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AWS raises GPU prices 15% on a Saturday, hopes you weren't paying attention

theregister.com

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Re: AWS raises GPU prices 15% on a Saturday, hopes you weren't paying attention

#331

Post by Schnitz »

xvxvx wrote: post #12

- GPU prices rising - RAM prices rising - hard drive prices rising Are we looking at a future where home computers are replaced by thin clients and all the power lies in subscription services? ‘You don't need storage space, use our cloud subscription’ ‘You don’t need processing power, stream your games through our subscription service.’ Game publishers have already publicly floated the idea of not selling their games…

Assuming you are a capitalist that is in it to maximize shareholder value then yes, that is the direction you will push the world in. Why sell me a car once if you can charge me a rent forever?

Re: AWS raises GPU prices 15% on a Saturday, hopes you weren't paying attention

#332

Post by fooey »

therobots927 wrote: post #52

The price shock that’s about to hit the AI industry is gonna be very fun to watch.

I keep asking our product team what the plan is when our API/Infra costs eventually skyrocket and our AI features become unsustainable, but there's absolutely zero preparedness.

We throw in all these cute little AI features to fill out marketing bullet points because they're basically free, but if they had real cost we're going to have no choice but to take them away.

Re: AWS raises GPU prices 15% on a Saturday, hopes you weren't paying attention

#333

Post by cootsnuck »

lukeschlather wrote: post #296
voxleone wrote: post #175

I think a lot of businesses don’t actually need cloud AI at all. Once workloads stabilize, cloud is mostly a convenience tax. Most business use cases (docs, forecasting, monitoring, support, control systems) don’t need frontier models or hyperscale elasticity. Efficient models running locally are already “good enough”. Continuous inference + data gravity + latency/privacy constraints make owned edge hardware economic…

I've been prototyping using LLMs for some borderline use cases, and the cost isn't really the concern, it's the reliability. Using less than the most frontier model seems irresponsible if it could mean the difference between 99.95% reliability and 99% reliability, and that's the threshold where you should've hired a human to do it because you lost more money on that 0.95% error rate than you saved on salaries. (I don…

Problem is that the frontier models are nowhere near 99% reliable. Orchestration and good system design is how you get reliability. Yes, the frontier models still are going to be better by default than open source models. But the LLM is still only a component in a broader system. What's seeming to be actually necessary for any high-usage worthwhile use case is making your model task specific (via fine-tuning / post-training / RL). I build these systems for enterprises. The frontier models are not enough.

Re: AWS raises GPU prices 15% on a Saturday, hopes you weren't paying attention

#334

Post by drob518 »

zelphirkalt wrote: post #305
drob518 wrote: post #154

The “hopes you weren't paying attention” part of the headline seems needlessly inflammatory. All I see is demand rising into a supply-limited market (GPUs and RAM). That doesn’t seem nefarious, just high-school economics.

GPU and RAM supply doesn't change over the course of one weekend usually though. So there would have been no reason not to wait until Monday or do it before Saturday.

So, what, exactly, is the correct day of the week to raise prices?

Re: AWS raises GPU prices 15% on a Saturday, hopes you weren't paying attention

#335

Post by esafak »

pjmlp wrote: post #209
xvxvx wrote: post #12

- GPU prices rising - RAM prices rising - hard drive prices rising Are we looking at a future where home computers are replaced by thin clients and all the power lies in subscription services? ‘You don't need storage space, use our cloud subscription’ ‘You don’t need processing power, stream your games through our subscription service.’ Game publishers have already publicly floated the idea of not selling their games…

I hope we go back into old days up to the late 1990's, and current generation of developers learn to target the computers users can afford.

Bill Gates used to use an average computer at work so he would have the same experience as users.

Re: AWS raises GPU prices 15% on a Saturday, hopes you weren't paying attention

#336

Post by lolstarz »

nradov wrote: post #285
kllrnohj wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on how much you play. geforcenow is limited to 100 hours a month, with additional hours sold at a 200% premium. This dramatically changes the economics ( https://www.techpowerup.com/344359/nvidia-puts-100-hour-mont... has a handy chart for this )

Yikes. If you're playing more than 100 hours a month then it's time to touch grass.

I'm not sure what the value of shaming people's hobbies is. 3 hours a day is easy if it's your primary hobby, and likely double/triple that on weekends.

Re: AWS raises GPU prices 15% on a Saturday, hopes you weren't paying attention

#337

Post by rvnx »

galleywest200 wrote: post #306
vel0city wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do wish these services would have an easier method to import/export playlists and collections. But that would make it easier to leave, so its not going to happen.

At least with Apple Music you can cmd-a cmd-c cmd-v playlists into a CSV file or something.

Yet you can't search anything unless you have a 100% exact match

Re: AWS raises GPU prices 15% on a Saturday, hopes you weren't paying attention

#338

Post by hexbin010 »

xvxvx wrote: post #12

- GPU prices rising - RAM prices rising - hard drive prices rising Are we looking at a future where home computers are replaced by thin clients and all the power lies in subscription services? ‘You don't need storage space, use our cloud subscription’ ‘You don’t need processing power, stream your games through our subscription service.’ Game publishers have already publicly floated the idea of not selling their games…

Next stage will be significant broadband/mobile price rises.

This is happening in the UK - 24 month contracts with annual 10-18% rises built in are the norm now

(The regulator worked in cahoots with the companies. A big storm was created during the high-interest rate period inventing/overstating a problem that people can't predict their bills because the rises were based on official inflation figures, which naturally varied. So the companies went: ok sure we can do fixed price rises...(At a nice high rate). This was sold as a 'win' because the rises are now 'predictable')

Plus the cheaper broadband (ADSL) is being phased out and replaced with fibre which for many people is overkill and everyone has to pay the price for that the upgrade whether you need it or not.

Three and Vodafone just merged which will mean price rises in mobile data too due to reduced competition

Re: AWS raises GPU prices 15% on a Saturday, hopes you weren't paying attention

#340

Post by Jeremy1026 »

SirMaster wrote: post #290
arcanemachiner wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is some proper data: https://pcpartpicker.com/trends/price/memory/ The same site also has price trends for CPUs, video cards, etc.

It's OK data, but the average can be skewed high by some vastly inflated options that nobody cares about. Most people will pick a ram spec and buy whatever is the cheapest kit for that spec at the time. I think the best data view would be what is the cheapest available kit for each spec over time rather than the average price of each kit.

Wouldn't historical data also be inflated by the gold plated Monster branded RAM sticks too though? Making the now to then comparison, well, comparable.
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