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Or the 90% are charged absurd markup because clearly they can deliver the hardware for 10% use-case for 1000$ and still make money on top but they would rather
by zeusk 2y ago
Or the 90% are charged absurd markup because clearly they can deliver the hardware for 10% use-case for 1000$ and still make money on top but they would rather charge the data centers 50k for the same product
- evoke4908 2y agoOr they can't afford to sell the cards at consumer prices. If they take a loss in the consumer segmet, they can recoup by overcharging the datacenter customers. That's how this scheme works. The card is most likely not profitable at consumer price points. Without this segmentation, consumer cards would trail many years behind the performance of datacenter cards.
- zeusk 2y agoYou can theorize a million scenarios, but clearly no one here will know what really transpired for Nvidia to hobble their consumer chips. I really don't think consumer is loss leading, GPUs for AI is a fairly recent market while Nvidia has existed churning out consumer GPUs since 90s. But clearly, lack of competition is one thing that supports whatever rent Nvidia seeks.
- hamandcheese 2y agoThere are companies lined up around the block to hand over $$$$$ for the only competitive GPUs on the market. Is the markup actually absurd?
- zeusk 2y agoThere are investors lined up around the block to hand over $$$$$ for SFHs on the market while people delay family making because they cannot afford housing or end up on the streets. So, is the market really absurd? Just because some billionaires are desperate for growth to grow their hundred billions into trillions outbidding each other does not mean that 90% of humanity cannot make use of ML running locally on cheaper GPUs.
- hamandcheese 2y agoI consider those two very different problems. One is a supply problem, the other is a competition problem. Also, housing is a basic human right, whereas fast GPUs probably are not.
- zeusk 2y agoDifferent markets, similar semantics. Both are artificially supply restricted. Infact you can argue that something is really wrong in our governance if housing is human right and yet there are people profiteering from how unaffordable it has become. I am more appalled at how long it has taken for the big tech other than Google to standardized ML workload and not be bound by CUDA.
- hamandcheese 2y agoAs far as I know, there is no political barrier preventing Intel and AMD from making competitive GPUs. There is, however, a political barrier to increasing the housing supply.
- zeusk 2y agoThe artificial limit does not have to be political, it can be as simple as nvidia blowing fuses to reduce compute on lower tier cards.