Live data from Hacker News

2027 memory capacity is reportedly sold out

ign.com

361–370 of 486 posts

Re: 2027 memory capacity is reportedly sold out

#361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s implied here is that devs were supposed to optimize for user resources, not for developer convenience.

Maybe we can have AI rewrite those programs and optimize for low ram usage

Maybe; if it's a Js / electron app there's a lower boundary though. The main issue is that the web (html/css) is the most versatile UX platform out there, nothing even comes close. You can't build most web apps' unique visual style in any other platform. Yet. Let alone have it crossplatform.

Re: 2027 memory capacity is reportedly sold out

#363
post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If demand outpaces supply then there’s a shortage no matter what you do. Demand is elastic. If the price of potatoes rises to $1000 / kg most people will switch to using pasta or rice for their dinner instead. There might be a shortage of potatoes at $1 / kg, but not at $1000 / kg. If my 7-year-old computer were to die tomorrow I would've normally replace the entire thing. It has had a good life, the newer generati…

> Demand is elastic. If the price of potatoes rises to $1000 / kg most people will switch to using pasta or rice for their dinner instead. There might be a shortage of potatoes at $1 / kg, but not at $1000 / kg. If potatoes suddenly became $1000/kg, everyone would agree that there is a shortage of potatoes. While sure, people won't starve and will eat other things, it doesn't change the basic fact that there aren't e…

This whole thread is a bad analogy. Take all potatoes out of the market, and:

1) Some people won't be able to afford alternatives. They will starve to death

2) There may not be enough of other foods, so even if people have money, people will starve to death.

There are years where corn or rice or oats are of poor yield. A couple of years of that, and canned food and stored food is gone. It doesn't take long for "we have no ", and things become bad.

This isn't a 3 month or year long blip in RAM pricing. If nothing changes, no bubble bursts, we won't see RAM become plentiful until 2035 at least. And a tight supply until 2030.

That's not a year of no potatoes. That's a decade of a core crop, with loads of calories, gone. That's "people are going to starve somewhere" trouble.

(I hate this food analogy, because in the West we've not seen a drought cause people to starve for half a century, if not longer. People are too complacent.

To speak to that, we grow crops where we get best value for the money. And best results. Corn cannot be grown in much of Canada, it needs a LOT of sun to mature, where as wheat can with a shorter growing season. Rice needs lots of water, where as other crops are more tolerant. Potatoes do well in certain soils. If there are no potatoes, you cannot just grow anything in that location.

Take away a core crop, and you can just lose those calories. Especially as farmers won't switch on the first year of a lost crop.)

RAM is quite durable, so I can imagine buying new servers with new CPUs, but instead of DDR5, it has DDR4 RAM slots. A loss of performance to be sure, but a good way to renew your fleet, and reduce the impact of all of this. But such boards aren't really here I don't think, not in quantity.

Re: 2027 memory capacity is reportedly sold out

#364

Hoping all these DCs and AI whatnots turn out to be a flop, so that we’ll get plenty ddr5 at sale price :D

even if they're a flop, you'll be told they're too big to fail. And now, you have to bail them out and buy their HBM instead of paying for your RAM

I hope that China makes up for the capacity that RAM producers are not willing to produce, so that the latter are sent back to the past (with no bailout nor protectionism)

Re: 2027 memory capacity is reportedly sold out

#366
post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If demand outpaces supply then there’s a shortage no matter what you do. I don’t believe scalpers are an issue in B2B; these aren’t concert tickets being sold to the general public. It’s clear you grasp the economic theory as it’s taught, but my comment was meant for you to question it. If someone is hungry you can charge more for food. The market allows and encourages it. But don’t mistake that for “willingness” and…

When demand exceeds supply you have two options: make the people who value those goods the highest compete with each other to pay the natural market price for them, or have a lottery with price ceilings. Price ceilings create inefficiency, and they create black markets. In a lottery, the goods are misallocated to a bunch of people who aren't getting the most value out of the goods, creating economic inefficiency. A b…

This all sounds very hypothetical economic universe. In the real world, rich people do buy expensive things and do nothing with them.

Re: 2027 memory capacity is reportedly sold out

#367
i feel like 90% of complaints about ram shortages i've read here could be solved by realizing that we mostly update devices for status reasons

we would collectively all be better off by being forced to stick to older devices, value software optimized for proper resource management, and learn that instead of reflexively accepting "problems" we can see them as choices

enjoy the rat race

Re: 2027 memory capacity is reportedly sold out

#368

Hoping all these DCs and AI whatnots turn out to be a flop, so that we’ll get plenty ddr5 at sale price :D

even if they're a flop, you'll be told they're too big to fail. And now, you have to bail them out and buy their HBM instead of paying for your RAM I hope that China makes up for the capacity that RAM producers are not willing to produce, so that the latter are sent back to the past (with no bailout nor protectionism)

You hope you and I will depend more on China? That won't fix any unbalanced market, it will move you another step towards a vertical structure..

Re: 2027 memory capacity is reportedly sold out

#369
post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is essentially what I did and it worked a treat. Get in while the getting's still good. Having a modern but DDR4 compatible system is not obly a great way to get up and running now, but will help see you through this crisis long term.

Reading this thread I am so frickin glad I built a monster DDR4 workstation back in 2021. It would cost me more to build out that computer today (dual 3090s, 512GB ECC, 3995wx). Ram was so cheap back then.

Very neat. What's the power draw on this machine?
Post reply on HN