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Is the RAM shortage killing small VPS hosts?

fourplex.net

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Re: Is the RAM shortage killing small VPS hosts?

#91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's probably what is going to happen, it's a strategic opportunity for the Chinese government here, there's a big market demand that can fuel their domestic production capabilities that nobody wants to take.

It would be a strategic opportunity for Intel, if they weren't run by imbeciles. DDR4 doesn't require the latest and greatest nodes. It's boring old technology. Even DDR5 is pretty boring. Intel could clean up fabbing DRAM (like they used to). But alas no. They're part of the semiconductor cartel and uninterested in the supply of DRAM increasing. Prices would drop and the fabs would only make stupid margins instead o…

Intel would be in the very same bind as every other DRAM producer who's trying to expand production today, only far worse because they have practically no experience fabbing DRAM compared to logic. (You can fab eDRAM on logic processes, but you'd only do that out of sheer desperation since the cost per bit is much higher.)

What they could do very easily in this market is bring back frickin Optane and hook it up to a modern PCIe bus with modern PCIe performance.

Re: Is the RAM shortage killing small VPS hosts?

#92
post #64

I don't know if you can consider Netcup "small", but their RS 4000 G12 ("root server", basically a VPS with dedicated/guaranteed resources) costs ~€31 for a monthly contract for any location in Europe without VAT included. It's 12 dedicated cores of a modern EPYC CPU, 32GB RAM, 1TB NVMe. I got that offer during their Black Friday sale and pay €25/month (price before VAT), plus the offer I got has a 2TB NVMe instead o…

So with 8 customers per box (AMD EPYC™ 9645 CPU has 96 cores) if they have single-cpu boxes, that would need 256 GiB RAM. CPU launch price 11000 USD. RAM will likely be another 10000 USD 20000 / 8 customers / 40 USD/mo = 62 months just to recoup CPU and RAM let alone other components. Weird, whenever I napkin math offers of any HW for renting, I get that I could buy it myself in 1-2 years of rent. Sometimes faster. D…

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Re: Is the RAM shortage killing small VPS hosts?

#93

I'd see Chinese RAM manufacturers like CXMT filling the void left in the market for consumer-grade RAM modules, I appreciate they face challenges (like lack of access to cutting edge EUV machines), but the RAM just needs to be fast enough and affordable enough for the average user for these companies to make significant inroads into the market that Micron, Samsung and SK Hynix are abandoning to chase the AI server ma…

Their scale is simply too small to affect the market outside China, majority of their chips will be eaten up by HBM3 production with yet unknown yield rate. They are forbidden to buy foreign equipment beyond their current process node, which is already obsolete, die size is 40% bigger than Samsung, not to mention lithography, the big 3 are using EUV while they are stuck with lobotomized DUV. They can start making som…

They're already producing 10nm DRAM with their current nodes, and they're working on producing 3d DRAM which may make node size somewhat moot.

Re: Is the RAM shortage killing small VPS hosts?

#94
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until recently I had a 4gb ram 80gb ssd+2tb hd VPS running debian in a Montreal data centre with a real use 700 mbit pipe to my city with a budget provider for the equivalent of $80USD/year. When fio speeds were slow they moved me to a less crowded server. I gave it up as don't need it and moved my personal sites back to NFS for peanuts a year and services to my NAS. The pricing, offsite storage for my backups, Canad…

Yeah, don't try AWS. I tried it once and now I'm stuck with $0 bill emails coming each month that I can't stop.

AWS did some weird security thing and it invalidated my 2FA. I can't login to my account to update my expired card.

I have $6 in charges and so now my account is locked. Lol. Fuck off AWS.

Re: Is the RAM shortage killing small VPS hosts?

#95

Out of curiosity, what advantages do the small VPS hosts offer compared to the big 3 (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud)? Customer Service? Pricing? Local Data Center?

The only advantage is cheapness, for personal use. If you’re a government agency or a company you don’t care about saving $14/month, you want a secure provider. And these hosts are not secure, you’re basically just on your own.

Without hiring/being a cloud expert, it's hard to be sure that you didn't leave some door wide open due to a configuration error. Both approaches offer more than enough opportunities to royally screw up.

Re: Is the RAM shortage killing small VPS hosts?

#96
If we follow events at high-zoom:

- first graphics cards

- then RAM

- now NVME drives

The result? PCs become hyper-expensive and also hard to assemble for mere lack of components, then we get to VPS and keep going. The computing that remains is mobile and cloud, "the only integrated platforms," meaning the absence of digital ownership for most people, total control by the giants.

Think of it in these terms: nowadays GNU/Linux is starting to be a sought-after desktop, nowadays we can self-host with levels of accessibility even for newbies that we didn't have in the past, and the interest in doing so for those who know something is stronger than ever. And here come the reasons not to do it, economic and also physical.

Does it sound like "flat-earthism"? Well, it also sounds very realistic, at least net of the effects, we can say it's conspiracy theorizing, but thinking ill is a sin but you often guess right, said a prime minister a long time ago with a list of extraordinary scandals behind him.

Re: Is the RAM shortage killing small VPS hosts?

#97

I'd see Chinese RAM manufacturers like CXMT filling the void left in the market for consumer-grade RAM modules, I appreciate they face challenges (like lack of access to cutting edge EUV machines), but the RAM just needs to be fast enough and affordable enough for the average user for these companies to make significant inroads into the market that Micron, Samsung and SK Hynix are abandoning to chase the AI server ma…

>market that Micron, Samsung and SK Hynix are abandoning to chase the AI server market

These three have collectively committed what, approaching $50B towards construction of new facilities and fabs in response to the demand?

The memory industry has traditionally projected demand several years out and proactively scheduled construction and manufacturing to be able to meet the projected demand. The last time they did that, in the crypto boom, the boom quickly turned into a bust and the memory makers got burned with a bad case of oversupply for years. With that context, can you blame them for wanting to go a bit more slowly with this boom?

Sure, the new fabs won't be up and at volume production until late 2027 / early 2028, but committing tens of billions of dollars to new production facilities, including to facilities dedicated to DRAM rather than NAND or HBM, is hardly 'abandoning'. They're pivoting to higher profit margin segments - rational behavior for a for-profit corporation - but thanks to the invisible hand of the (not quite as free as it should be) market, this is, partially, a self-solving issue, as DRAM margins soar while HBM margins compress, and we're already seeing industry response to that dynamic, too: https://www.guru3d.com/story/samsung-reallocates-of-hbm3-cap...

Re: Is the RAM shortage killing small VPS hosts?

#98
post #96

If we follow events at high-zoom: - first graphics cards - then RAM - now NVME drives The result? PCs become hyper-expensive and also hard to assemble for mere lack of components, then we get to VPS and keep going. The computing that remains is mobile and cloud, "the only integrated platforms," meaning the absence of digital ownership for most people, total control by the giants. Think of it in these terms: nowadays…

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Re: Is the RAM shortage killing small VPS hosts?

#99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ideally all cloud applications hostable on any platform would just provide the following services to clients: A. rendezvous services so clients can connect to one another, B. storage/retrieval of encrypted data where the host does not have the key to decrypt, C. transport of encrypted data which cannot be known by the host due to B above. > How can you trust him to have redundant networks You can't, so abstract that…

Your data has to be decrypted somewhere to be useable, how would that work?

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Re: Is the RAM shortage killing small VPS hosts?

#100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their scale is simply too small to affect the market outside China, majority of their chips will be eaten up by HBM3 production with yet unknown yield rate. They are forbidden to buy foreign equipment beyond their current process node, which is already obsolete, die size is 40% bigger than Samsung, not to mention lithography, the big 3 are using EUV while they are stuck with lobotomized DUV. They can start making som…

They're already producing 10nm DRAM with their current nodes, and they're working on producing 3d DRAM which may make node size somewhat moot.

Not 10nm, they are producing with 18.5nm and 17nm now, which technically already is in breach of US restrictions, the US government can blacklist them if they feel like it.

3D DRAM is no magic, it will only give them maybe 2 generations' breathing room if they got the required etching equipment figured out. But others will be doing 3D DRAM with EUV by then.

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