alt Hacker News> Bottom line is that H100 prices are near 3 year highs, A100s are still profitable to run, B200 prices are increasing, no one has enough compute.
Then why aren't the hardware manufacturers of components needed by AI companies making plans yesterday to bring new fabs online to meet demand? That isn't a gotcha question, I genuinely want to know. The money involved isn't that much compared to the money changing hands between Nvidia Microsoft, OpenAI, etc., and it's not like once in-progress data center construction is complete they won't need to buy more RAM and GPUs, especially with any new advances in technology that might happen.
Inevitably someone will reply that hardware manufacturers don't want to be stuck losing money on a facility because the bubble popped and demand disappeared, but if Anthropic and OpenAI are going to "run laps around current big tech", it should be a no-brainer to increase production capacity.
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They are. They're making as many fabs as they can as fast as they can.
The bottleneck is ASML, who can only make so many EUV machines. No one else can make EUV machines.
Scaling chip fabs and chip equipment is much harder. And you have to understand that chip fabs go bankrupt if demand suddenly drops so they have to be more cautious by default.
A new fab will need to be filled with advanced equipment like lithography machines. They are the most complex thing humanity has every built.
There is one supplier of EUV lithography machines in the world, ASML. They are basically acting as an integrator for hundreds of highly specialized components manufactured to unimaginable levels of precision. Each of them has roughly one eligible supplier in the world who are operating at full capacity. To expand, they'll need yet another set of specialized and almost impossible to build equipment.
So the supply chain moves incredibly slowly, and the slowness is intrinsic due to the complexity and depth of the supply chain. It can't be fixed with just money. IIRC ASML is aiming to merely double their production of EUV lithography machines by 2030.