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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

#301

Post by kbolino »

bullen wrote: post #233
mrob wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CAS latency is specified in cycles and clock rates are increasing, so despite the number getting bigger there's actually been a small improvement in latency with each generation.

Not for small amounts of data. Bandwith increases, but if you only need a few bytes DDR3 is faster. Also slower speed means less heat and longer life. You can feel the speed advantage by just moving the mouse on a DDR3 PC...

While it has nothing to do with how responsive your mouse feels, as that is measured in milliseconds while CAS latency is measured in nanoseconds, there has indeed been a small regression with DDR5 memory compared to the 3 previous generations. The best DDR2-4 configurations could fetch 1 word in about 6-7 ns while the best DDR5 configurations take about 9-10 ns.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAS_latency#Memory_timing_exam...

Re: The RAM shortage comes for us all

#303

Post by bigiain »

layer8 wrote: post #298
panzagl wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hear me out- artisanal DRAM.

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

You've cracked the funding problem!

You need to sell the artisanal DRAM to HiFi hucksters. Get Monster Cable on board to say their cables can only reach peak warmth, punch, and clarity - when using gear with artisanal DRAM. You'll easily sell into that market at $10k per GB...

Re: The RAM shortage comes for us all

#304

Post by quickthrowman »

delfinom wrote: post #200
seanalltogether wrote: post #135

I wonder if these RAM shortages are going to cause the Steam Machine to be dead on arrival. Valve is probably not a big enough player to have secured production guarantees like Sony or Nintendo would have. If they try to launch with a price tag over $750, they're probably not going sell a lot.

If anyone that has hidden cash reserves that could buy out even Apple. It would probably be Valve. Lol, wacky reality if they say "hey we had spare cash so we bought out Micron to get DDR5 for our gaming systems"

Valve is worth maybe 0.1% (single digit billions is what I’d guess) of Apple, which made $112B in net income in 2025. That’s profit, not revenue.

Apple could probably buy Valve for 30 days of its net income, which is around $9.3B ($306M per day in profit, including weekends)

There’s zero chance that Gaben has squirreled away Four Trillion Dollars in cash.

Re: The RAM shortage comes for us all

#305

Post by geerlingguy »

dist-epoch wrote: post #218
hathawsh wrote: post #111

The article suggests that because the power and cooling are customized, it would take a ton of effort to run the new AI servers in a home environment, but I'm skeptical of that. Home-level power and cooling are not difficult these days. I think when the next generation of AI hardware comes out (in 3-5 years), there will be a large supply of used AI hardware that we'll probably be able to repurpose. Maybe we'll sell t…

A single server is 20 KW. A rack is 200 KW. These are not the old CPU servers of yesterday.

At minimum, you'd need to wire in new 240V circuits, and you could only run one or two of these servers before you'd need a service upgrade.

Then you'd have to deal with noise from a literal wall of fans, or build a separate high capacity water cooling system (and still deal with dumping that heat somewhere).

Re: The RAM shortage comes for us all

#306

Post by jacquesm »

nish__ wrote: post #28
jacquesm wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope you have very deep pockets. But I'm cheering you on from the sidelines.

Just need a half billion in upfront investment. And thank you for the support :)

Kickstarter time? That would set some records.

Re: The RAM shortage comes for us all

#307

Post by agoodusername63 »

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.

Went after the right component too. RAM manufacturers love an opportunity to create as much scarcity as possible.

Re: The RAM shortage comes for us all

#308

Post by shadowpho »

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.

And then spend the next five years building the actual fab around it? Like what’s the plan here.

Re: The RAM shortage comes for us all

#309

Post by retube »

nish__ wrote: post #171
Reason077 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A dozen or so well-resourced tech titans in China are no doubt asking themselves this same question right now. Of course, it takes quite some time for a fab to go from an idea to mass production. Even in China. Expect prices to drop 2-3 years from now when all the new capacity comes online?

My napkin math: According to my research, these machines can etch around 150 wafers per hour and each wafer can fit around 50 top-of-the-line GPUs. This means we can produce around 7500 AI chips per hour. Sell them for $1k a piece. That's $7.5 million per hour in revenue. Run the thing for 3 days and we recover costs. I'm sure there's more involved but that sounds like a pretty good ROI to me.

yeaaahhh.. these fabs don't just have a button that says "punch out a top of the line nvidia GPU"

Re: The RAM shortage comes for us all

#310

Post by BobaFloutist »

bigiain wrote: post #291
irae wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Your laptops have an 18-24 month replacement cycle? What are you guys doing to the poor things?
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