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The RAM shortage comes for us all

jeffgeerling.com

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Re: The RAM shortage comes for us all

#291

Post by bigiain »

irae wrote: post #258
RachelF wrote: post #110

Perhaps we'll have to start optimizing software for performance and RAM usage again. I look at MS Teams currently using 1.5GB of RAM doing nothing.

RIP electron apps and PWAs. Need to go native, as chromium based stuff is so memory hungry. PWAs on Safari use way less memory, but PWA support in Safari is not great.

I, for one, would not miss a single one of the electron apps I'm forced to use.

Every single one of them makes me feel like the vendor is telling me "we can't be bothered employing half decent developers or giving the developers we have enough time and resources to write decent software, so we're just going to use cheap and inexperience web developers and burn another gigabyte or two of your memory to run what could easily be a sub 100MB native app."

At least now I'll have significant numbers to tell my boss: "Sure, we can continue to use Slack/VSCode/Teams/Figma/Postman/ - but each of those is going to require an additional GB or two of memory on every staff member's computer - which at today's pricing is over $500 in ram per laptop which are all on a 18-24 month replacement cycle. So that's maybe a million dollars a year in hardware budget to run those 5 applications across the whole team. We'll need to ensure we have signoff on that expenditure before we renew our subscriptions for those apps."

Re: The RAM shortage comes for us all

#292

Post by bigiain »

cube00 wrote: post #288
alliao wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

now that's a word i haven't heard in a while...optimising

> optimising Usually followed by "stock holder value"

And to the tech staff, some out of context and misunderstood quote from semi technical management which starts with the word "Premature"

Re: The RAM shortage comes for us all

#294

Post by mixermachine »

bee_rider wrote: post #31
jsheard wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every type of DRAM is ultimately made at the same fabs, so if one type is suddenly in high demand then the supply of everything else is going to suffer.

Wait, really? For CPUs each generation needs basically a whole new fab, I thought… are they more able to incrementally upgrade RAM fabs somehow?

Not quickly but if somebody puts enough money on the table, the fabs change too. All about cost and return. Micron just axed their brand crucial (end customer RAM and SSD) because they will only sell to database centers from now on.

Crazy times.

Re: The RAM shortage comes for us all

#295

Post by mbesto »

jandrese wrote: post #181
hodgehog11 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see this working for Google though, since they make their own custom hardware in the form of the TPUs. Unless those designs include components that are also susceptible?

That was why OpenAI went after the wafers, not the finished products. By buying up the supply of the raw materials they bottleneck everybody , even unrelated fields. It's the kind of move that requires a true asshole to pull off, knowing it will give your company an advantage but screw up life for literally billions of people at the same time.

> By buying up the supply

We actually don't know for certain whether these agreements are binding. If OpenAI gets in a credit crunch we'll soon find out.

Re: The RAM shortage comes for us all

#296

Post by mindslight »

daemonologist wrote: post #244
mindslight wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hedging is understandable. But what I don't understand is why they didn't hedge by keeping Crucial around but more dormant (higher prices, less SKUs, etc)

The theory I've heard is built on the fact that China (CXMT) is starting to properly get into DRAM manufacturing - Micron might expect that to swamp the low end of the market, leaving Crucial unprofitable regardless, so they might as well throw in the towel now and make as much money as possible from AI/datacenter (which has bigger margins) while they can. But yeah even if that's true I don't know why they wouldn't h…

So position Crucial as a premium brand, raise prices 4x instead of 3x, and drastically cut down on the SKUs to reduce overhead. If they tried that and kept spiraling into fewer and fewer SKUs and sales, I could understand it. But the discontinuation felt pretty abrupt.

Re: The RAM shortage comes for us all

#297

Post by wkat4242 »

christkv wrote: post #105
MPSimmons wrote: post #89

This reminds me of the recent LaurieWired video presenting a hypothetical of, "what if we stopped making CPUs": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2OJFqs8bUk Spoiler, but the answer is basically that old hardware rules the day because it lasts longer and is more reliable of timespans of decades. DDR5 32GB is currently going for ~$330 on Amazon DDR4 32GB is currently going for ~$130 on Amazon DDR3 32GB is currently goin…

A friend built a new rig and went with DDR4 and a 5800x3d just because of this as he needed a lot of ram.

I have exactly this and was planning to upgrade to AM5 soon :'(

Looks like AM4 will live on for many more years in my flat

Re: The RAM shortage comes for us all

#298

Post by layer8 »

panzagl wrote: post #205
nish__ wrote: post #18

Anyone want to start a fab with me? We can buy an ASML machine and figure out the rest as we go. Toronto area btw

Hear me out- artisanal DRAM.

Every transistor carefully hand-wired with love, giving each bit its own individual characteristic, for more organic, natural data.

Re: The RAM shortage comes for us all

#299

Post by bigiain »

nish__ wrote: post #239
shadowpho wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about the $10b to build the facility (including clean air/water/chemicals/etc)?

Rent a warehouse.

Rent a warehouse in one of the non Han dominated areas of China, where you can use all you want from the city's drinking water supply and pump all your used chemicals into the nearby river. Make sure to totally automate your robotic production line so you don't need to employ any locals.
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