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It’s sad to see the one area of life that has long resisted inflation (computing) now succumb to inflationary forces. Other than emergency situations such as C
by linguae 10mo ago
It’s sad to see the one area of life that has long resisted inflation (computing) now succumb to inflationary forces. Other than emergency situations such as COVID-19, I’m used to seeing prices going down over time for computers and their components. It’s one of the rare bright spots when everything else is escalating in price, and now that’s disappearing.
- PunchyHamster 10mo agoIt's not inflation tho ? It's just rise in demand.
- coldtea 10mo agoSeriously doubt it.
- smallmancontrov 10mo agoWhen Sam Altman buys 40% of global DRAM wafer production, that looks like a demand increase to the market.
- BrianGragg 10mo agoNot to mention the other companies panic buying another ~20% (guess).
- wqaatwt 10mo ago> time for computers and their components Seems it has been the opposite for some components like GPUs though for years (well before the AI boom)
- georgemcbay 10mo agoSpeaking as someone who used to buy them regularly to support a PC gaming hobby stretching back to the original glQuake -- GPUs were on average very reasonably priced prior to the crypto boom that preceded the AI boom. So its technically not AI "ruining everything" here, but there was a nice, long before-time of reasonable pricing.
- ifwinterco 10mo agoIt was always subject to inflationary forces due to money printing like everything else, it was just the one place where natural deflation due to improving technology was temporarily enough to offset it
- MrBuddyCasino 10mo agoMemory price fluctuations due to market demand and monetary inflation - the increase in quantity of fiat money, diluting its value - are two separate and unrelated things.
- coldtea 10mo agoAnd both are at play here - it's not just RAM, to ascribe it to AI
- coldtea 10mo agoI've seen prices for memory, SSDs, thunderbolt hubs, and thunderbolt/high end USB cables, flatline or get worse over the last 3 or so years.
- jack_tripper 10mo agoMost in-demand electronics got worse post-2020 and haven't recovered. That's why I just buy something when I need it or when I think the price is reasonable, because nowadays, if I wait for something to get cheaper like I used to do in the 90s-00s, chances are it's gonna get even more expensive as time passes, not cheaper. The days when you would wait 6-12 months and get the same thing for 50% off or a new thing with 50% more performance for the same price are over, when there's only one major semiconductor fab making everything, 3 RAM makers, 3 FLASH makers, 2 GPU vendors, 2 CPU vendors, controlling all supply, and I'm competing with datacenters for it.
- Glemkloksdjf 10mo agoThere was the issue of hard disk prices for years after the floods in taiwan in 2011. GPU prices were horrendes when crypto happened (they migrated into a stable issue but it was still because of crypto). DDR4 jumped because they started focusing on DDR5 before these news right now. I could probably find more examples but hey
- Damogran6 10mo agoIn general, your dollar buys a _Crazy_ amount of compute...but over the last 30 years or so, RAM has spiked several times (Taiwan plant fire) and suffered from several market driven spikes (DDRx shortages, Apple's crazy pricing structure)
- dagmx 10mo agoFirstly, this is not due to inflation. The price increase is explicitly (per the article even) due to increased market demand that is causing raised prices. Secondly, Computing has always been subject to inflation. It cannot escape inflation. You may not notice it , perhaps due to the increase in performance but the cost of parts definitely has risen in the same tiers if you look over a long enough period to avoid pricing amortization
- Workaccount2 10mo agoInflation simply refers to the rate at which prices are increasing. It's agnostic as to the origin ( any single/combo of demand increase, supply shortage, money printing, price fixing, etc).
- dagmx 10mo agoOnly if you phrase it devoid of any context. And if the definition was that loose to begin with, then the original comment is even more incorrect since there have been multiple rounds of demand/scarcity led pricing increases.
- rahimnathwani 10mo agoInflation isn’t just "prices increasing". It’s the sustained, broad-based rise in the overall price level. Your comment treats any price increase as inflation, but economists draw a pretty clear line here: a relative price change (say, eggs getting more expensive because of a supply shock) isn’t the same thing as inflation. You can have sector-specific increases (as in this case, with RAM) that are independent of changes in the general price level.
- sshine 10mo ago> the cost of parts definitely has risen in the same tiers if you look over a long enough period This is especially apparent if you’re a hardware manufacturer and have to buy the same components periodically, since the performance increase that consumers see doesn’t appear.
- 10mo ago
- nullsmack 10mo agoI know one area of computing that has dramatically risen in price in the past 10-15 years or so is GPUs. Cards that fit into midrange today sell for prices that would've been considered ultra-highend just a few gpu generations ago. Today's highend prices for just a graphics card are higher than I've paid for entire computers in the past. It's ridiculous.
- adgjlsfhk1 10mo agoimo this is wrong. what's changing is how high end having a discrete GPU is. as integrated graphics have become increasingly powerful, the discrete GPU has shifted to being more of a luxury item.