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Do you have a timeframe for the pop? I need some excitement.
by gizajob 1y ago
Do you have a timeframe for the pop? I need some excitement.
- alganet 1y agoMore a sequence of potential events than a timeframe. High-end GPUs are already useless for gaming (a low-end GPU is enough), their traditional source of demand. They're floating on artificial demand for a while now. There are two markets that currently could use them: LLMs and Augmented Reality. Both of these are currently useless, and getting more useless by the day. CPUs are just piggybacking on all of this. So, lots of things hanging on unrealized promises. It will pop when there is no next use for super high-end GPUs. War is a potential user of such devices, and I predict it could be the next thing after LLMs and AR. But then if war breaks out in such a scale to drive silicon prices up, lots of things are going to pop, and food and fuel will boom to such a magnitude that will make silicon look silly. I think it will pop before it comes to the point of war driving it, and it will happen within our lifetimes (so, not a Nostradamus-style prediction that will only be realized long-after I'm dead).
- rightbyte 1y agoI don't see how GPU factories could be running in the event of war "in such a scale to drive silicon prices up". Unless you mean that supply will be low and people scavanging TI calculators for processors to make boxes playing Tetris and Space Invaders.
- alganet 1y agoWhy not? This is the exact model in which WWII operated. Car and plane supply chains were practically nationalized to support the military industry. If drones, surveillance, satellites become the main war tech, they'll all use silicon, and things will be fully nationalized. We already have all sorts of hints of this. Doesn't need a genius to predict that it could be what happens to these industries. The balance with food and fuel is more delicate though. A war with drones, satellites and surveillance is not like WWII, there's a commercial aspect to it. If you put it on paper, food and fuel project more power and thus, can move more money. Any public crisis can make people forget about GPUs and jeopardize the process of nationalization that is currently being implemented, which still depends on relatively peaceful international trade.
- newsclues 1y agoCPU and GPU compute will be needed for military use processing the vast data from all sorts of sensors. Think about data centres crunching satellite imagery for trenches, fortifications and vehicles.
- alganet 1y ago> satellite imagery for trenches, fortifications and vehicles Dude, you're describing the 80s. We're in 2025. GPUs will be used for automated surveillance, espionage, brainwashing and market manipulation. At least that's what the current batch of technologies implies. The only thing stopping this from becoming a full dystopia is that delicate balance with food and fuel I mentioned earlier. It has become pretty obvious that entire wealthy nations can starve if they make the wrong move. Turns out GPUs cannot produce calories, and there's a limit to how much of a market you can manipulate to produce calories for you.
- newsclues 1y ago2025 Ukraine war. There are satellites and ISR platforms taking images and data and data centres are processing that information into actionable targets.
- rightbyte 1y ago> Why not? Bombs that fly between continents or are launched from submarines for any "big scale" war.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- selfhoster11 1y agoLocal LLMs are becoming more popular and easier to run, and Chinese corporations are releasing extremely good models of all sizes under MIT or similar terms in many cases. There amount of VRAM is the main limiter, and it would help with gaming too.
- alganet 1y agoGaming needs no additional VRAM. From a market perspective, LLMs sell GPUs. Doesn't even matter if they work or not. From the geopolitical tensions perspective, they're the perfect excuse to create infrastructure for a global analogue of the Great Firewall (something that the Chinese are pioneers of, and catching up to the plan). From the software engineering perspective, LLMs are a nuissance, a distraction. They harm everyone.
- selfhoster11 1y ago> Gaming needs no additional VRAM. Really? What about textures? Any ML that the new wave of games might use? For instance, while current LLMs powering NPC interactions would be pretty horrible, what about in 2 years time? You could have arbitrary dialogue trees AND dynamically voiced NPCs or PCs. This is categorically impossible without more VRAM. > the perfect excuse to create infrastructure for a global analogue of the Great Firewall Yes, let's have more censorship and kill the dream of the Internet even deader than it already is. > From the software engineering perspective, LLMs are a nuissance, a distraction. They harm everyone. You should be aware that reasonable minds can differ in this issue. I won't defend companies forcing the use of LLMs (it would be like forcing use of vim or any other tech you dislike), but I disagree about being a nuisance, distraction, or a universal harm. It's all down to choices and fit for use case.
- alganet 1y agoHow is any of that related to actual silicon sales strategies? Do not mistake adjacent topics for the main thing I'm discussing. It only proves my point that right now, all silicon talk is bullshit.
- int_19h 1y ago> High-end GPUs are already useless for gaming (a low-end GPU is enough), their traditional source of demand. They're floating on artificial demand for a while now. This is not the case if you want things like ray tracing or 4K.
- grg0 1y agoHell, yeah. I'm in for some shared excitement too if y'all want to get some popcorn.