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The RAM shortage could last years

theverge.com

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Re: The RAM shortage could last years

#411

Post by tomaskafka »

HerbManic wrote: post #99
tim-projects wrote: post #5

The era of optimisation is finally here. I'm excited.

I said it for many years that OS developers need to focus on over optimisations. If it wasnt a chip sgortage it would be the ever slowing progress on chip scaling. But software optimisation helps all hardware and that doesnt drive sales. Linux however, they dont have to worry about that. Maybe it is finally the era of Haiku OS as the ghost of BeOS rises!

There is almost no way any hyper optimized OS could protect you from Windsurf re-layouting the whole UI 60 times per second because of badly implemented spinner, and taking 8 GB of RAM to show it.

Re: The RAM shortage could last years

#412

Post by ghighi7878 »

jeroenhd wrote: post #154
chintech2 wrote: post #23

I'm a bit surprised the article makes no mention of China's new memory companies. [0] https://techwireasia.com/2026/04/chinese-memory-chips-ymtc-c...

As the article states: >CXMT still trails Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron by approximately three years in advanced DRAM node development, and yield rates on new production lines remain the variable that determines whether capacity targets translate into reliable supply. Liu notes that lines launched in the second half of 2026 are unlikely to change the global supply-demand balance until 2027. The Verge article talks ab…

Most people don't need current tech. Ddr4 is good enough

Re: The RAM shortage could last years

#413

Post by tomaskafka »

subarctic wrote: post #189
michaelt wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am surprised we consider TSMC like a natural resource: isn't it really a combination of know-how and build-out according to that know-how? Have you seen how many states and countries look enviously at Silicon Valley’s tech companies, China’s manufacturing dominance, or London’s financial sector and try to replicate them? Turns out it’s way harder than you’d expect. Hell, Intel can’t match TSMC despite decades of…

With you on the first two, but I haven't heard of London's financial sector being a big deal, what's going on there?

They are world experts at legalizing the corruption profits from both first world and third world countries, just research HSBC.

Re: The RAM shortage could last years

#414

Post by tomaskafka »

RajT88 wrote: post #70
danaris wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you say is absolutely true, and is a serious problem—but the way our system operates does not allow us to correct for it. Anyone trying to spin up a competitor to TSMC would have to first overcome a significant financial hurdle: the capital investment to build all the industrial equipment needed for fabrication. Then they'd have to convince institutions to choose them over TSMC when they're unproven, and likely…

China is 10 years into what you describe, no?

Yes. And then taking down TSMC will be a nuclear bomb that wipes everyone else’s economy at once.

Re: The RAM shortage could last years

#415

Post by dannersy »

energy123 wrote: post #378
dannersy wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The usage of LLMs is continuing to increase ~exponentially I would like a source for that statement. Additionally, I want to know by who? Because it certainly isn't end users. Inflating token usage doesn't make it any more economically viable if your user base, b2b or not, hasn't increased with it. On the contrary, that is a worse scenario for providers.

> I would like a source for that statement The recent enterprise revenue numbers of Anthropic

So as I said, a self interested metric who also controls how many tokens it takes to get a desirable result from their models.

Re: The RAM shortage could last years

#416

Post by tomaskafka »

rzmmm wrote: post #16

It seems that RAM manufacturers are still reluctant to increase production. They know something that investors don't about long term RAM demands?

They are not happy to invest tens of billions for new capacities for Sam Altman’s “I will surely buy once I have money, pinky promise”.

Re: The RAM shortage could last years

#417

Post by tralarpa »

gadders wrote: post #402
Epa095 wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Renewables is the only realistic path to energy independence. Today's global situation should show the absolute necessity of that, even if you dont give a sh*t about the environment. Had we done more 10 years ago we would have been better of. The second best time to start is now.

Yes, we should definitely optimise for the most expensive form of electricity: https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/bjorn-lomborg-solar-wind-p...

When reading an article written by Bjorn Lomborg, you should also do the effort to read the cited sources. This is not an ad hominem attack, just an observation. Do it and you will see.

Re: The RAM shortage could last years

#418

Post by energy123 »

gadders wrote: post #403
energy123 wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their coal generation decreased last year. They're building on the order of 70GW of new coal while they decomission or underutilized more than 70GW of pre-existing coal. Meanwhile they installed 450GW of new renewables energy.

They also consume half of all coal consumed globally per year. They are in no way a green economy.

Not relevant to the question of which energy source makes sense to build in the year 2026. But sure China has many coal plants left over from 2003 when renewables was more expensive, nobody would dispute that this is a fact, however irrelevant.

Re: The RAM shortage could last years

#419

Post by throwaway2037 »

GreySeer wrote: post #210
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We live in a neoliberal world where corporate monopolies / oligopolies aren’t even remotely regulated. If you try to do even the gentlest regulation of companies people scream about communism and totalitarianism. Unless the regulation serves the monopolies by making it harder to enter the market. The thing that enables this is pretty obvious. The population is divided into two camps, the first of which holds the he…

Arguably a more efficient approach might just be to have a tax that adds on to corporate tax incrementally for every % of market share a company has above say 7-8%. Then dominant companies are incentivised to re-invest in improving their efficiencies rather than just buying/squeezing out competitors. A more evenly spread market would then, as a result, be against regulations that make smaller market participants less…

First, on the surface, this sounds like a terrible idea. Almost all ideas that I see on HN about economics fail with even the tiniest amount of common sense.

As a counterpoint: Look at very high value goods, like jet engines and MRI machines. I went for an MRI the other day and wondered to myself (then asked an LLM) what the international MRI market looks like. They are vanishingly small number of manufacturers and are usually dominated by a few international players. How are you going to apply this tax to non-domiciled (international) companies? Also, companies like General Electric, Mitsubishi Heavy, and Seimens are enormous and incredibly diverse. This idea falls apart quickly.

Re: The RAM shortage could last years

#420

Post by energy123 »

dannersy wrote: post #415
energy123 wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would like a source for that statement The recent enterprise revenue numbers of Anthropic

So as I said, a self interested metric who also controls how many tokens it takes to get a desirable result from their models.

Users are willingly paying for larger volumes of tokens. You are layering your own unproven interpretation onto that. I would have arrived at an opposite interpretation given the available facts. Models are becoming more token efficient for the same task, such as ChatGPT 5.3 versus 5.2 which halved the token count, and capabilities show a log relationship with the number of tokens since o1 preview was revealed in September 2024.
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