It's only "artificial" in the sense that getting this much money on the AI companies that don't even make a profit is not normal.
replyIt's actaully "super" in the sense super intelligence is causing the shortage
replyIt is not artificial constraint. The build out is titanic; the supply of AI compute is doubling every 6.8 months. To feed that much growth hyperscalers have to price everyone else out of the market.
replyTo put the AI buildout in perspective, it exceeds the GDP percentage that was put into the railroads or interstate highway system.
replyIt's not artificial as in "RAM vendors lie about real demand and refuse to invest in more capacity".
replyThere is definitely some exaggeration around timelines (2030 instead of 2027) and the industry has a cartel but most of it is real demand. From AI companies that don't have the money to pay for it and probably won't ever receive actual shipments but they locked down contracts ahead of time.
> I firmly believe this shortage is artificially produced and I really hope chinese manufacturers flood the market and make memory as cheap as toilet paper
replyI hope so too, but I'm afraid that if China ever blockades Taiwan, then current RAM/GPU prices will look like an incredible bargain.
My guess is it may happen after the election in November. Trump has everything tied up in a pointless war in Iran right now, so it would be a good time for China to make a move, before the 2028 election gives us a more competent government again.
reply>the 2028 election gives us a more competent government again.
replyNow that's a pretty brave assumption!
Anything would likely be an improvement over the current situation. Even electing a piece of silica (a literal rock) would be better than the malicious idiocy happening now.
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replyI don't think that an abundance of any computing resource is a good thing. Cloud, storage, memory: this idea that you can always get lots of it leads to all sorts of undesirable outcomes.
replyWhat? All a shortage does is ensure those with deep pockets control the entire ecosystem. Bye bye personal computing. The people with money don’t want you to own anything, they’d rather you rent everything from them. How is that not an undesirable outcome?
replyQualcomm CEO was talking demand for chips that can run a 100B param model on a phone.
replyThere is a Q about how much RAM these phones will need and the average selling price.
People are seriously addicted to doom scrolling. But what are they willing to pay for a phone?
How so?
replyPrice crashes, builders go bankrupt, price oscillates heavily, pace of improvement goes way down.
replyHonestly I think a slowdown in the "pace of improvement" might be positive. These days it feels like you can't catch your breath.
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