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The RAM shortage could last years

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Re: The RAM shortage could last years

#261

Post by overfeed »

trvz wrote: post #125
xbmcuser wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am betting the pendulum swings faster to the other side to excess capacity as all the construction lies of Altman fall through with financiers waking up the the fact they can't build the infrasctructure as fast nor make any profits on that infrastructure that will get built.

Those financiers can’t risk not being involved in a company with even just a slight potential for AGI.

> Those financiers can’t risk not being involved in a company with even just a slight potential for AGI.

Do recent actions of Open AI give you the impression of a company that believes it is about to attain AGI imminently?

Re: The RAM shortage could last years

#262

Post by rasz »

torginus wrote: post #42
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…

The Radeon VII came out in 2019 as a $700 consumer GPU with an 1TB/s HBM2 memory subsystem which is more than any consumer GPU you can get today, including the high-end ones afaik. At that point in time, there was a whole lineup of AMD GPUs with HBM going down into the midrange. If they could make this stuff and sell it to regular people a decade ago for very palatable prices, why do they come up with the idea that t…

And the bottleneck at the time was HBM interposers, not actual ram dies.

Re: The RAM shortage could last years

#263

Post by kdheiwns »

onion2k wrote: post #255
diego_sandoval wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did OpenAI's order actually kickstart the "panic" over RAM? Are they really such a big RAM buyer?

They ordered 40% of the global RAM production for 2025/26. It was a non-binding agreement that either side could easily withdraw from but they're essentially trying to buy about half of all the RAM.

Blows my mind that it's non-binding.

If I booked half a hotel's rooms then suddenly said "yeah never mind. Half my friends cancelled and we're not staying", basically any hotel would be coming at me for my money because there's no way they can fill their rooms now and they're losing revenue. But OpenAI can really get the whole world to pivot towards it then say "cool but we don't need your product anymore" and RAM makers are just going to let it go.

Whoever decided that was a good idea needs to be fired and publicly shamed.

Re: The RAM shortage could last years

#265

Post by kilpikaarna »

drnick1 wrote: post #199
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To add a more local hurdle as well, the Dutch power grid is at capacity and its managing company is now telling companies that planned to build a datacenter that they can't be connected to the grid until 2030, even though said companies already paid for and got guarantees about that connection. That is, memory capacity is reserved for datacenters yet to be built, but this will do weird things if said datacenter const…

This just highlights what an utter failure and self-inflicted wound the green policies of Euro countries have been. Europe has already lost the AI race to the U.S. and China.

The only way to lose even harder would be to build a shitload of datacenters for them

Re: The RAM shortage could last years

#266

Post by overfeed »

DoctorOetker wrote: post #69
VladStanimir wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think its from the ML collapse FUD, its most likely from the multiple time's in the past when they overbuilt and it resulted in a memory oversupply and price collapses. The 1985–1988, 1993–1994, 1998–2002 and the post pandemic oversupply. These were all cases where shortages followed by over corrections caused oversupply, financial losses due to low prices and fewer surviving companies. I think they're taking…

its not like all the RAM is passing the same machine, they can gradually increase machines and observe the change in demand, and smoothly match it.

Machines take up space in buildings (factories); both of which are discrete rather than continuous functions. If your factory is already full of memory-making machines, and want to add one more, it will cost you billions and many months to build another factory.

If you suppose you have cracked the smooth-ramping problem, perhaps you should throw your hat in the ring and soak up all the pent-up demand that SK Hynix, Samsung and Micron are neglecting.

Re: The RAM shortage could last years

#267

Post by justsomehnguy »

michaelbuckbee wrote: post #139
danishanish wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> leaving the memory makers in a tough spot

Oh noes! Think of a poor memory makers!

The amount of money flowing both from the AI bubble and from quite literally scalping both the server and consumer market... They gambled on the opportunity and if they fail - it's their problem.

Re: The RAM shortage could last years

#268

Post by irishloop »

Mawr wrote: post #253
nilkn wrote: post #224

As an aside, recently I wanted to refresh my gaming PC, but the price shock and general lack of availability of buying components individually made it seem hardly worth it, so I just kept deferring the project. Then, mostly by chance, I saw that my local Microcenter had some pre-builts for sale, and I ended up picking one up for The last time I built a gaming PC was upwards of a decade ago, and at that time the preva…

> and at that time the prevailing wisdom was to never buy a pre-built That's still the case, and always will be — with a pre-built you're at the very least paying for someone to assemble it for you, so it's always going to be more expensive as a baseline. Beyond that, the chance they've chosen good components and haven't tried to screw you over on less flashy ones like the motherboard and power supply is low. That's…

> with a pre-built you're at the very least paying for someone to assemble it for you, so it's always going to be more expensive as a baseline

Except isn't it possible that pre-built companies actually get better deals on hardware bought in bulk, and therefore could offset the labor costs with cheaper materials?

Re: The RAM shortage could last years

#270

Post by t-3 »

tgma wrote: post #152
whatever1 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of the capital intensive businesses face this issue. Chemicals, Shipping, Semiconductors etc. You get market signals that the demand is there, you acquire the necessary capital, you spend 5 years to build capacity, but guess what, 5 other market players did the same thing. So now you are doomed, because the market is flooded and you have low cash flow since you need to drop prices to compete for pennies. Now you…

> Capitalists claim that this is optimal. Because that does not happen exactly as you say for all players. The demand signals will be processed and long-term risk is balanced against short-term gain in a distributed fashion, so not everyone will do the same.

Sufficient diversity of response will only appear when there are enough competitors. When there are only a few, it doesn't necessarily work out.
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