I was supposed to get a device with 64 gigs of RAM later this year. I just got an email telling me that due to the RAM shortage they’ve cancelled the 64 gig version.
What I’m surprised hasn’t happened yet is RAM ICs being recycled at the retail level. As in, you could bring in an old laptop or phone with 32GB of soldered RAM and it would be desoldered and sold for cash or possibly even soldered into a new device you buy from that retailer.
I wonder how close we are to that business model arriving.
How many 16k 4116 RAM chips can your laptop handle?
4116s are DIPs. I’d de desolder those myself for installation into my Intel 8088 luggable.
I want to be there when you set that up on the table at your next departmental meeting.
32GB of RAM from old hardware might as well be trash compared to 32GB of RAM made today.
What good is all that (slow) RAM if you’re stuck with an equally slow CPU?
Its not an equally slow CPU. These boards support Xeon CPUs that first launched 11 years after DDR3.
The implication is that there are users needing large RAM footprints that aren’t CPU bound. The hit in performance on the RAM isn’t significant enough to justify spending orders of magnitude more for modern DDR5 which is in short supply.
In computing history there’s precedent for this. Amiga computers had a small amount of “Fast RAM” which was extremely expensive, but the CPU could address a second bank of “Chip RAM” which was significantly slower but much much cheaper.
We could see this idea return in modern computers.
MY CLASSIC SCI-FI SOFT COVER BOOKS!!??!1
Edit: MY CLASSIC CONSOLE COLLECTION?!
The things I love the most don’t have RAM, or I already have them 🤷
Going to be fucking hilarious when all the western companies get fucked by China taking over the market they don’t seem to care about.
They’re wealthy but absolute fucking morons. The people who fall for the “they have money so they must be smart” are such gullible buffoons. CCP is much more competent than American oligarchs, running what could’ve been great with better policy into the ground.
It’s almost as if socialism makes for a better capitalistic system. It’s a lot better when the oligarchs fear the government rather than the government fearing the oligarchs.
I agree
Hmm I know China has a big push for AI as well, I wonder what their market is looking like.
Edit: https://www.chinatalk.media/p/how-much-ai-does-1-get-you-in-china Ah seems like their AI isn’t as big due to lack of access to western chips.
AI is the last great bubble.
And it, like all bubbles, will pop.
You are already seeing the people in the know flee the field.
You see reports that every company that has adopted it has at best changed nothing, at worst lost money on it.
Outside of the psychotic linked in CEO bubble, literally no one wants AI. And every day its generating more and more hate due to its halucinations, mistakes, and bullshit.
Its garnering massive negative attention for its use, and for anyone stupid enough to adopt it at this point (cough intel cough)
Its a dying star, and people are frantically trying to harvest the last bits of warmth from it before going off in search of new horizons.
I can only assume you haven’t used it for anything it’s good at lately. The truth is somewhere in the middle. Just like we still have websites after the dot com bubble, there will still be LLMs after the AI bubble pops.
The only stories I’ve ever heard of involving AI are told by people who, once again, are unable to see how their increase in productivity is not being met with a reduction in work hours. Unless, or course, “reduction in work hours” means they are being shown the door so a different idiot can do kore work for the same amount of pay.
Why does everyone feel the need to do as much as possible as quickly as possible at all times of every single day? And why are most people I talk to using ChatGPT to replace Google searches so they don’t need to actually think?
We all need to slow the fuck down.
worker productivity continues to climb ever higher, yet wages never grow with it.
take someone from the 1950s office and ask them to do the same amount of work that an officer worker today does, and they’d quit on the spot. especially since they’d be paid less today than they were in the 1950s as far as buying power goes.
No, I dont use it.
I get enough hallucinations and blatant lies from biologicals, I don’t need an AI erasing a mountain to consume the coal underneath to tell me made up bullshit.
Certainly, but hopefully you won’t turn on your PC and have 50 popups and 10 different buttons blinking and getting in the way of each other begging you to try AI.
Don’t count on China. They are going to invade Taiwan next year and the global trade embargo will be a rounding error to the destruction of the tmsc factories during that war. Or they will capture the fabs and prohibit export to the US. Loose loose for us.
“China, a country that hasn’t invaded another country in 50 years, is going to invade this country” said the country that invades a country once a decade.
The issue is not black and white like you people that barely got by high school make it out.
China a country that has been trying to unify Taiwan since the civil war they couldn’t quite finish.
When you live in the imperial core of one of the most militaristic nations in the history of the world, everything seems like a provocation.
Ironic considering much of the world was constantly in conflict prior to Pax Americana.
America has engaged in war the majority of the post world war 2 era. Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan twice, Iraq twice. And that’s not including all the proxy wars they’ve funded.
Don’t forget Africa!
Yes every instance was totally bad. The U.S. should’ve done nothing to counter USSR and their dominoes across the world. US should’ve just let every country fall into an authoritarian USSR influenced country.
Obviously, I don’t blindly think every war was good, such as Bush era Iraq. However, defending Kuwait was 100% defensible in Gulf War.
yes, because what happened in the past can perfectly predict what’s going to happen next.
not saying you are definitely wrong, but if someone wants to have a bet i wouldn’t bet on the side of China not invading.
Spoken like an American
Spoken like someone who is blinded by the Trump admin, obliviously naive. You must’ve been one of those that thought Russia would never invade Ukraine despite US intelligence.
I’m blinded by the Trump administration because I don’t believe American propaganda about Chinese aggression?
No because you’re using your current “America bad” outrage to justify other countries and their expansionism. Other countries can be bad, you know? Many just were unable to do so under American hegemony.
Technically and diplomatically, China and Taiwan are the same country
They’ve been going to invade Taiwan next year for the last 30 years
If they do it Trump strikes “a deal” to give them Taiwan. That’s my bet.
What is loose, certainly not your anus right? Or, maybe it is!
What’s your source for that. China has no more reason to invade Taiwan next year than they have at any point in the last 30 years
China has been wanting to reunite with Taiwan ever since the founding of the PRC. the reason has always been there, and right now they are more ready than ever.
keep a close eye on what Chinese military is doing.
Why are they more ready now than they were 2 years ago? Politically nothing has really changed I know Americans like to think that Trump is a big factor but he isn’t, since even he is just as bullish on China as any other US president has been and it’s not as if the military is left.
Well, our economy is collapsing from bad debt and inflation, we’ve alienated ourselves from our ally’s, we’ve relocated aircraft carriers and are starting new wars.
It’s honestly a great time for china to exert some force.
you really are asking me to do the research for you huh.
a quick web search finds me:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/dec/29/china-live-fire-military-drills-around-taiwan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PLA_Navy_landing_barges
and it’s not hard to find more.
Umm hundreds of Chinese ambassadors to Xi Himself. How many do you want I’ll start pulling them.
Back in my day, we downloaded ram. 8GB at a time.
Which was used to then download a car.
I believe that’s the plan for the future, too. Conglomo A owns all the RAM, but we can rent access.
I hate that this is the plan. Time to burn it all down
Exactly. No loyalty to this system. The only solution is to destroy it.
The reason RAM prices went up 4x is that a massive amount of not-yet-manufactured memory was bought with money that doesn’t really exist to be put into GPUs that haven’t been made yet, to be installed in data centers that haven’t been built, powered by infrastructure that may never exist, to satisfy demand that isn’t actually there, in order to generate profits that are mathematically impossible.
😎
All that to create Artificial Intelligence that isn’t really intelligent.
What do you mean?
Just walk the car wash!
On the bright side, at least the entire global economy isn’t ridiculously overextended on this delusional bubble.
The price crash is going to be great. Such a massive yo-yo. Most of the AI companies will just completely eat shit out of it.
Did you use ChatGPT to write this?
And they told me I was crazy for putting 64 gigs into my machine back in early 2021. I “only” paid about 200 USD
I bought a netbook (GPD Win Max 2) with 64GB of RAM last year. It was really expensive, by 2025 standards.
But now I feel like I have the power of the universe in my jacket pocket. Best irresponsible buying decision I ever made.
I got mine 2 (or shit, is it 3 now) years ago - 10/10 best laptop purchase in a long while.
GPD have done well for themselves in the small screen laptop space!
I knew somehow similar thing would happen in coming years. Alas, I had neither money nor requirement for that.
Same
I think calling it a RAM shortage is a bit incorrect. It is not like we are running out of raw materials or something else in the supply chain is broken. It’s shitty AI companies buying RAM that is not existing yet with money they don’t have. Unfortunately there’s no good term for that, I guess.
It’s called Imaginary Economics.
It tends to happen right before a capitalist system fails.
It tends to happen right before a capitalist system fails.
How often does this happen that we can claim this correlation? 🤔
About once every 350 years… With a sample size of 3… 😅
Better than no samples I guess!
So you’re saying which empires/systems exactly then?
Spain perhaps? The Holy Roman empire?
I was averaging roman, British and Mongolian empires, based on Google AI summary, so take that with a pinch of salt 😅 🧂
It’s about to. The very nature of it, means you can only have a sample size of one.
And when do you predict this will occur? When should I have built my nuclear shelter so I know when to start building it?
Too late for that I’m afraid. It already happened. It just takes a while before the [citation needed] folks understand that past performance is not a guarantee for future success.
Can I coin the term imagineomics?
Is this a thing? Because what comes to mind for me is “the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent,” which just happens sometimes
[citation needed]
I’m not holding my breath.
We’ve been hearing about an AI crash practically since the hype train started.
It’s the biggest bubble seen to date. It has all the characteristics, and it will crash eventually.
People can see the trends and see how it will probably break down in some way, the problem is that the market can stay irrational longer than we can stay solvent. It helps that these dipshits seem to have forgotten that money equals abstract resources and creating new resource issues that’ll certainly put pressure on them in a more direct way either through legislation or via sabotage of required infrastructure.
When has this happened before?
The term was well established centuries ago.
FRAUD
I like electron finance
Their exact location cannot be pinpointed; instead, they exist in a probability cloud where they are likely to be found at any given time.
That’s what this hype cycle is founded on. If I lend you $5, you have $5 you can lend further. Now, we each still have a right to $5, so we can lend that debt obligation again for $4.50. Now we have, somehow, a market value of $19.
Until someone looks, then it’s probably 0.
Supply monopolization?
Consumer fraud?
Sherman Act cartel market manipulation.
Section 1 of the Sherman Act prohibits price fixing and the operation of cartels, and prohibits other collusive practices that unreasonably restrain trade.
Unfortunately there’s no good term for that, I guess.
Market manipulation?
It’s a racket, plain and simple. There used to be laws against this sort if thing.
It’s a racket, plain and simple. There used to be laws against this sort if thing.
Keyword: used to
I hope that it was worth it, and that America is great again. Let me just check some news articles… Oh my
It is a shortage caused by artificial demand rise.
A mismatch between supply and demand is called a shortage. The source is irrelevant.
It’s shitty AI companies buying RAM
It’s greedy manufacturers selling it all to them in the first place and other market segments be damned.
I’m no AI fan but the manufactures aren’t angels either.The shovel makers and shovel sellers always get rich in a gold rush
If your boss offered you a raise for the same work, would you turn it down?
Not the same.
The money is fixed. You getting a raise means the money has to come from somewhere- which means the boss taking a pay cut or the customers paying more.
Still not the same, i don’t work for any of those manufacturers - and if i did i sure as hell wouldn’t care if their CEOs got a paycut to benefit the consumers. Won’t someone please pity the CEOs…
I’m referring to the relationship between someone offering you more money for the same work the difference of which gets passed on to consumers.
A few consumers are going to a business and offering more money for the same work. The consumer is the business’s boss just like your boss might offer you more money. You aren’t going to turn down the raise because it will hurt other consumers just like the business isn’t going to turn down the money even though it will cost other consumers more.
and if i did i sure as hell wouldn’t care if their CEOs got a paycut to benefit the consumers
I brought that up because that wasn’t going to happen. If you get a raise, your boss isn’t going to take a paycut to make it happen. The raise comes from the consumers.
Go ahead, make a lucrative market for consumer ram, see how fast china figures out how ot start filling that need :)
I’m fairly certain that spinning up RAM fabs isn’t super quick nor something that doesn’t require the most cutting edge tech.
China is definitely ahead of the US in a lot of tech, but unless they do invade Taiwan they might not have quite a deep enough bench.
Ram doesn’t require anywhere near the tech we need for processors.
They’re going this kind of thing for processors
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiUHjLxm3V0
Ram uses tech that’s way older. and for our needs, they can just stack smaller, low density chips
I’ve not missed a Veritasium video in a long time 😄. I’m sure that RAM is much easier to produce, but DRR5 is pretty complex still, and is what has been snapped up in whole by these AI companies. I’m actually wondering if we’ll see a resurgence of DDR4 motherboards, as those fabs are likely around still, just likely more idle if used at all.
And if they complain, just shout “free market” at them
My most recent hobby has been an old Suzuki Samurai that I dragged out of the woods a few years ago. It doesn’t use much RAM. It doesn’t even have fuel injection.
I’ve also been getting back into archery with my kid.
Honestly, the more I think about it, the more I think that making it harder to get a computer and play games is a huge miscalculation. If everyone is distracted by Call of Battle: Dutyfield then you have fewer bored assholes casting about for something to do, and if people can still play Factorio, you don’t end up with bored, autistic, organized assholes casting about for something to do.
AI’s are more important than humans now. I guess we should get used to this. Line must go up.
Soon it will just be a bunch of AIs buying, selling, and interacting with each other.
That is what we in the professional world would term the “poop” scenario.
Line must goes up until it hits a ceiling, then system collapses… but line go up again after!
Good thing AI sucks
I wish Sam Altman to encounter difficulties every time he had to use bathroom and increased chance of his phone fell to the toilet all the time.
. . . And then the market will be flooded with RAM that companies preordered and can’t pay for, because the AI bubble burst before it could be manufactured.
Hey, I can dream, right? And seriously, I would be quite happy if this causes an increase in dumb appliances, devices, and cars in the meanwhile.
Most of the lithography that is dedicated to RAM is being done for HBM modules, which are not consumer grade. So more likely it will end up in landfills.
Or new consumer HBM modules
Chip designs take years, so if there’s a sudden glut of HBM, there’s no good way to put it to use outside of existing designs.
That being said, a lot of LPDDRX is being produced for Nvidia servers and a few other systems. That would be useful. Doubly so if we packaged as LPCAMM.
My AMD GPU has HBM.
These are giant dedicated HBM chips that are on the motherboard, they won’t be going into any GPUs.
HBM are thinned die stacks which are assembled at the GPU periphery using silicon interposers. My AMD GPU has HBM. In case of HBM overproduction post-bubble we might see resurgence of GPUs with HBM rather than GDDRx.
When the bubble bursts it will play out exactly the same as it always does. The government will use money it doesn’t have to bail out the too-big-to-fail companies causing runaway inflation, rates will be jacked up to bring inflation down causing a recession, we will all get laid off, and by the time everything starts to stabilize and we have disposable income something will happen to make prices untenable again.
I hear here a lot that the AI bubble will burst. And I wish this was true. But is there any indication for it? Crypto and GPU bubbles didn’t burst. I worry that it’s just another Lemmy circlejerk.
They’re already hedging by trying to rent you products instead of selling
What if the unintentional consequence of hardware hoarding by AI companies is we have fewer devices being made that spy on us, like smart TVs and appliances.
The idea is that in the future your “personal computer” will be a streaming stick that you plug into a monitor to access your Microslop Copilot Windows 12 OneDrive Azure Cloud Virtual PC for $99 a month.
A terminal would require more RAM, not less.
