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As AI gobbles up chips, prices for devices may rise

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Re: As AI gobbles up chips, prices for devices may rise

#301

Post by vee-kay »

tazjin wrote: post #256
999900000999 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, we can expect better from software. Maybe someone can fork Firefox and make it run better, hard cap how much a browser window can use. The pattern of lazy almost non existent optimization combined with blaming consumers for having weak hardware, needs to stop. On my 16GB ram lunar lake budget laptop CachyOS( Arch) runs so much smoother than Windows. This is very unscientific, but using htop , running Chrome/YouTu…

> Or, we can expect better from software. Maybe someone can fork Firefox and make it run better, hard cap how much a browser window can use. You can already do this. For example, I use `systemd-run` to run browsers with CPU quotas applied. Firefox gets 400% CPU (i.e. up to 4 cores), and no more. Example command: systemd-run --user --scope -p CPUQuota=400% firefox

You can impose CPU restrictions in Windows 10 or 11 too...

You can limit CPU usage for a program in Windows by adjusting the "Maximum processor state" in the power options to a lower percentage, such as 80%. Additionally, you can set the program's CPU affinity in Task Manager. Please note this will only affect the process scheduling.

You can also use a free tool like Process Lasso or BES to limit the CPU for a Windows application. You can use a free tools like HWInfo, SysInternals (ProcMon, SysMom, ProcDump) to monitor and check for CPU usage, especially to investigate CPU spikes caused by rogue (malware or poor performance) apps.

Re: As AI gobbles up chips, prices for devices may rise

#302

Post by appreciatorBus »

bigbadfeline wrote: post #125
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And in the process of doing so they're providing a hugely valuable service by building these complex systems out of lots different components, and people and companies find a lot of value in that service. Calling this "scalping" is just economically illiterate conspiracy theorizing.

The majority of these companies have long term purchase agreements for hardware at prices far lower than the market prices today, that's front-running the hardware market, the same as scalpers buying up GPU's to restrict supply and then sell at higher prices. > And in the process of doing so they're providing a hugely valuable service The value is in the hardware itself, the added services aren't essential - just pac…

Is it “scalping” when HN readers demand six figure salaries for programming work?

Re: As AI gobbles up chips, prices for devices may rise

#303

Post by latexr »

arisAlexis wrote: post #281
torginus wrote: post #133

It's somewhat alarming to see that companies (owned by a very small slice of society) producing these AI thingies (whose current economic is questionable value and actual future potential is up to hot debate), can easily price the rest of humanity out of computing goods.

Calling the greatest and last invention of man "AI thingies" is telling of why our society will split into tech and non tech communities in the future like all the science fiction authors have predicted.

> Calling the greatest and last invention of man

There are several inventions which are far greater than LLMs. To name two: computers and methods to generate electricity, things without which LLMs wouldn’t have been possible. But also harnessing fire, the wheel, agriculture, vaccines… The list goes on and on.

Calling LLMs “AI thingies” seems much more in tune with reality than calling them “the greatest invention of man” (and I’m steel manning and assuming you meant “latest”, not “last”). You can’t eat LLMs or live in them and they are extremely dependent on other inventions to barely function. They do not, in any way, deserve the title of “greatest invention”, and it’s worrying that we’re at that level of hyperbole. Though you’re certainly not the first one to make that claim.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/alphabet-ceo-sundar-pichai-sa...

Re: As AI gobbles up chips, prices for devices may rise

#304

Post by intrasight »

dartharva wrote: post #247
ta9000 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is it. Buy used Dell and HP hardware with 32 GB of RAM and swap the pcie ssd for 4 TB.

No, this is not it. It only worked when there were a small number of buyers for used hardware, who were largely enthusiasts. The moment it becomes mainstream you're going to face the same scarcity in the used/refurbished market as well.

There are lots of such computers to be repurposed. It'll relieve price pressure and avoid e-waste.

Re: As AI gobbles up chips, prices for devices may rise

#305

Post by intrasight »

kotaKat wrote: post #249

Does this mean developers will have to make their software work on hardware with 8GB of RAM and stop blindly assuming every person in the world gets a packed developer workstation like they do?

In an idealized market economy that would be the case. But it is far from ideal. Your individual incentive as a SWE is to write more code.

Re: As AI gobbles up chips, prices for devices may rise

#306

Post by vee-kay »

amiga-workbench wrote: post #81
SXX wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No dedicated GPU is certainly unrelated to whatever been happening for last two years. It's just in last 5 years integrated GPUs become good enough even for mid-tier gaming let alone running browser and hw accel in few work apps. And even before 5 years ago majority of dedicated GPUs in relatively cheap laptops was garbage barely better than intrgrated one. Manufacturers mostly put them in there for marketing of havi…

A dedicated GPU is a red flag for me in a laptop. I do not want the extra power draw or the hybrid graphics sillyness. The Radeon Vega in my ThinkPad is surprisingly capable.

Dedicated GPUs in gaming laptops are a necessity for the IT industry, as it forces manufacturers, assemblers and software makers to be more creative and ambitious with power draw and graphics software, and better optimal usage of available hardware resources (e.g., better battery and different performance modes to compensate for the higher power consumption due to the GPU; so a low-power mode enabled by casual user will disable the dedicated GPU and make the OS and apps dependent on the integrated GPU instead, but same/another user using same PC can switch to dedicated GPU when playing a game or doing VFX or modeling).

Without dedicated GPUs, we consumers will get only weaker hardware, slower software and the slow death of graphics software market. See the fate of Chromebooks market segment - it is almost dead, and ChromeOS itself got abandoned.

Meanwhile, the same Google which made ChromeOS as a fresh alternative OS to Windows, Mac and Linux, is trying to gobble the AI market. And the AI race is on.

And the result of all this AI focus and veering away from dedicated GPUs (even by market leader nVidia, which is no longer having GPUs as a priority) is not only the skyrocketing price hikes in hardware components, but also other side effects. e.g., new laptops are being launched with NPUs which are good for AI but bad for gaming and VFX/CAD-CAM work, yet they cost a bomb, and the result is that budget laptop market segment has suffered - new budget laptops have just 8GB RAM, 250GB/500GB SSD, and poor CPU, and such weak hardware, so even basic software (MS Office) struggles on such laptops. And yet even such poor laptops are having a higher cost these days. This kind of deliberate market crippling affects hundreds of millions of students and middle class customers who need affordable yet decent performance PCs.

Re: As AI gobbles up chips, prices for devices may rise

#307

Post by intrasight »

piskov wrote: post #24
johnea wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't see any of that. I highly recommend disabling javascript in your browser. Yes, it makes many sites "look funny", or maybe you have to scroll past a bunch of screen sized "faceplant" "twitverse" and "instamonetize" icons, but, there are far fewer ads (like none). And of course some sites won't work at all. That's OK too, I just don't read them. If it's a news article, its almost always available on another si…

Probably using reader mode by default would be less guttural experience (and you’ll have an easy fallback).

Used to work. No longer. What does work is archive.today. But even that is at risk. Some sites now presented encoded text when you view the archive.

Re: As AI gobbles up chips, prices for devices may rise

#309

Post by Numerlor »

walterbell wrote: post #292
doom2 wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has work begun on increasing RAM production capacity? My understanding is that these companies are specifically _not_ increasing capacity yet while they wait to see if the bubble bursts or not.

They decreased 2025 production, to increase memory prices, profits and their stock prices, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46419776

Afaik production of nand was reduced as some of the lines can be repurposed for dram that's more in demand.

Significantly increasing supply is also a huge multi year investment into a new fab that'd likely not pay out when the artificial demand breaks down.

Re: As AI gobbles up chips, prices for devices may rise

#310

Post by bratbag »

blitzar wrote: post #295
palmotea wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's somewhat alarming to see that companies (owned by a very small slice of society) ... can easily price the rest of humanity out of computing goods. If AI lives up to the hype, it's a portent of how things will feel to the common man. Not only will unemployment be a problem, but prices of any resources desired by the AI companies or their founders will rise to unaffordability.

> If AI lives up to the hype, it's a portent of how things will feel to the common man. This hype scenario would be the biggest bust of all for Ai. Without jobs or money then there is nobody to pay Ai to do all the things that it can do, it the power and compute it needs to function will be worth $0.

Or the value of everything non ai drops to zero, which makes the value of ai infinite by comparison.
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