how and build-out according to that know-how?

Have you seen how many states and countries look enviously at Silicon Valley’s tech companies, China’s manufacturing dominance, or London’s financial sector and try to replicate them?

Turns out it’s way harder than you’d expect.

Hell, Intel can’t match TSMC despite decades of expertise, much greater fame, and regulators happy to change the law and hand out tens of billions in subsidies.

Re: The RAM shortage could last years

#138

Post by danishanish »

stuxnet79 wrote: post #11

Ok so Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron do not have the capacity to meet demand. Also, what little capacity they do have they are allocating to HBM over DRAM. Based on my limited knowledge HBM can not be easily repurposed for consumer electronics. Translation: main street is cooked for the next 3-4 years. It doesn't stop there though. OpenAI is currently mired in a capital crunch. Their last round just about sucked all th…

I think I’m missing something. Financially, what bag would the memory makers be holding here? I don’t think I’m well informed regarding how these deals were structured.

Re: The RAM shortage could last years

#139

Post by michaelbuckbee »

danishanish wrote: post #138
stuxnet79 wrote: post #11

Ok so Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron do not have the capacity to meet demand. Also, what little capacity they do have they are allocating to HBM over DRAM. Based on my limited knowledge HBM can not be easily repurposed for consumer electronics. Translation: main street is cooked for the next 3-4 years. It doesn't stop there though. OpenAI is currently mired in a capital crunch. Their last round just about sucked all th…

I think I’m missing something. Financially, what bag would the memory makers be holding here? I don’t think I’m well informed regarding how these deals were structured.

Memory makers make capital investements (build different factories, convert physical production lines, etc.) to meet orders that have been place for the next ~5 years.

OpenAI (or whoever) crashes and can't pay for the order leaving the memory makers in a tough spot.

Re: The RAM shortage could last years

#140

Post by Legend2440 »

rzmmm wrote: post #16

It seems that RAM manufacturers are still reluctant to increase production. They know something that investors don't about long term RAM demands?

They've been burned before. The DRAM industry has a long history of booms and busts.

Demand increased, everyone built new fabs, then prices dropped and they couldn't pay off their investments. Many went out of business. It happened in the 80s, it happened in the 90s, it happened in the 2000s.

Now there's only three manufacturers left, and they know very well that demand for their product tends to be cyclical.

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