Expensive PCs/homeservers means more people on mobile crap + someone cloud, means students who do not learn PCs FLOSS when they have time and so on. That's the real point.
RAM now represents 35 percent of bill of materials for HP PCs
141–150 of 355 posts
Re: RAM now represents 35 percent of bill of materials for HP PCs
#142Is there any hope for RAM to stabilize in prices again?
This a good question. My guess: As long as the LLM boom continues, and no new DRAM manuf capacity is added, the high prices will remain.
Previous RAM price spikes lasted for over a year. This one should last at least that long. It's promising however that the rate of change has slowed down in the last month.
Re: RAM now represents 35 percent of bill of materials for HP PCs
#143Re: RAM now represents 35 percent of bill of materials for HP PCs
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, but if the browser is the only thing that becomes more memory efficient that's still a substantial win.
Yeah the server needs sunstantially lest ram per user than the PC. Probably 10mb per user vs. 8gb for client to have OS and browser up. Apple could lead here. They sell feels not specs so they could down OS and Browser RAM requirements and sell lower RAM entry models.
They did that. But when the AI craze hit turned that all the 8GB base model Macs didn’t have enough space for even basic models (in addition to the 1-2 electron apps you can run simultaneously).
Of course seems like local AI is more or less a flop in the consumer market at least?
But still IMHO even for general use macos with 8GB is almost unusable unless you use it like an Ipad.
Re: RAM now represents 35 percent of bill of materials for HP PCs
#145i am working on my side-product [1] where i was exploring a Rockchip which required external memory (just 1G) which went from $3 to $32 and completely destroyed economics for me. I settled with one with embedded memory and optimizing my code instead :) 1. https://x.com/_asadmemon/status/1989417143398797424
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.
RAM usage is super easy to dial down, it's just texture quality.
Re: RAM now represents 35 percent of bill of materials for HP PCs
#146What!? I always thought we could just download more RAM!
on Linux you can actually do that by enabling zram https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zram
Re: RAM now represents 35 percent of bill of materials for HP PCs
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah the server needs sunstantially lest ram per user than the PC. Probably 10mb per user vs. 8gb for client to have OS and browser up. Apple could lead here. They sell feels not specs so they could down OS and Browser RAM requirements and sell lower RAM entry models.
They did that. But when the AI craze hit turned that all the 8GB base model Macs didn’t have enough space for even basic models (in addition to the 1-2 electron apps you can run simultaneously). Of course seems like local AI is more or less a flop in the consumer market at least? But still IMHO even for general use macos with 8GB is almost unusable unless you use it like an Ipad.
8GB is unusable, but is MacOS and Safari optimizabe? The point is they control the stack so they could reduce memory usage. It would be a big selling point, it could make a Mac "experience for experience" price competitive with PCs.
Re: RAM now represents 35 percent of bill of materials for HP PCs
#148I 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?
It's not like most developers are wasting memory for fun by using Electron etc. It's just the simplest way to deploy applications that require frequent multiplatform changes. Until you get Apple to approve native app changes faster and Linux users to agree on framework, app distribution, etc., it's the most optimal way to ship a product and not just a program.
Re: RAM now represents 35 percent of bill of materials for HP PCs
#149i am working on my side-product [1] where i was exploring a Rockchip which required external memory (just 1G) which went from $3 to $32 and completely destroyed economics for me. I settled with one with embedded memory and optimizing my code instead :) 1. https://x.com/_asadmemon/status/1989417143398797424
For reference, Octopart is useful to track prices from many distributors, linked below [0] is a commonly used memory (1G) for Rockchip, Amlogic, Allwinner on many Radxa and Orange Pis.
Re: RAM now represents 35 percent of bill of materials for HP PCs
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thats a ridiculous metaphor. Ram isn't food. Nobody starved to death from insufficient RAM in their computer.
Economies die from lack of produce though.
When the internet boom happened, computers had a tiny fraction of the RAM they have today. Everything worked fine. Programmers had to make efficient programs. But we were fine with that. We just programmed in C and C++ and shipped small binaries, because what choice did we have? Nobody tried to build desktop software in javascript on top of electron. And nobody built web servers in python.
If all consumer devices only shipped with 1gb of RAM maximum, we'd get over it remarkably quickly. Just about the only times large amounts of RAM is an actual requirement is AI, some data science / simulation, and editing video in 8k. And maybe 3d modelling. Lots of programs we run today are memory hogs for no good reason - like the rust compiler, cyberpunk 2077 and google chrome. But we could make those programs much more memory efficient if we really had to. Cyberpunk wouldn't look as pretty. But nobody would really care.
The economy won't die due to expensive RAM. Programmers will just adapt, like we've always done.