Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yea mid-tier is a stretch. Maybe low-end gaming
Low end gaming ia 2d indie titles and they now run on toasters. All the popular mass matket games work on iGPU: fortnite, roblox, mmos, arena shooters, battlen royales. Good chunk of cross platform console titles also work just fine. You can play Cyberpunk or BG3 on damn Steam Deck. I wont call this low end. Number of games that dont run to some extent without dGPU is limited to heavy AAA titles and niche PC only gen…
As AI gobbles up chips, prices for devices may rise
331–340 of 536 posts
Re: As AI gobbles up chips, prices for devices may rise
#332I cannot stop thinking about the LLMs having this Midas touch quality, because everything they touch seems to ruin things or make people want to avoid them, for example: - Ghibli studio style graphics, - the infamous em-dashes and bullet points - customer service (just try to use Klarnas "support" these days...) - Oracle share price ;) - imagine being one of the worlds most solid and unassailable tech companies, losi…
> Where does it stop? When we decide to drop all technology as it is? It doesn't stop. This is because that it's not the "technology" driving AI. You already acknowledged the root cause: CEOs. AI could be great, but it's currently being propped up by sales hype and greed. Sam wants money and power. Satya and Sundar want money and power. Larry and Jensen want to also cash in on this facade that's been built. Can LLMs…
This will scale back when AI replacement attempts slow down as expectations temper (Salesforce, Klarna, etc).
Re: As AI gobbles up chips, prices for devices may rise
#333I cannot stop thinking about the LLMs having this Midas touch quality, because everything they touch seems to ruin things or make people want to avoid them, for example: - Ghibli studio style graphics, - the infamous em-dashes and bullet points - customer service (just try to use Klarnas "support" these days...) - Oracle share price ;) - imagine being one of the worlds most solid and unassailable tech companies, losi…
> Where does it stop? When we decide to drop all technology as it is? It doesn't stop. This is because that it's not the "technology" driving AI. You already acknowledged the root cause: CEOs. AI could be great, but it's currently being propped up by sales hype and greed. Sam wants money and power. Satya and Sundar want money and power. Larry and Jensen want to also cash in on this facade that's been built. Can LLMs…
Re: As AI gobbles up chips, prices for devices may rise
#334Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think living up to the hype needs to be defined. A lot of AI 'influencers' love wild speculation, but lets ignore the most fantastical claims of techno-singularity, and let's focus on what I would consider a very optimistic scenario for AI companies - that AI capable of replacing knowledge workers can be developed using the current batch of hardware, in the span of a year or two. Even in this scenario, the capital…
> A lot of AI 'influencers' love wild speculation You mean like Sam Altman, who repeatedly claimed AI will cure all cancers and diseases, solve the housing crisis, poverty, and democracy? I was going to add erectile disfunction as a joke, but then realised he probably believes that too. https://youtu.be/l0K4XPu3Qhg?t=60 It’s hard to point fingers at “AI influencers”, as if they’re a fringe group, when the guy who’s t…
Re: As AI gobbles up chips, prices for devices may rise
#335Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have multiple apps using 300 GB+ PostgreSQL databases. For some queries, high RAM is required. I enable symmetrical NVMe swaps, too. Average Joe with gaming needs wouldn't need more than 64 GB for a long time. But for the database, as the data grows, RAM requirements also grow. I doubt my situation is relatable to many.
I understand servers. But why do actually average user need more than 2 or 4GB? For what actual data in memory at one time?
I've got old linux boxes that feel fine with a couple gig of DDR3, but can't think of a place where that would be acceptable outside of that.
Re: As AI gobbles up chips, prices for devices may rise
#336Earlier quoted context omitted.
No just stop being cynical. The reason almost every electronic item is cheaper now than 2 decades back is just becuase the demand(and thus supply) is higher.
I can't tell if this is sarcasm or not. I'd argue it's more the result of the CCP bankrolling the Chinese electronics industry to the point where roughly 70% of all electronics goods are produced in China. The concentration of expertise and supply chains is staggering, and, imo, was really born out of geopolitical strategy.
But we don't see this bankrolling in absolute values. Rather, it's due to regressive taxation, low (cheap) social security for workers, and very weak intellectual property protection.
Re: As AI gobbles up chips, prices for devices may rise
#337For last 2 years, I've noticed a worrying trend: the typical budget PCs (especially Laptops) are being sold at higher prices with lower RAM (just 8GB) and lower-end CPUs (and no dedicated GPUs). Industry mandate should have become 16GB RAM for PCs and 8GB for mobile, since years ago, but instead it is as if computing/IT industry is regressing. New budget mobiles are being launched with lower-end specs as well (e.g.,…
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…
Browsing web requires more and more RAM each year but I don't think browsers are the main reason - sites use more and more JS code. With a hard cap many sites will stop working. Software bloat is a natural tendency, the path of least resistance. Trimming weigh requires a significant effort and in case of web - a coordinated effort. I don't believe it could happen unless Google (having a browser with >60% market share) will force this but Google own sites are among worst offenders in term of hardware requirements.
Re: As AI gobbles up chips, prices for devices may rise
#338It'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.
Re: As AI gobbles up chips, prices for devices may rise
#339Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not optimistic that this would be the outcome. You likely will just have poor running software instead. After all, a significant part of the world is already running lower powered devices on terrible connection speeds (such as many parts of Africa).
> a significant part of the world is already running lower powered devices but you cannot consider this in isolation. The developed markets have vastly higher spending consumers, which means companies cater to those higher spending customers proportionately more (as profits demand it). Therefore, the implication is that lower spending markets gets less investment and less catered to; after all, R&D spending is still…
Both didn’t run great on the “average consumer hardware”.
But I’ll admit this is cherry picking from my side :)
Re: As AI gobbles up chips, prices for devices may rise
#340I believe we're in the middle of a "perfect storm" and AI is not the only one to blame: - Right now A LOT of PCs are getting out of date because Windows 11 wants some new hardware that's missing in older PCs. - At the same time, smartphones were starting to use and need more memory. - Modern cars (mostly electric) have much more electronics inside than older ones... they're now distributed systems with several CPUs w…