The RAM shortage could last years • Hacker News Board

Re: The RAM shortage could last years

#431

Post by EraYaN » Mon, Apr 20, 2026, 1:48 PM UTC

aeonfox wrote: post #410

rimliu wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well, then you are really bad at native and should not be comparing those technologies despite your claims otherwise (which make little sense).

> really bad at native Yikes. I spent 15 years developing native on both mobile and desktop. If you think that native has the same design flexibility as HTML/CSS, you're objectively wrong. By design, each operation system limits you to their particular design language, and styling of components is hidden by the API making forward-compatible customisation impossible. There's no escaping that. And if you acknowledge th…

The real disconnect is that the user doesn't really care all that much. It's mostly the designers who care. And Qt for example but also WPF let you style components almost to unrecognizable and unusable results. So if everyone will need to make do with 8GB for the foreseeable future, designers might just be told "No.", which admittedly will be a big shock to some of them. Or maybe someone finally figures out how to do HTML+CSS in a couple of megabytes.

Re: The RAM shortage could last years

#432

Post by throwaway2037 » Mon, Apr 20, 2026, 1:49 PM UTC

neutronicus wrote: post #426

throwaway2037 wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

High-level, I would agree with you. One thing that blows me away: I think I read that Northern Virginia, USA has the highest data center density in the world. Mostly it is due to demand from US gov't, military, and spy agencies (like NSA). How did they do it? In mainstream media, I don't see any news about a stressed power grid in this area. I guess the US gov't carefully coordinated with local power providers to con…

> I don't see any news about a stressed power grid in this area. That's because you don't live in Maryland. Our energy bills are through the roof and our transmission company is talking about rolling blackouts in 2027. https://www.thebanner.com/community/climate-environment/cont...

Well, they have done pretty well for 20 years of planning. Google tells me that AWS us-east-1 region (Northern Virginia) was started in 2006!

EDIT

The opening paragraph:

    > State regulators’ review of the controversial power line proposed to stretch across three rural Maryland counties will extend to at least February 2027, officials announced Thursday, a timeline that prevents developers from meeting the grid operator’s deadline to ensure reliable electricity.

I bet this is pure NIMBYism. Just this phrase alone is a dead giveaway: "controversial power line". LOL: What is controversial about a power line? Hint: They aren't, but NIMBYism exists.

Re: The RAM shortage could last years

#433

Post by bluGill » Mon, Apr 20, 2026, 1:49 PM UTC

adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #233

bluGill wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a lot of cyclical businesses that make money every year. It requires careful management. Factories can produce less than full capacity - but you better design for that. you can make money in the worst years without laying anyone off even - but it requires careful attention to details and not over hiring in good times as if they will never end.

the normal way to do that is by hiring/firing to meet demand, but in the fab business, you have 10s of billions of dollars of capex with relatively little opex. if you're running at <90% capacity, you're losing money.

That is the common way, but there are companies that manage without hiring/firing. (or they hire temp workers). There is a minimum level of capacity you need to run just to keep the lights on, and figuring out how to get that low without impacting your ability to serve the highs is hard. Memory manufactures have not gotten very low, probably for good reasons, but it is something they should work on.

Re: The RAM shortage could last years

#434

Post by croon » Mon, Apr 20, 2026, 2:29 PM UTC

stackbutterflow wrote: post #308

gtech1 wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't even know what human consciousness is. We can't even answer if we have free will or not. And you are proposing that AGI..is what exactly ?

The IQ of the smartest human, the perfect memory storing and recollection of computers, the fact that it never tires. I don't know if it's AGI but it's already something greater than us.

Is the IQ measured by tests created for and answered by humans in the training data?

Re: The RAM shortage could last years

#435

Post by u8080 » Mon, Apr 20, 2026, 2:36 PM UTC

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…

You could buy CXMT DDR5 modules like, right now.

Re: The RAM shortage could last years

#436

Post by AlecSchueler » Mon, Apr 20, 2026, 2:41 PM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #118

toast0 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amsterdam hosts a major internet exchange. It's not a bad place to build a datacenter and there are many. Northern latitude brings free air cooling, but also additional distance to clients. Lots of peers in AMS-IX, but not a lot of oceananic cable landings (one with two paths to the US, but most of the submarine cables land nearby in Europe)

Whether it's generally a reasonable place to build them isn't the percentage. The number seems to be ~3%.

3% of the global total does seem surprisingly significant.

Re: The RAM shortage could last years

#437

Post by renewiltord » Mon, Apr 20, 2026, 2:44 PM UTC

hgoel wrote: post #397

renewiltord wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah and exactly zero of those companies are European as a consequence. I think we won’t be taking Europe’s lead on this, thanks.

How do you reconcile this capitalistic zeal with how opposed to honest capitalism these companies are?

I reconcile that with the fact that Europe doesn't make enough DRAM for me.

Re: The RAM shortage could last years

#438

Post by flykespice » Mon, Apr 20, 2026, 2:47 PM UTC

veber-alex wrote: post #376

rekabis wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think this will smack the hands of developers who don’t manage RAM well And hopefully kill Electron. I have never seen the point of spinning up a 300+Mb app just to display something that ought to need only 500Kb to paint onto the screen.

As if native apps are any better. Books app on my mac takes 400MB without even having a single book open.

I find that an exaggerated claim, have you really checked they aren't using a webview or some other non-native runtime?

Re: The RAM shortage could last years

#439

Post by kylehotchkiss » Mon, Apr 20, 2026, 3:12 PM UTC

jeff_vader wrote: post #9

tim-projects wrote: post #5

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

Wait until China invades Taiwan.. (ok, it's not too likely, but what if?)

Does China need to take Taiwan? American protection of the island seems to be a waning concern. I could see that being a peaceful event now. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj94y87k2ljo

Re: The RAM shortage could last years

#440

Post by edb_123 » Mon, Apr 20, 2026, 3:12 PM UTC

HerbManic wrote: post #101

tomaytotomato wrote: post #19

I just checked my gaming PC I built a few years ago with 64GB of DDR5 RAM, its actually gone up in value, that is unheard of generally. Think I will scrap my PC and sell its parts. I wonder if there are any niche companies building decent rigs with DDR3 and 5/6th generation Intel CPUs out there, it is cheap and might be a business opportunity?

I am still running a DDR3 2nd Gen i7. 32GB RAM, it is surprisingly comfortable but I also dont push it too hard.

Same. Core i7 2600K clocked to 4.4GHz with 32GB DDR3. It still does its job as my stationary DAW, and basically handles anything DAW-related I throw at it with ease. The only issue is its lack of AVX2 support, and since this is required by Ableton Live 12, I'll be stuck at Ableton 11 forever.