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RAM now represents 35 percent of bill of materials for HP PCs

arstechnica.com

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Re: RAM now represents 35 percent of bill of materials for HP PCs

#31

Post by rubyn00bie »

I think we’re at the peak, or close to it for these memory shenanigans. OpenAI who is largely responsible for the shortage, just doesn’t have the capital to pay for it. It’s only a matter of time before chickens come home to roost and the bill is due. OpenAI is promising hundreds of billions in capex but has no where near that cash on hand, and its cash flow is abysmal considering the spend.

Unless there is a true breakthrough, beyond AGI into super intelligence on existing, or near term, hardware— I just don’t see how “trust me bro,” can keep its spending party going. Competition is incredibly stiff, and it’s pretty likely we’re at the point of diminishing returns without an absolute breakthrough.

The end result is going to be RAM prices tanking in 18-24 months. The only upside will be for consumers who will likely gain the ability to run much larger open source models locally.

Re: RAM now represents 35 percent of bill of materials for HP PCs

#32

Post by autoexec »

nine_k wrote: post #20
trollbridge wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn’t the EU have an excellent education system?

Even the most excellent education system takes several yeas to educate a high-schooler to a level of a junior engineer. Then several more years are needed for the best of them to become senior engineers, with the knowledge and experience that a university alone cannot provide. So, we're looking at a decade-long project at least, even if everything goes as planned, and crazy fast, in the technical and administrative d…

All the more reason to start now I guess. Putting it off isn't going to get them that knowledge and experience any sooner. If something happens over the next 10 years that eliminates our need for memory chips things will probably be either too messed up or too wonderful for anyone to cry over the years they needlessly spent trying to secure a domestic source of RAM.

Re: RAM now represents 35 percent of bill of materials for HP PCs

#34

Post by dijit »

bsimpson wrote: post #18
tehlike wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I hope so. Resource usage has been on a hedonic treadmill at least since I came online in the 90s. Good things have come from that, of course, but there's also plenty of abstraction/waste that's permitted because "new computers can handle it." With so many gaming devices based on the AMD Z1 Extreme platform (and its custom Valve corollaries) over the past few years, it'll be great to see that be the target/baseline f…

I'm not sure how we got on to games as resource hogs when Teams uses 2GiB of RAM and Windows itself uses 4GiB of RAM.

I work in gamedev, so perhaps I'm a bit sensitive, and I understand that general purpose engines aren't as light on resources as the handcrafted ones that nobody can afford to make anymore... but we're not anywhere close to the layers of waste and abstraction that presents itself when using webtech for desktop apps by default.

Re: RAM now represents 35 percent of bill of materials for HP PCs

#35

Post by wmf »

tehlike wrote: post #6
asadm wrote: post #4

i 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.

Very few games target high specs to begin with.

Re: RAM now represents 35 percent of bill of materials for HP PCs

#36

Post by Infiniti20 »

haxtormoogle wrote: post #33

Isn't there a full wafer ai chip mainframe for data centers now that blows anything needing ram out of the water? I don't understand the ram shortage exists companies have surpassed nvidia.

How come there’s ASICs for mining but not AI? Seems like there would be almost unlimited demand

Re: RAM now represents 35 percent of bill of materials for HP PCs

#37

Post by dijit »

Retric wrote: post #30
echelon wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm glad we're starting to use the term "slop" for human outputs as well. Especially corporate slop.

It’s not exactly new. Pig slop is generally random food scraps etc. Big brother used “slop” for their flavorless penalty food long before LLM’s. Arguably the connotation has changed slightly, but AI slop caught on because it fit so well.

"slop" is a type of British food (like "Gruel").

It's uncommon, and associated with old timey prisons and orphanages.

The word itself has existed for hundreds of years.

Re: RAM now represents 35 percent of bill of materials for HP PCs

#38

Post by TacticalCoder »

trollbridge wrote: post #12
throw_m239339 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think Europe should invest into manufacturing RAM. RAM isn't going anywhere, all of modern compute uses it. This would be an opportunity to create domestic supply of it. It's easy to build factories, much more difficult to train the engineers required to run them... and let's not even talk about all the crazy regulations & environmental rules at the EU level that make that task even more difficult, because yes, c…

Doesn’t the EU have an excellent education system?

> Doesn’t the EU have an excellent education system?

Excellent universities, overall. But results from primary and secondary schools are nose diving at a more than alarming rate in several EU countries. Literacy rates are falling, math grades are falling. There's IMO only so much time before universities begin to be affected as well.

Re: RAM now represents 35 percent of bill of materials for HP PCs

#39

Post by dijit »

Gigachad wrote: post #25
Aerroon wrote: post #9

I think Europe should invest into manufacturing RAM. RAM isn't going anywhere, all of modern compute uses it. This would be an opportunity to create domestic supply of it.

The worry is that these high prices aren't going to last long. And by the time you spend years building the capacity, the prices plummet making your facility uneconomical to run. Ram will always be in some demand, but that doesn't mean it's viable for everyone to start building production.

There's a few things to note here:

1) Prices aren't returning to "normal".

The only way they will is if the hyperscalers and AI companies start to implode -- which will kill a huge portion of the US economy and lead to global recession, so, cheap RAM but nobody can afford it

2) By building up capacity you influence the outcome.

If someone else enters the DRAM space, the duopoly has to actually start thinking about competing on price, maybe they become price competitive before the launch of your new fab in order to kill it, but, it will have an effect and probably before it even opens

3) A western supply chain has benefits by itself.

There's a reason some industries are not allowed to die, most notably farming- because security and external pressure are concerning.

---

Realistically there's no reason not to do this. It will be long, painful and expensive. The best time was a decade ago. The next best time is now.

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