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

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

#261

Post by hacker_homie »

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…

Time to go outside and touch grass it’s the only financially responsible thing to do until prices become reasonable again.

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

#262

Post by dgemm »

therobots927 wrote: post #52

The price shock that’s about to hit the AI industry is gonna be very fun to watch.

I think a lot of usage will move to the cheap open weight Chinese models once there is an incentive to do that. Everything below the highest end frontier models are becoming commoditized and I suspect the commodity segment will pass the "good enough" bar for most applications.

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

#263

Post by TrackerFF »

SirMaster wrote: post #232
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)

Building a PC price is not double lol and RAM is nowhere near up 6-8x https://www.bestbuy.com/product/crucial-pro-overclocking-32g... That 32GB for $274 was not $34-$45 in the summer. RAM is up like 3x, but RAM is one of the cheaper parts of the PC. RAM that was $100 in summer is like $300 now when I look. So that's an extra $200 maybe $300, on say a $1500 build. GPUs are not up, they are still at MSRP: https://www.b…

Where I live, a pair of Kingston FURY Beast Black RGB DDR5 6000MHz 32GB (2x16GB) has literally gone up from what is equivalent to $125 this summer, to currently selling for what is equivalent to $850.

Obviously this depends on where you live.

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

#264

Post by resters »

So rather than free market capitalism where AWS would have actually lowered prices after investing heavily in a new datacenter-focused line of Huawei GPUs, the US government took steps to stop capitalism and competition, gave NVIDIA lots of free money (USA! USA!) and now prices are going up.

Recall pictures of Bezos smiling at various Trump events.

Everything Trump admin has done so far with tech reduces competition and tries to pick winners. This price increase is just the beginning.

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

#265

Post by lopis »

jstummbillig wrote: post #87
lopis wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem I've seen described by some is that the industry is resistant to expand capacity right now, because a partial pop of the AI bubble is expected aaany time now for months, but it keeps not happening. But if it does happen and they have too much capacity, the whole GPU and RAM industry would not be able to recoup that investment and would collapse.

People confuse themselves with the bubble-metaphor. If an AI bubble exists and pops (we need not discuss either) the already existing and on-the-way-demand will not just disappear. Millions of todays users will not just decide that they don't want to use claude code or chatgpt anymore. Instead, an increasing number of people are going to want AI stuff from here on out, forever, because it's proven to be good enough i…

The "bubble popping" mostly means that investment will drastically fall, investors will start demanding profit, and costs will soar. This will cause a lot of tools currently built on top of LLMs to become too expensive. Free tools will likely become rare.

There's a significant number of users that will not pay for AI. There's likely also a significant number of users that will not accept higher subscription costs no matter how much they use AI tools today.

When this happens, the market will go back to "normal". Yes, there will still be a higher demand for computer parts than before ChatGPT was released, but the demand will still go down drastically from current levels. So only a moderate increase in production capacity will be needed.

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

#266

Post by hiddew »

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?

That is very much a future I look forward to living in. Not requiring to own a car but sharing it efficiently with folks in the neighborhood, would save quite some parking space for unused vehicles in front of homes, and centralize maintenance to the companies operating the vehicle fleet.

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

#267

Post by lopis »

jstummbillig wrote: post #224
FridgeSeal wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Millions of todays users will not just decide that they don't want to use claude code or chatgpt anymore Won’t they? For a great number of people, LLM’s are in the “nice to have” basket. Execs and hucksters foam at the mouth over them, other people find utility but the vast majority are not upending their life in service of them. I suspect if ChatGPT evaporated tomorrow, the chronically dependent would struggle, mo…

I am not sure I understand. I agree: If AI were to disappear tomorrow, people would adjust (as they did when AI, or the iPhone or the internet appeared). That's what people do. But now there is user demand. Who or what would take away AI? What is the scenario?

Lots of companies right now have slapped AI features on their products without extra cost. Some are offering it for free (e.g. search engines). If LLM costs significantly increase, I would expect free AI features to disappear or become extra paid features (already started to happen in some SASS), while any free LLMs become simpler and cheaper.

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

#268

Post by boneitis »

isoprophlex wrote: post #96
cj wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For Christmas I got an alarm clock that basically doesn’t function without a $50/year subscription. For an alarm clock (Hatch.co). Consumers need to get better at understanding TCO when buying things. Or maybe the government should be slapping those “annual cost” stickers like they do on washing machines to understand how much electricity they use.

A 50$/year alarm clock?! Is it time to post the philip k dick Ubik quote again?! https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

Yes.

I remember starting this book back in college and rolling my eyes at this scene for being so campy and tacky that I just dropped the book.

I came back to it just a few weeks ago out of disbelief that that is where we've arrived today.

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

#269

Post by dangus »

mrweasel wrote: post #196
dangus wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if you finance the computer (not hard to get 0% financing on consumer electronics), the price goes from $41 a month to $62 a month. It’s the same difference.

For some reason I think people are less likely to finance a computer, but maybe not, given that phone financing is a thing.

Just go to the Apple website and notice how every computer price has a monthly payment option in the same font size right under the purchase price.
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