alt Hacker News2027 memory capacity is reportedly sold out
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My own PC died and now I’m locked out of my entire Steam library for the foreseeable future. A $2000 PC is literally a downgrade from what I bought 10 freaking years ago.
What the freaking hell.
This is why I'm so hesitant to use AI. There are other reasons (for example: the journey is the fun part, not the destination; and I want to learn not have something done for me), but the pressure AI puts on memory and storage is too much for me. I do use it occasionally, mostly to keep tabs on it and for small problem solving (how do I do this one piece of a query in MySQL, since I'm not a MySQL DBA), but that's it for now, until this memory/storage issue is fixed.
This will have general inflationary consequences for consumer products (phones, consoles, laptops, etc.). On top of current uncertainties regarding oil and fertilizers, I think 2% inflation in the US and Europe would be a very optimistic target.
Seems like we need a USB equivalent standard to RAM sticks. I have lots and lots of old (1-2GB), intercompatible sticks sitting. Sometimes you just need the space and not the speed.
Keep an eye on this page → https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/trends/price/memory/
Amazon has implemented a password system for RAM delivery. You're supposed to give a password to the deliverer before taking delivery of the RAM, and you're not supposed to send the password over the phone at all (although the Amazon delivery guy still called me and asked for it over the phone).
Hmm. Forget about desktops. I'm programming a microcontroller which is actually reasonably priced and has gotten all its 32Mb of RAM in the same die as the processor, but I'm getting nervous and having a strong urge to stockpile...
The boom cycle looks like it's going to last a while, but it never lasts forever. If the current memory manufacturers all conspire to not build more capacity, I'm sure someone else will (eg China).
How am I going to buy a computer that connects to AI datacenters now?
I saw on Twitter that TSMC has made 1B worth of chips for Apple that they cannot package because of missing memory.
(PS: It is time to let ASML sell to CXMT.)
I just bought 16 GB DDR4 for my (somewhat old) Dell tower for $120 + shipping from Techyparts.com. Looking around that seemed like a really decent price (but maybe I'm wrong).
I had previously ordered from Aeonfly, but they cancelled my order--likely because they wanted to raise the price.
This hopefully helps mitigate the risk of putting more production capacity in place, which the Big 3 were not willing to do so far.
AI companies would do well to realize that civil disobedience is a thing.
Take what's currently happening to Flock cameras as an object lesson. People are so fed up with Flock that they're cutting their cameras down en masse, sometimes wiping them clean from entire jurisdictions. Tens of thousands of other people in those jurisdictions are cheering them on, even offering alibis for them before they've been caught. Law enforcement doesn't seem too keen to catch them either. You absolutely can be so hated that the law will not be enforced to protect your property.
If AI companies don't slow down and build some good will, AI data centres are probably at risk. They'd probably have been targeted before Flock were they not harder targets. A higher degree of cooperation and organization will be required to sabotage them, but it would be foolish to believe it won't eventually happen.
Monopolizing memory production for another year suggests that lessons have not been learned, the mad build-out will continue, and we're headed for some truly crazy stuff.
Turns out AI-maxxing implicates citizens-minning.
Yup... And in 2021(5 years ago now) I got 64gb ddr4 for 120 bucks, second hand with a 6 month warranty. I felt like I hit the jackpot then, now that price seems like literal peanuts. I can't wait for the AI bubble to burst.
All of you that are excited for the m5 mac studios are going to be so bummed.
We are hammering our foot by investing in AI at this point.
AI grows and grows and becomes god and kills us all.
How did it all start? Oh we invested all our money in AI.
Queue the blog posts:
We rewrote all our Python code in Go because the RAMs too damn high!
It was already reported that new RAM production wouldn't be available until at least the end of 2027, and when it does come back online there'll be a backlog of orders, so prices and availability won't be stable until at least 2029. That's assuming there aren't more global economic and political issues delaying it.
But Micron is overpriced and new capacity is about to come online right? Right???
China RAM entered the US market in quantity a week ago west coast. It’s slow buggy trash but it’ll cool the market until failure rates are known. Europe got its first shipment 3 weeks ago.
So.. memory futures? Sounds like a signal of an efficient and mature market to me, manufacturers sell their stock way beforehand, keep production steady, and wholesalers can hold stock and absorb risk in exchange of profit.
Nothing prevents wholesalers from selling their memory or memory futures at a loss, as that is a risk that is justified by equal possibiltiy of the memory appreciating in excess of inflation.
Honest question: is this the first time this thing happens?
Besides the AI craze, to me it sounds kinda reasonable. Most large buyers (apple, public clouds, OEMs) do forecasting and orders in advance, right?
The fact that consumer-level DDR4 is getting more expensive makes absolutely no market sense to me.
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Why AI companies wont build their own RAM but prefer to pay multiple times more than what they sold pre AI boom? (And ram business was still profitable). They already make custom processors
Lame: Fight the war on general computation by spending decades pushing elaborate technical standards for locking down bootloaders, try to convince society why we need device attestation and hardware-bound keys, gradually establish devices without root access as the norm, get into constant skirmishes with free software and privacy advocates, get drawn into unpleasant political quagmires, etc etc
Game: Just buy up all the RAM...
One unit of HBM capacity consumes roughly the wafer capacity that could have produced three units of DDR5 capacity. HBM dies need to be larger than ordinary DRAM dies because of how the final packaging works.
> As discussed previously, the ramp of HBM production will constrain industry supply growth in non-HBM products. Industrywide, HBM3E consumes approximately three times the wafer supply as D5 to produce a given number of bits in the same technology node. With increased performance and packaging complexity, across the industry, we expect this trade ratio for HBM4 to be even higher than the trade ratio for HBM3E. We anticipate strong HBM demand due to AI, combined with increasing silicon intensity of the HBM roadmap, to contribute to tight supply conditions for DRAM across all end markets. As the memory industry is still recovering from the challenging environment in 2023, this tight supply environment will help drive the considerable improvements in profitability and ROI (return on investment) that are needed to enable the investments required to support future growth.
https://investors.micron.com/static-files/4550f98c-1054-4847...