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  • Hacker News
  • I fear that, whenever consumer-facing supply finally starts to return, the opportunity cost will be priced in. Consumer RAM may end up being nearly as pricey as HBM for a while, and I don't see any reason why it would ever go back down on it's own, unless there are entirely new fab processes that don't meaningfully overlap HBM.
    by Catloafdev
  • Pretty soon we'll see a renaissance in the tech that we gave up years ago or can still be improved

    - memory compression algorithms

    - alternative LLM architectures that don't rely on memory or GPUs

    - compatibility hardware (like DDR3 to DDR4 boards)

    - distributed computing improvements, both at local GPU and networking levels (SLI for AI)

    - GPU hacks to add more memory or support older architectures

    I'm personally looking forward to the new LLM architectures that don't require as much compute, e.g. DLLMs, which can be good enough for CPU usage but lack the accuracy of frontier models currently.

    When this happens the bottom will fall out of the GPU and memory markets, putting a glut of cheap hardware out there.

    Doom mongering like this never seems to include these as viable future alternatives, which is standard market adjustments, I wonder who the doom narrative helps? :)

    by SillyUsername
  • The good thing is that we no longer consider RAM is free and forced to develop more efficient program (hopefully)
    by smy20011
  • I can't even read this blog post because Cloudflare's "security verification" fails over and over again. The internet sucks now.
    by haakon
  • I called this almost a year ago that the way things are going that home users and pc enthusiasts will be priced out of computing. And the best thing for the rest of the world is China reaching on parity on node side and crash the market. What would be the prices today if Chinese companies were not forced to build their own chips.
    by xbmcuser
  • On the bright side, this will further accelerate the retro computing scene as people throw their hands up at the thought of building something shiny and new
    by shoobiedoo
  • DRAM pricing has historically been cyclical in nature, and the only reason for the current high DRAM pricing is that current AI inference is unnecessarily RAM intensive/inefficient.

    Interesting effect is that since DRAM production tooling has been switched from DDR/GDDR to HBM, we may finally see the proliferation of HBM in consumer GPUs/accelerators after the bust cycle starts.

    by YuechenLi
  • The big companies are insulated because they've locked in multi-year supply contracts with ram manufacturers - Microsoft, Google, Meta, Amazon (All on 3-5 yr contracts). OAI's deal with Samsung & SK Hynix is also colossal - locking up roughly 900,000 DRAM wafers per month, roughly 40% of world output (Stargate project).

    Apple got caught out because it had a shorter contract that ended in the beginning of Q3, and they've tried to source their RAM from Chinese CXMT who declined because all capacity was already locked in contracts. They've gone with a lesser known company Kioxia.

    Overall the consumer segment is completely neglected, companies don't care about end users in the current market conditions.

    by N_Lens

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The Painful Truth: The RAM Crisis Is Only Just the Beginning · Birbla