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The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics

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Re: The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics

#571

Post by [deleted] »

actionfromafar wrote: post #361
SiempreViernes wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That one was caused by manipulation by politicians, not market forces. Funny how you then go on to explain it was market _actors_ that drove the politicians to act, but that this is nevertheless totally not an example of market _forces_.

Market forces are usually meant in the spherical cow sense, not that the cow has politicians on their pockets. Here it's useful to point out that free markets can't exist without an external force keeping them in check.

[deleted]

Re: The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics

#572

Post by gib444 »

mjh2539 wrote: post #454
gib444 wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And AI causing electricity infrastructure price rises for domestic consumers - aka forced indirect investment in AI companies. Oops, sorry, wrongthink, I mean "due to the war in the Middle East", even though a large majority of gas in the UK comes from elsewhere (gas and electricity prices in the UK are supposedly very tightly coupled ?)

If Malaysia can't obtain 30% of its fuel because of the Hormuz closure, they don't just reduce their consumption of fuel by 30%, but make up for most of the deficit by buying it for a higher price somewhere else. But the fuel they buy to make up for the deficit simply means there's less fuel for other folks buying in that market to purchase, which drives up prices. This process repeats until prices stabilize worldwid…

What's fuel (petrol/diesel) got to do with it? (By gas I meant natural gas, not petrol)

Re: The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics

#573

Post by joshuaissac »

joe_mamba wrote: post #563
ijidak wrote: post #550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to learn more about how they've been sabotaged. What happened?

Google US semiconductor sanctions on China. Basically US (and allies pressed by US) aren't allowed to export their most cutting edge semiconductor tools and materials to China, so China can only make chips using older-gen tools on older process nodes than western-aligned competitors. The other part of the sabotage is that western companies then have restrictions on what chips they're allowed to buy from China. IDK if…

> IDK if RAM chips are also on that list.

Apple cancelled their deal with YMTC (Chinese RAM company) after the US sanctioned the latter. I don't know whether that is directly because of the sanctions, or indirectly (e.g. if Apple thought sanctions would hamper YMTC's ability to supply the goods), but they have had the same effect.

https://www.lightreading.com/business-management/chinese-chi...

https://www.business-standard.com/article/international/appl...

Re: The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics

#574

Post by wing-_-nuts »

inglor_cz wrote: post #560
wing-_-nuts wrote: post #546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uhuh, That's why we're #1 in the world in conditions uncorrelated with obesity like infant mortality right?

Does this concern an average American, or mostly the poorest quintile of the population? We're not discussing whether your healthcare system is friendly to the poor; everyone knows that the US is not particularly kind to its poor, in any aspect. The original topic was if its overall quality declined in the last decade for the average American , who is not poor .

If it's bad enough 'for the poor' that it's pulling down the average for everyone that's a pretty damning indictment of the system overall is it not?

I'll be honest. I really tire of the mental gymnastics people put themselves through to make excuses for the American system. I don't think we have anything more to discuss here.

Re: The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics

#575

Post by Eric_WVGG »

swatcoder wrote: post #19
LeifCarrotson wrote: post #15

What was most surprising about all this to me was this line: > So modern DRAM manufacturing is an extraordinarily complex and expensive process. Building a single state-of-the-art DRAM fabrication facility, a “fab,” will cost you about $15 to $20 billion; acquiring all the necessary equipment, like lithography tools and etching machines, will cost you another few billion; and then it’ll take you a few years of produc…

And what happens if the market settles back down or the leading memory tech pivots away from what you invested all this capital and time chasing? You'd need a very strong, very particular forecast to make such a costly bet. And conversely, it may say something about their internal forecasts that they're not making the bet.

I’m of the (possibly unpopular) opinion that ~80% of these new data centers are never going to see the light of day.

None of the economics or supply needs of these things make any sense. The water is generally not there, electric transformers are next to impossible to acquire. I just read about one in Utah that’s supposed to be 2.5x the size of Manhattan?? https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/933687/u...

I could be wrong, but I think a lot of this was planned by software guys who are used to brute-forcing their way through “impossible” problems. But those were software problems, where the limits are mostly theoretical. In the world of atoms, limitations are real.

Re: The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics

#576

Post by m4x »

mrandish wrote: post #570
m4x wrote: post #531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't one of the points of the article that memory manufacturers leave demand unmet for their own financial safety? In which case, nobody (including Apple) is paying close to manufacturing costs. There isn't enough memory to go around and prices are extremely inflated. You're talking about the "best" things Apple could do with their money, in terms of investment returns, but I think that misses the point that Apple l…

> that misses the point that Apple literally can't buy enough memory at any price. They can't buy enough today . I think I already explained this as well as I can in my second paragraph above. You seem to not be appreciating that every decision in this business has a 3.5+ year latency. And 3.5 years ago when Apple made the decisions they're living with now, Micron was selling their furniture (euphemistically speaking…

I'm not sure what you think I'm saying, but in case it needs clarifying, it is not that Apple should have built fabs 3.5 years ago, or today, or at any other point in time.

What I did say is that in a hypothetical world where Apple did invest in their own fabs, they'd have much better access to memory and could be selling machines with vastly more memory than their competitors today. Should they be doing this? I'm making no statement either way.

> a very wise man took me to dinner and counseled me to never post mortem my decisions on the outcomes, but only on the decision process

I appreciate this wisdom on one hand, but on the other it's comically misguided. You have no way to evaluate the decision process if the outcomes are not considered. Don't post mortem your decisions in a way that leads to self-blame or paralysis, but certainly post mortem them to see whether the process was suboptimal.

In this case, any board laughing at the idea of investment in memory 3.5 years ago should instead have been looking more closely at likely memory needs over the then-near-future, given the quite obvious upcoming demand for GPU memory. There's no magic bullet and they wouldn't have been able to make perfect decisions regardless, but clearly the process they followed at that time was suboptimal.

Re: The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics

#577

Post by mannanj »

Ray20 wrote: post #155
fakedang wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And farms are failing. Climate change will accelerate that, so there will be food shortages within a few years. This is the key one to watch out for. Prior food-based conflicts have sparked revolutions and civil wars. People can tolerate not having electricity, people can tolerate not having internet, people can tolerate not having gas. But a lack of food, due to a wheat shortage which in turn was sparked by Siberi…

> Climate change will accelerate that The climate is changing in a positive direction for farming. Farming is easier now than ever before. There's literally no chance of food shortages. Unless, of course, there's another attempt at building socialism.

You cannot state a contrary opinion like that here without kicking off the tribalism mentality. Yes, hacker news internet nerds have that. You can observe it in the wild above by the incessant down votes.

Re: The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics

#578

Post by mannanj »

fakedang wrote: post #122
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #46

It's impressive that somehow, as if by coincidence, we're seeing the biggest inflationary drivers for decades, perhaps for centuries, all happening simultaneously. The Iran war is spiking the price of oil and will likely cause shortages of pretty much everything if it isn't ended. The Ukraine war is helping with that by destroying Russian refining capacity. The memory shortage is set to do the same to consumer electr…

> And farms are failing. Climate change will accelerate that, so there will be food shortages within a few years. This is the key one to watch out for. Prior food-based conflicts have sparked revolutions and civil wars. People can tolerate not having electricity, people can tolerate not having internet, people can tolerate not having gas. But a lack of food, due to a wheat shortage which in turn was sparked by Siberi…

So where are all these rich bunkers and storage caches again? Isn't there like a map of these things, to help them preserve their thousands of lbs of food for their future generations of course. No need to have backup feed for the starving masses.

Re: The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics

#579

Post by cindyllm »

mannanj wrote: post #578
fakedang wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And farms are failing. Climate change will accelerate that, so there will be food shortages within a few years. This is the key one to watch out for. Prior food-based conflicts have sparked revolutions and civil wars. People can tolerate not having electricity, people can tolerate not having internet, people can tolerate not having gas. But a lack of food, due to a wheat shortage which in turn was sparked by Siberi…

So where are all these rich bunkers and storage caches again? Isn't there like a map of these things, to help them preserve their thousands of lbs of food for their future generations of course. No need to have backup feed for the starving masses.

[dead]

Re: The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics

#580

Post by WalterBright »

samiv wrote: post #552
WalterBright wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The middle class emerged in colonial America. During the 1800s, scores of millions of people came to the US with little more than a suitcase. They went into the middle class, and some into the wealthy. We know this because: 1. Average height increased throughout the 1800s 2. Life expectancy increased throughout the 1800s 3. Plenty of photos and paintings of towns that consist of middle class housing > The system divi…

Most employees have absolutely Zero leverage. Ask any Amazon warehouse worker how much liberties they have and how much in practice they can negotiate. Just because some employees have had some leverage doesn't change the underlying power dynamics between employers and employees. In fact we're now seeing this play out in software as well with the AI hype train and I expect a reality check to hit many people previousl…

> Most employees have absolutely Zero leverage.

They can walk away at any moment and there's absolutely nothing Amazon can do about it.

Amazon pays significantly above minimum wage. Why don't they pay minimum wage?

Amazon benefits to warehouse workers include heavily subsidized health care (starting at $5 per week), up to 20 weeks of paid parental leave, prepaid college tuition, and a 401(k) company match.

That's the leverage workers have.

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