This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Fuck Microsoft with an umbrella, but in this case it's not just only Microsoft, there are a lot more and bigger players on this shit dish
I wonder if we’re going to see a console generation with expandable memory for the first time since the N64.
Would make some sense if the current climate persists for a few more years. Sell variants with multiple ram configs at different price points, and when ram prices come down you can wack a ram stick/module in there.
Obvious problems: consoles usually use unified memory, which probably won’t really work with expandable storage, so would need a different architecture. Also, if they use non-standard dimms, it’s unlikely the manufacturers would drop prices of those modules anywhere close to the actual amount of theoretical ram price drops. And this would require cooperation with game developers to make games that work with different ram configs, and give a tangible benefit for having more ram, without breaking compatibility for the base model units.
You think RAM prices are ever going to drop?
Sweet, summer child..
Yeah, I do. For two reasons.
Buildout will start to slow down when the speculative investment slows down. Which is going to happen. None of the big ai companies are actually making money yet, and even if they were, eventually growth will start to level off. Investors are always looking for the next big thing, so once AI isn’t the shiny new thing, the magic investor money will start to dry up.
Even if demand continues as it is, more memory will be manufactured. China is already producing memory, and I’m expecting them to scale fast. Also other countries and regions are realizing how important tech independence is, so I expect we’ll see more fabs pop up at least in the EU and US. One of the big reasons we’re in this mess is that the Korean fabs have been hesitant to expand production because even they don’t expect this to last.
Poor Microslop
I went to my thoughts store and they were all out of thoughts. The prayer store? Out of business.
My fucks to give? Gave the fuck up and left.
My local prayer store burned down. The thots store is still in business tho thank God.
They're still planning on making a new Xbox? Sometimes I forget there's an Xbox console anymore.
If there was a decent governement behind they would have never left this reaching the point where the consumer market is left with nothing
Episode 7893 of corporations artificially creating problems to make profit by selling the solution. Just to then fail at solving the problem of their own creation.
Brilliant economic system. You can marvel at its ingenuity and just get lost in it.
They aren’t artificially creating this problem, they are inadvertently creating this problem.
AI companies need RAM and other compute components to feed the AI beast which drives up demand, and cost but reduces supply for everyone, including their Xbox and Surface divisions.
Given their enterprise divisions make vastly more money than their consumer divisions, nothing will change.
The problem is artificial, because 95% of all this 'AI' is useless, pointless, and a massive waste of resources. Nobody asked for it, and practically nobody is using it.
Even in cases where a chatbot is helpful, a small, local model is more than enough. Not a single soul needs a 50T parameter model for anything. Nobody on the planet uses AI image enhancement or item removal.
Almost all of this shit is purely made to inflate the bubble, and serves no other purpose. All the while ruining many other industries, people's hobbies, ease of finding factual information online, etc.
The problem is artificial, because it was created pretty much deliberately, for no particular reason other than profit.
It's a solution in search of a problem.
And it's a bunch of misanthropic sociopaths with main character syndrome who read scifi novels and saw the warnings as a guideline because "I'm the super smartest, I can implement it correctly, and I have to be first, because those other guys won't do it correctly"
But does anyone need ai companies?
The fact that the major players are still in business means someone thinks so.
Are they still 'in business' though? They're burning through money they don't even have at a never before seen rate. Just to make barely useful software that works 20% of the time at best.
I feel like it's the same as saying the banks and real estate companies were 'still in business' in 2008. Naturally, time will tell if it's the same cycle repeating. So far everything seems to be pointing in that direction.
Many companies operate without making a profit, sometimes it’s because they aren’t making enough money and sometimes they invest it back into the business.
Regardless, SpaceX is about to go public with a valuation of $1.8 trillion, and they arent profitable.
...640k ought to be enough for anybody...
They could just cancel all yet to be manufactured orders for starters...
Good, then they can finally be the kings of the shithole they're digging.
sits on his sbc pcs, sticks of ddr4 and stack of old hard drives like a dragon
Idk, maybe stop??
"We're going to crash in to that orphanage! AHHH!"
"Then brake..."
"OH THE HUMANITY!?!"
Reminds me of that time Samsung wouldn't sell ram to Samsung because they needed to compete with the demand from Samsung.
Wait, what? #OutOfTheLoop
Samsung is a Korean jaebeol. It's a massive conglomerate all owned by the one family, but each department operates very independently and is incentivised largely to maximise its own profit independent of the rest of the conglomerate.
The semiconductor/memory chip production side wouldn't sell the chips to the consumer electronics side, because it's more profitable to sell and feed to the genAI side of the business.
They could start manufacturing ram? Or fund startups trying to make ram?
Seriously is there no way to get out of having only 2-3 chip and memory makers?
The lead time on new fabs is massive like truely massive. We would have to assume this bubble won't burst for the next decade to justify it.
On the flip side ramping up production is what actually caused the current problem to a degree. The last time there was a massive bubble that caused a huge demand surge for memory. The various companies producing it all ramped up production. Then the bubble popped and 70% of the companies went bankrupt.
Its why the current companies are refusing to ramp production. They refuse to be fucked over by the bubble. And frankly I don't blame them.
As stupid as it is it's ALSO good for the consumer. Cause if the bubble goes pop and the few remaining big guys all go belly up. Then we are all collectively fucked.
If you think now is bad the fuck do you think would happen if one one few remaining fabs goes bankrupt and is sold off and split up.
Best case scenario is long term we have a larger number of more flexible smaller fabs. Realistically it just means we have even fewer companies making ram at all in the short term and prices go even higher for possibly years longer then they otherwise would.
So while yeah the ram companies are making money hand over fucking fist. They are also doing what is best for themselves and the customer. Shit just fucking sucks cause reality disagrees with the delusion that's being imposed on it.
The big three producers refusal to expand will hurt them a lot, chinese producers like cxmt got a great way in and have already started producing dram that works for ddr5 6000mhz.
Yeah, they're basically giving up future marketshare to make a quick buck. No long term thought whatsoever.
Honestly, we should probably just have a state owned and ran chip fab company. If the US is serious about security and/or innovation, that's what needs to happen. There's no way it's going to happen though sadly, but that's what should be done. >
Why state owned, when they can have privately owned and just funnel your tax money right into it, then retire to take up cushy "consultancy" positions on the board?
You cant just "fund a startup trying to make ram". Chip fabrication is probably the most difficult and capital intensive production process there is. What manufacturing more ram looks like is investing tens of billions of real money (not the you give us stock we let you use our GPU deals the AI companies have been doing) and then waiting 5-10 years before the fab you funded starts to make chips, and hope prices are still high by then.
That's why the existing manufactures are slow to scale up, they arent sure that the current spike in demand will still be there by the time their scaling up increases production.
It's actually worse than that, the whole ecosystem needs to be set in place, it's not just one company, it's the raw materials it's the logistics, the experienced people living in the area etc.
It's more like creating a city from the ground up than create a company.
Yes, but also cartel behavior. Those same 3 manufacturers have been found guilty of it in the past, and it wouldn't surprise me one bit if they were fixing prices again now. See this video by Gamers Nexus.
Its both things to be perfectly honest. Last Time there was a ram bubble. A bunch of companies all went belly up because they ramped up production too high to meet demand. Got caught left hold in the bag. It's why this so few companies now and why they can do the cartel nonsense.
And well, yes, they're very clearly doing cartel nonsense yet again. They also aren't entirely wrong in their reasoning. They're just going about it in a really s***** manner.
Cuz if they did ramp up production and then the bubble pops and the left holding the bag and one of them goes belly up then we're all f***** even more. Prices will then actually legitimately just go up even more. Which would just f*** everyone even more.
History has proven that ramping up production to meet a bubble is a stupid business decision. It also hurts your customer and hurts your profits in the short to medium term.
So you have a logical historical reason. A logical current business reason and illegal cartel nonsense.
There's just no reason to ramp up production. It just doesn't make sense on any front. It's basically purely knee-jerk reaction.
If only there was something like a chip act that the government could have provided that capital….
