Like the cartel will allow the prices to fall even if there was more RAM available.
That’s only a couple years from now, I can wait. Simultaneously, Chinese memory manufacturers are ramping up, so maybe a mega glut will develop and we can get back on track with the long-term trend of falling memory prices.
Just make more RAM. 🤷♂️
RAM manufacturers (there aren’t many) don’t want to invest in scaling up production. They know the bubble will pop fairly soon. Also, price fixing.
There’s an element of that, or at least there was an element of that. Right now supply chain analysis shows they’re ramping up literally as fast as physically possible. It’s so bad that even basic things like valves, piping, and ceramic components are back-ordered for months or years. A laser tool maker is quoted as waiting more than 40 months for parts now. This is putting supply strain on tens of thousands of components which we never imagined we would suddenly require in much larger quantities.
I think the good news is that on the other side of this, we’ll have unprecedented production capacity for RAM and storage. If AI continues to gobble up capacity, it’ll mean abundant and cheap inference. If it doesn’t, it’ll mean abundant and cheap RAM and storage.
It’s not that simple from the manufacturers perspective.
Setting up a new fab takes years. Usually 5 or more for a grounds up build. Less for an upgrade (1-2 years or so). Lots of in-progress fabs have been sped up and we will see more supply sooner, but not soon enough.
Making less HBM and more DDR RAM doesn’t make sense for $hareholders, so we are stuck with getting supply at a trickle such that the marginal cost for both is equal or it’s a contract with a penalty larger than any profits
A lot of data center stuff was on the ballots and quite a lot of it was rejected by voters. They may not be able to use the RAM they’re hoarding. If investors pull out of AI, they’ll have no choice but to sell it off to pay the bills.
I’m not real savvy on this stuff though, so it’s just an uneducated guess of mine.
they will just build where they haven’t been rejected, or where locals are more receptive of bribery, token offers of a new park or somesuch, or buyouts on their property
I read some research showing the average local voter was amenable to a $10k bribe. I think locals should be negotiating for electricity price caps. E.g. 10c/kWh. Anything over that is paid for by the data center owner. This puts money into the pockets of all locals over a long period of time, and insulated them from the demand surge causing price spikes all over the US.
gamer zeitgeist already forgot Google illegally destroyed a forest in order to erect a datacenter.
gamers truly have the RAM of a goldfish.
shareholdersinside traders
That’s a massively optimistic prediction if the AI economy doesn’t implode. It’s quite likely consumer electronics will be a faded memory (no pun intended) before they let people have their own devices again. I’d put it at 2035, with 2030 at the earliest.
If course if AI goes belly up, there could be a massive sell off and prices could drop as soon as next year… assuming there’s a global economy left to buy electronics at that point.
How would you prefer your tech apocalypse? Matrix or Mad Max?
If the bubble pops hard enough, the prices of those servers will drop so low they’ll become consumer electronics. Oh that RAM won’t fit in my desktop? Screw it, I’ll figure out how to put Linux on that rackmount.
(Wait, this this thing will only run FreeBSD? Eh close enough)I’m not sure consumers are ready for a 1kWh server as a home/office item
Mad max, I don’t mind going rouge to scrounge for tech
I saw the matrix when I was too young for it, and that scene of humans being harvested for energy was burned into my mind. Fuck no, never that.
You’re going red?
Well, don’t forget the third option:
- Terminator / “por que no los dos?” / all of the above
Based on how markets responded during the AI stock selloff last week, an AI crash may not actually bring the the broader economy.
Diesel prices vs stagnant wages will be the doom of the rest of the economy.
Maybe. Maybe not. We’re in uncharted waters and it could go a lot of different directions. There’s too many unknown variables right now.
All those data centers will need to be used for something. They’ll either figure out how to use the AI optimized RAM for VDI, or the fabs will switch back and only sell to data centers.
They’ll sell us dumb terminals and a virtual desktop subscription. It would be great for like 90% of consumers if the companies running it weren’t evil.
90%? You optimist.
RAM has pretty good shelf life, and it can be taken put from server racks too
By that point, we’ll all be converting laptop RAM like that one legend, recently. 🤷🏼♂️
Fuck these leeches.
tis ur inaction. u’r truly at fault.
Ork bots are really glitchy these days.
funny, TeamGroup hosts robots to automate their work🤣😂🤣
If the devs are reading these logs: your bot’s busted. ☝🏼
If the bubble pops, the US economy goes with it. It’ll be 2008 all-over again.
Hopefully not like 2008 all over again because this time I’m hoping (maybe coping) that there’ll actually be some consequences for those responsible. We can’t just let our economy get held hostage every few years by a few greedy assholes. Hopefully with lessons learned, and a bluer government, we can break this cycle. The economy crashing in 2028 would be pretty good timing for that setup.
If this is a bubble, it’s not a very impressive one. The dot-com bubble was built on companies with little or no revenue, and the Nasdaq eventually fell about 78%. Today the S&P 500 trades on a forward P/E of 18.7, below its 5 and 10 year averages, with Q3 earnings growth at 29.5%. Nvidia, for example, arguably the epicenter of the bubble, just made $63.7bn of operating income on $96.2bn of revenue at a 75% gross margin. So this bubble is built on organic growth and insane real demand. Google Cloud grew 103%. Azure 48%. AWS 39%.
Also, neither OpenAI nor Anthropic are publicly traded. They can implode and it’ll leave barely a ripple in the stock market.
1980s*
history is officially a poem.Holy shit, two cakes
nobody who paid for PC hardware in the last 2 years will admit it.
