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> This is the real risk after the slow death of personal computing. By the time you can have a slow death of personal computing, capacity will improve and pric

> This is the real risk after the slow death of personal computing. By the time you can have a slow death of personal computing, capacity will improve and prices will improve. In the shorter term sitting on an old computer or regressing a couple years on specs or paying an extra $100/$200 for 8GB/16GB works. > Even internet resources like servers will be hoarded by the hyperscalers that are the only ones who can afford to order years of compute hardware in advance. I don't see why hyperscalers would be so much better at handling price increases. For some average business paying a week's wages for the computer you use, they can afford that doubling to two weeks just fine. For all the normal server rental companies, okay the guy on the $10 plan either pays $16 now or cuts their resource allocation and keeps paying $10. That's not going to cause a sea change. And higher end hosting isn't that much different.

Gasp0de 5mo ago
Hyperscalers buy so many CPUs and so much RAM they can dictate prices (to a point) or at least make an agreement to buy at a much lower price but buy X amount for the next 5 years.
- Dylan16807 5mo ago
  When the market's so hot I don't see why anyone would give them a particularly big discount. And they would have been getting a discount before, so they probably end up seeing a larger percentage spike in what they have to pay. Maybe if they're locking in long enough to fund new fab construction? But in that case after a few years a ton of capacity will come online so they're actually helping solve the problem.
bayindirh 5mo ago
> By the time you can have a slow death of personal computing, capacity will improve and prices will improve. I love this baseless optimism. Reminds me of the economic theory (forgot who put it forward): Everything will be fine in the long run. ...and it's rebuked by Maynard Keynes: "We're all dead in the long run". Yes, by the time capacity & prices will improve, we'll be all dead. > I don't see why hyperscalers would be so much better at handling price increases. I'm pretty sure that you don't know how much discount they can get when they order "I'll buy the whole production in Y2027". When first generation EPYC was launched, it didn't reach academic or local datacenters, because AMD sold all production to Hyperscalers and Dropbox back in the day. Money is always more valuable today than tomorrow, so if you can pay today, you'll get massive discounts.
- AnthonyMouse 5mo ago
  > ...and it's rebuked by Maynard Keynes: "We're all dead in the long run". The trouble with Keynes is that it's only fully true on the time scale of the heat death of the universe, and in that context it's fully nihilistic. Whereas most economic theories do operate on timescales where the finding out comes within the lifetime of the people fucking around. And to the extent that it doesn't, it generally comes within the lifetime of their kids. Meanwhile that quote is used to justify every piece of short-term thinking that screws the next generation to juice this year's numbers. > When first generation EPYC was launched, it didn't reach academic or local datacenters, because AMD sold all production to Hyperscalers and Dropbox back in the day. When first generation EPYC was launched, it broke Intel's effective monopoly on performant servers that everyone was eager to get out from under, but the first generation was being fabbed by Global Foundries using the decaying infrastructure being sustained only by the few uncompetitive Opterons nobody had really wanted in years. It's the example of the thing you're saying doesn't happen. The following generations were fabbed by TSMC who has dramatically more capacity than GF and expanded it even more since EPYC launched, to the point that AMD's share in servers this year is almost 50%, up from ~0% the year before EPYC launched. > Money is always more valuable today than tomorrow, so if you can pay today, you'll get massive discounts. The real issue here is capacity planning. It costs billions of dollars to build more fabs so they only do it if they're confident the demand isn't going to crash. But cash-rich customers willing to pay in advance are a good way to do that. You give them a contract that says they pay you now and agree not to dump the hardware into the market if the bubble pops (e.g. customer agrees to maintain possession of the hardware for 3 years after delivery and use only for AI) and then the AI companies are the ones taking the risk instead of the hardware companies, which makes the hardware companies willing to build more fabs. Which in turn is what gets the price back to something ordinary people can afford.
  - stymaar 5mo ago
    > The trouble with Keynes is that it's only fully true on the time scale of the heat death of the universe, and in that context it's fully nihilistic. Whereas most economic theories do operate on timescales where the finding out comes within the lifetime of the people fucking around You got this completely backwards: Keynes argument is that economic policies cannot just rely on the fact that things are going to be fine “in the long run”, because the “long run” may be something we never see. He was in fact arguing against economic theories that are “only fully true on the time scale of the heat death of the universe”, not the other way around.
QuadmasterXLII 5mo ago
So far its just metastasized not smoothed out. GPUs then RAM then electricity then disk… long way to go till land then sunlight, hope we don’t get there!
originalvichy 4mo ago
Late reply. This is all assuming that the corps producing the hardware will live in the same world as before this squeeze. The reality is that the combination of a highly concetrated manufacturing landscape + the global political environment means that the same games that were played with ASML, Nvidia and TSMC will likely be repeated with the relatively lightly affected generic manufacturers of components. Given the close connections the hyperscaler CEOs have with the USGov, and the leverage the US has over South Korea and Japan, one executive order is enough to tip over the entire manufacturing sector and supply chain to the hyperscaler’s advantage. As others noted, only the Chinese sector has a chance to fill the space for consumers in this nightmare scenario.

Gasp0de 5mo ago

Hyperscalers buy so many CPUs and so much RAM they can dictate prices (to a point) or at least make an agreement to buy at a much lower price but buy X amount for the next 5 years.

Dylan16807 5mo ago
When the market's so hot I don't see why anyone would give them a particularly big discount. And they would have been getting a discount before, so they probably end up seeing a larger percentage spike in what they have to pay. Maybe if they're locking in long enough to fund new fab construction? But in that case after a few years a ton of capacity will come online so they're actually helping solve the problem.

bayindirh 5mo ago

> By the time you can have a slow death of personal computing, capacity will improve and prices will improve. I love this baseless optimism. Reminds me of the economic theory (forgot who put it forward): Everything will be fine in the long run. ...and it's rebuked by Maynard Keynes: "We're all dead in the long run". Yes, by the time capacity & prices will improve, we'll be all dead. > I don't see why hyperscalers would be so much better at handling price increases. I'm pretty sure that you don't know how much discount they can get when they order "I'll buy the whole production in Y2027". When first generation EPYC was launched, it didn't reach academic or local datacenters, because AMD sold all production to Hyperscalers and Dropbox back in the day. Money is always more valuable today than tomorrow, so if you can pay today, you'll get massive discounts.

AnthonyMouse 5mo ago
> ...and it's rebuked by Maynard Keynes: "We're all dead in the long run". The trouble with Keynes is that it's only fully true on the time scale of the heat death of the universe, and in that context it's fully nihilistic. Whereas most economic theories do operate on timescales where the finding out comes within the lifetime of the people fucking around. And to the extent that it doesn't, it generally comes within the lifetime of their kids. Meanwhile that quote is used to justify every piece of short-term thinking that screws the next generation to juice this year's numbers. > When first generation EPYC was launched, it didn't reach academic or local datacenters, because AMD sold all production to Hyperscalers and Dropbox back in the day. When first generation EPYC was launched, it broke Intel's effective monopoly on performant servers that everyone was eager to get out from under, but the first generation was being fabbed by Global Foundries using the decaying infrastructure being sustained only by the few uncompetitive Opterons nobody had really wanted in years. It's the example of the thing you're saying doesn't happen. The following generations were fabbed by TSMC who has dramatically more capacity than GF and expanded it even more since EPYC launched, to the point that AMD's share in servers this year is almost 50%, up from ~0% the year before EPYC launched. > Money is always more valuable today than tomorrow, so if you can pay today, you'll get massive discounts. The real issue here is capacity planning. It costs billions of dollars to build more fabs so they only do it if they're confident the demand isn't going to crash. But cash-rich customers willing to pay in advance are a good way to do that. You give them a contract that says they pay you now and agree not to dump the hardware into the market if the bubble pops (e.g. customer agrees to maintain possession of the hardware for 3 years after delivery and use only for AI) and then the AI companies are the ones taking the risk instead of the hardware companies, which makes the hardware companies willing to build more fabs. Which in turn is what gets the price back to something ordinary people can afford.
- stymaar 5mo ago
  > The trouble with Keynes is that it's only fully true on the time scale of the heat death of the universe, and in that context it's fully nihilistic. Whereas most economic theories do operate on timescales where the finding out comes within the lifetime of the people fucking around You got this completely backwards: Keynes argument is that economic policies cannot just rely on the fact that things are going to be fine “in the long run”, because the “long run” may be something we never see. He was in fact arguing against economic theories that are “only fully true on the time scale of the heat death of the universe”, not the other way around.

QuadmasterXLII 5mo ago

So far its just metastasized not smoothed out. GPUs then RAM then electricity then disk… long way to go till land then sunlight, hope we don’t get there!

originalvichy 4mo ago

Late reply. This is all assuming that the corps producing the hardware will live in the same world as before this squeeze. The reality is that the combination of a highly concetrated manufacturing landscape + the global political environment means that the same games that were played with ASML, Nvidia and TSMC will likely be repeated with the relatively lightly affected generic manufacturers of components. Given the close connections the hyperscaler CEOs have with the USGov, and the leverage the US has over South Korea and Japan, one executive order is enough to tip over the entire manufacturing sector and supply chain to the hyperscaler’s advantage. As others noted, only the Chinese sector has a chance to fill the space for consumers in this nightmare scenario.