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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

#351

Post by mmsimanga »

lysace wrote: post #283
mmsimanga wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is even worse for those of us in Africa. The equivalent phone I can buy for USD$150-250 back home is absolutely shocking in terms of how bad it is in ram ,disk space and often an outdated version of Android. I buy my phones on Amazon US which delivers and I get a much better phone for the same price range.

In that price range paid bundling of pre-installed apps become a major economi driver. Those installs are worth a lot more in the US.

Ah that makes sense. Thanks for the insight.

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

#352

Post by cons0le »

zahlman wrote: post #48
vee-kay wrote: post #38

For 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.,…

I'm reading this thread on an 11-year-old desktop with 8GB of RAM and not feeling any particular reason to upgrade, although I've priced it out a few times just to see. Mint 22.x doesn't appear to be demanding any more of my machine than Mint 20.x. Neither is Firefox or most websites, although YouTube chat still leaks memory horrendously. (Of course, download sizes have increased.)

This is a text based website though. It should be fast on everything. Most websites are a bloated mess, and a lot slower

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

#353

Post by Workaccount2 »

koito17 wrote: post #173
vee-kay wrote: post #38

For 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.,…

This is what I find a bit alarming, too. My M3 Max MacBook Pro takes 2 full seconds to boot Slack, a program that used to literally be an IRC client. Many people still believe client-side compute is cheap and worrying about it is premature optimization. Of course, some performance-focused software (e.g. Zed) does start near-instantly on my MacBook, and it makes other software feel sluggish in comparison. But this is…

Software has an unfortunate attribute (compared to hardware) where it's largely bound by what users will tolerate as opposed to what practically is possible.

Imagine Ford, upon the invention of push-button climate controls, just layered those buttons on top of the legacy sliders, using arms and actuators so pressing "Heat Up" moved an actuating arm that moved that underlying legacy "Heat" slider up. Then when touch screens came about, they just put a tablet over those buttons (which are already over the sliders), so selecting "Heat Up" fired a solenoid that pressed the "Heat Up" button that moved the arm to slide the "Heat Up" slider.

Ford, or anyone else doing hardware, would never implement this or it's analog, for a long obvious list of reasons.

But in software? That's just Thursday. Hence software has seemed stuck in time for 30 years while processing speed has done 10,000x. No need to redesign the whole system, just type out a few lines of "actuating arm" code.

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

#354

Post by Neywiny »

nubinetwork wrote: post #265
SunlitCat wrote: post #220

I really wonder when the point will be reached at which the South Korean government steps in and starts to take a closer look at the growing long-term supply commitments that companies like OpenAI are indirectly driving with major memory manufacturers such as SK hynix and Samsung Electronics. Allocating a very large share of advanced memory production, especially HBM and high-end DRAM, which are critical for almost a…

> South Korean government It's not like it's their fault that micron pulled out of the market... Edit: maybe someone should consider sweet-talking kioxia into making dram chips?

Micron isn't pulling out of the market. They discounted Crucial. Those are very different things. They pulled out of the direct to consumer market, not DRAM

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

#355

Post by vee-kay »

cellular wrote: post #345
vee-kay wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Window…

CPU affinity? I haven't been able to change priority in task manager since window 8 i think. Cpu affinity seems only to allow which cores get assigned...not really good management.

Process Lasso worked for me few years back when I needed to do CPU cores restriction for an old program.

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

#356

Post by cons0le »

vee-kay wrote: post #38

For 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.,…

>It is as if the industry has decided to focus on AI and nothing else.

I mean, isn't this exactly what happened? I could be wrong about this, but didn't ycombinator themselves say they weren't accepting any ideas that didn't include AI?

80 percent of the jobs people reach out to me for are shady AI jobs that I have no interest in. Hiring in other non-AI jobs seems to have slowed.

When I talk to "computer" people, they only want to talk about AI. I wish I could quit computers and never look at a screen again.

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

#357

Post by UltraSane »

abenga wrote: post #186
UltraSane wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Supply should increase as a response to higher prices, this bringing prices down.

How does this square with some companies just stopping sales to consumers altogether?

They aren't making less though.

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

#358

Post by cubefox »

Imustaskforhelp wrote: post #223
marcyb5st wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That assumes that supply production means can scale up instantly. Fabs for high end chips don't and usually take years from foundations being laid to First chip out of the production line. In the interim, yeah, they will force prices up. Additionally those fabs cost billions. Given the lead time I mentioned a lot of companies won't start building them right away since the risk of demand going away is high and the ROI…

I think one of these fab compaies have already invested/talked about investing 700 BILLION dollars (I think it was micron? but I am not sure) I have heard that in the fab making industry, things moves in cycles and this cycle has been repeated so many times and the reason that ram is so expensive was that at one time during covid there was shortage so they built more factories and they built so so many that these com…

The article said a new RAM factory will open in 2027.

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

#360

Post by parrellel »

Ekaros wrote: post #348
parrellel wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where have you seen 4 GB cut it in the last decade? 2 GB was enough to make Vista chug in 2007? 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.

My entire question is why can't whatever users do on computers actually work on 2GB of RAM? Like what is the true reason we are in state that it is for some reason not possible? 2 GB is huge amount information. So surely it should be enough for almost all normal users, but for some reason it is not.

Ah! Yes, I agree.
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