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By this kind of logic we'd paying something like ~$10,000/month for our internet connections. The perceived value needs to exceed the cost but that does not mak

By this kind of logic we'd paying something like ~$10,000/month for our internet connections. The perceived value needs to exceed the cost but that does not make it the only factor to consider price with. What makes this expensive & sell well is it's not very fungible at the moment. Where else are you going to get 512 GB of high speed memory with a well supported accelerator attached that you can throw in the corner of anyone's home and not really have them notice? There are plenty of lesser options, plenty of noiser/power hungry options, plenty of harder to support options, but not really something in direct competition at the moment. Even the next rounds of the integrated AMD/Nvidia solutions are only targeting 196 GB of much slower memory and compute.

ericd 2mo ago
I think the difference besides the supply crunch there is that everyone connected gets the ~same internet, just faster or slower. Quantitative, not qualitative difference. On the other hand, a computer that can run Gemma 4 8B versus one that can run DeepSeek Flash are different enough experiences that I'd say they're effectively a difference in kind. It's been a bit since we had such serious stratification in outright capability in computing, rather than just how long it takes to get something done, or how many of something it can serve at once. In the early 90s, I think there were a lot more of those "this computer can do this thing, this one just can't" scenarios. Closest competition I see right now are stacks of 2-4 connected DGX Sparks, similar lowish speed high mem, and about the same cost/gig.
- zamadatix 2mo ago
  If it were about capability instead of speed then you're welcome to pay me $5,000 for DeepSeek Flash running on an SSD :D. For $10,000 I'll even give you something which can run 700 GB models comfortably from RAM - not that the speed should be worth much.
  - ericd 2mo ago
    Haha right, well, usable speed. And I guess there are some parallels with internet, the internet is technically usable with HughesNet, but people used to fiber would probably consider it unusable.

ericd 2mo ago

I think the difference besides the supply crunch there is that everyone connected gets the ~same internet, just faster or slower. Quantitative, not qualitative difference. On the other hand, a computer that can run Gemma 4 8B versus one that can run DeepSeek Flash are different enough experiences that I'd say they're effectively a difference in kind. It's been a bit since we had such serious stratification in outright capability in computing, rather than just how long it takes to get something done, or how many of something it can serve at once. In the early 90s, I think there were a lot more of those "this computer can do this thing, this one just can't" scenarios. Closest competition I see right now are stacks of 2-4 connected DGX Sparks, similar lowish speed high mem, and about the same cost/gig.

zamadatix 2mo ago
If it were about capability instead of speed then you're welcome to pay me $5,000 for DeepSeek Flash running on an SSD :D. For $10,000 I'll even give you something which can run 700 GB models comfortably from RAM - not that the speed should be worth much.
- ericd 2mo ago
  Haha right, well, usable speed. And I guess there are some parallels with internet, the internet is technically usable with HughesNet, but people used to fiber would probably consider it unusable.