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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

#471

Post by vee-kay »

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.

Quick.. list your favorite software and tell us how much GBs of space they use after installation and how many GBs of RAM they consume when running.

You will find most of your fave programs struggle badly with 2-4GB of RAM, even on Linux.

Over the years most software programs (even on mobile) have become bloated and slow due to "new features" (even if most people don't need them) and also because it is a nexus with the hardware manufacturers. Who will buy any expensive CPU, more RAM, larger capacity SSDs, bigger displays, etc., if there is no software program needing all that extra oomph of performance, bandwidth, and fidelity?

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

#472

Post by vee-kay »

elthor89 wrote: post #146

If all manufacturers jump into serving the ai market segment. Can this not be a opportunity for new entrants to start serving the other market segments? How hard is it to start and manufacture memory for embedded systems in cars, or pc?

Good luck fabricating new microchips. It is a very expensive and difficult proposition.

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

#473

Post by 999900000999 »

MangoToupe wrote: post #136
999900000999 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, we can expect better from software. Maybe someone can fork Firefox and make it run better, hard cap how much a browser window can use. The pattern of lazy almost non existent optimization combined with blaming consumers for having weak hardware, needs to stop. On my 16GB ram lunar lake budget laptop CachyOS( Arch) runs so much smoother than Windows. This is very unscientific, but using htop , running Chrome/YouTu…

> I was only using 6GBs of ram. Insane that this is seen as "better software". I could do basically the same functionality in 2000 with 512mb. I assume this is because everything runs through chrome with dozens more layers of abstraction but

Let's not let perfect be the enemy of good.

I was being lazy, but optimized I guess I could get down to 4GB of ram.

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

#474

Post by ptero »

irishcoffee wrote: post #435
ptero wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That view is about 18 years old and HN was very different then. As with any communication platform it risks turning into an echo chamber, and I am pretty sure that particular PG view has been rejected for many years (I think dang wrote on this more than once). HN works very hard to avoid becoming politicized and not discouraging minority views is a large part of that. For example, I now seldom bother to write anythin…

> HN works very hard to avoid becoming politicized and not discouraging minority views is a large part of that. > For example, I now seldom bother to write anything that I expect to rub the left coast folks the wrong way: I don't care about karma, but downvoted posts are effectively hidden. There is little point of writing things that few will see. These two statements don't seem to agree with each other.

Why? Work hard doesn't mean fully succeed.

HN policies and algorithms slow the slide, and keep it better than reddit, but the set of topics that allow one to take a minority opinion without downvoting keeps shrinking. At least compared to the time 10-15 years ago.

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

#475

Post by worik »

hylaride wrote: post #361
andy99 wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not saying society will remodel, I’m saying the typical white collar job is already mostly unnecessary busywork anyway, so automating part of that doesn’t really affect the reasons that job exists.

Except people now have an excuse to replace those workers, whereas before management didn't know any better (or worse were not willing to risk their necks). The funny/scary part is that people are going to try really hard to replace certain jobs with AI because they believe in the hype and not because AI may actually be good at it. The law industry (in the US anyways) spends a massive amount of time combing through c…

AI can't do your job

Your boss hired an AI to do your job

You're fired

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

#476

Post by marcosdumay »

racl101 wrote: post #461
hansmayer wrote: post #321

I cannot stop thinking about the LLMs having this Midas touch quality, because everything they touch seems to ruin things or make people want to avoid them, for example: - Ghibli studio style graphics, - the infamous em-dashes and bullet points - customer service (just try to use Klarnas "support" these days...) - Oracle share price ;) - imagine being one of the worlds most solid and unassailable tech companies, losi…

We need a word for a Midas touch except instead of gold everything turns to feces.

We just need people capable of understanding it's a curse.

.. and maybe to ignore whoever can't.

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

#477

Post by worik » 

    AI companies are spending billions of dollars constructing data centers at warp speed around the world. It's the reason why Gogia says the demand for these chips isn't just a cyclical blip.
That makes no sense, except in the very short term.

The Datacentre building going on is clearly cyclic, the start of a cycle, but still a cycle. There are finite requirements, finite money and finite tolerance for loss.

RAM lead in times to ramp up production are long, but also finite.

This will correct, again. Hopefully in the meantime we learn to do more with less, always an innovation engine

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

#478

Post by piglet_bear »

RiverCrochet wrote: post #450
piglet_bear wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ha, I can only wish. Maybe true if you live in NYC, SF, Berlin or London. But most of these don't exist or help with socializing and making new connections where I live (medium sized European university city). Everyone here only hangs out with their family and school/university mates and that's it. Any other available events are either for college students or lonely retirees but nothing in between.

> Everyone here only hangs out with their family and school/university mates and that's it. If you can get a few people from 2 of these groups together more than once, you've started solving this problem. Of course keeping it going for a long time is a challenge, and you want to avoid always being in the situation where you are doing all the work and others aren't contributing, but it gets easier and better with expe…

Except that if you're not anyone's family and not in university anymore then you're shit out of luck as people in their 30s already have their social circles already completed and don't have space, time and energy to add new strangers when they barely have free time to hang out with their existing clique.

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

#479

Post by marcosdumay »

xorcist wrote: post #375
imglorp wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The CEO quiet part out loud was very clearly: "salaries". This will scale back when AI replacement attempts slow down as expectations temper (Salesforce, Klarna, etc).

The weird thing is that the AI companies themselves are hiring like there's no tomorrow, doing talent aquisitions etc. Why would you do that if the purpose of your product is to reduce necessary workforce? Why isn't that the first question that comes to mind for a journalist covering the latest acquisition? It's like an open secret that nobody really talks about.

To answer your questions (I don't think it's what you wanted, but people will scratch their heads after reading them):

On reality, they are hiring because they have a lot of (investment) money. They need a lot of hardware, but they also need people to manage the hardware.

On an alternative reality where their products do what they claim, they would also hire, because people working there would be able to replace lots of people working in other jobs, and so their workers would be way more valuable than the average one, and everybody would want to buy what they create.

Journalists don't care about it because whatever they choose to believe or being paid to "believe", it's the natural way things happen.

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

#480

Post by marcosdumay »

torginus wrote: post #133

It's somewhat alarming to see that companies (owned by a very small slice of society) producing these AI thingies (whose current economic is questionable value and actual future potential is up to hot debate), can easily price the rest of humanity out of computing goods.

Yes. To put it in slightly different terms, it's alarming that a handful of companies can price all of humanity out of computing goods. And it's even more alarming that those companies don't even need to be profitable.
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