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DRAM pricing is killing the everything market.

We just had a vendor uplift our quote 50% per unit for some machines because of a mix of memory + supply chain issues.


At work we just got a quote to upgrade a couple servers, original price a few years ago was ~ $150k. Essentially the same hardware, just newer, is now quoted at ~ $450k.

We decided to just keep our current hardware for now and extend a support contract for ~ normal price.


I wonder how long these shortages have to last until software developers are required to be mindful of RAM usage like in the decades before,

Probably not. AI code generation will not allow to use memory efficiently.

Quite the opposite i'd wager. Now that AI can figure everything out we can have the AIs do the performance work. Performance work alot of the times also went against developer experience in terms of languages/patterns and such. AI doesn't need to care about DevEx which might also show a shift towards more memory efficient languages and patterns. Only time will tell though.

Is it not enough to add to your prompt “use memory efficiently”?

> a vendor uplift our quote 50% per unit

Try 200% (tho tbf our boss sit on that quote for like a year and a half because he thought it was too pricey. Bet he regretted it now).

And all the quotes are now only valid for a week due to insane price fluctuation.


We just had a vendor uplift our quote 50% per unit

Good thing they didn't increase it.


That’s strange, there aren’t wider market supply chain issues outside of DRAM. Maybe your vendor is just throwing excuses around.

>That’s strange, there aren’t wider market supply chain issues outside of DRAM.

GPUs, ram, ssds, hdds, hell even CPUs are starting to climb in price. It's an everything shortage and it's only getting worse.

A workstation that two years ago cost $3,000 was $10,000 last month and $10,500 this month. There are parts which aren't available at any price.


Wait what? That's over 300%.

Between this revelation and that post recently on HN about the scanned receipts and egg prices, I find myself wondering if we're worrying about the wrong things.

We're seeing massive inflation in computing, but because the dollar is holding its value we call it increased prices. But the buying by the big buyers is the thing driving the inflation, its mechanism is scarcity.

But it's also localized. Only we experience this as a problem because compared to the hyperscalers we're poor.

The same idea applies to the price of groceries. As the prices increase, base increase being inflation, but logistic efficiency also plays a big role.

The effect is the same. The ones with more spendable income don't experience an issue yet in the projects nobody is eating fresh veggies.

The part that scares me is the creep, as I call it. Throughout the years I've always been able to carry price shocks and such but this time I'm out of the game. No more DRAM for me.

I then wonder if one day, without losing my job, I won't be able to pay for veggies.


At least with veggies you can stick seeds in the ground in the backyard.

My hard drive tree will take years to develop before it bears fruit!


DRAM and flash both seem to be up about 10x. HDDs are just impossible to buy.

Fuel price rises = logistics price rises.

You're right that fuel prices have risen. But usually the impact of fuel prices is mostly felt on bulkier, lower cost items first.

After all, a truck can carry a 10kg sack of rice, or a 10kg nvidia gpu. If shipping costs for 10kg rise by $15 the sack of rice has doubled in price, but the GPU is only 0.5% more expensive.


Not all increases in prices are reactive. Some are anticipated. Inertial inflation is real.

For a truck yeah, but across the ocean, it isn't quite that simple because GPUs and grains are sent in different types of ships (or different modes entirely) that aren't interchangeable.

You're right - perishable goods have to be shipped fast. Your bananas, berries, fresh fish, and not-fron-concentrate juice can't be on some slow-steaming container ship with the furniture, clothes, building materials and vehicles.

The GPUs can though.


Rice is a nonperishable grain. Grain ships in neither of those. Grain is shipped in bulk carriers

And the GPUs are such high margin that they all take an airplane anyway.

That is other “different mode entirely” that exists to go across an ocean :)

This is driven by AI datacenter demand, not fuel prices. RAM prices have actually dropped significantly in the last couple days as the Iran war hit and the possibility that interest rates might go up and pop the AI bubble sunk in. (Though let’s see where they go after the last couple days of whipsawing.)

It's driven by a whole bunch of factors but I agree it's largely driven by AI data center demand

But still 30% of the worlds helium production is apparently shut down and ships can't get to where they need to be as efficiently as they have been so there is going to be knock on effects from this.


Yeah. Not true. Or send me the name of your server vendor. I’m buying.

Having issues with both price and availability on NVMe, SATA flash, starting to see some CPUs, and for a personal project high density spinning rust (24TB+).


DRAM is up more than that 50% though.

Flash has supply (and price) problems too.

This isn't true: NAND flash prices are up too, though not nearly as dramatically. But the war means that fuel and shipping prices are way up as well.

They’re throwing something around.

I assume this is sarcasm.

SSDs and HDDs are being squeezed as well.

Don't forget SDCards

"Memory card prices have TRIPLED in the last few months: when will this madness stop?!" https://www.digitalcameraworld.com/cameras/memory-cards/memo...


Sony stopped making their cards entirely, which stinks because I'd settled on their pro cards for all my camera bodies.

We just had a vendor tell us none of the HDDs we were looking for were available unless we also committed to a full NAS offering.

This feature has never been available to me- it just threw an error each time. Wonder how far it actually got rolled out?


I blame The Apprentice


In my hometown someone did this, take half the wall of the Nationwide branch out along with the ATM. Someone also tried to get a free standing one from inside a shop but just ended up destroying the frontage and not taking it home with them.


they use datapacket/cdn77, no?


they run on a blend of everything depending on the region from my experience. Hetzner is one of the providers they use


Matrix is god awful, literally the opposite of Discord in usability


I just moved away from iPhones because the battery life on every single one I've owned is abysmal. I'm a week into a phone with an absolutely massive battery and it can actually get me through a whole day which no iPhone ever has.


I have a 12 mini. I am writing this more than 13 hours after taking it off the charger and have 44% battery.

YMMV


I booked direct on Ryanair.com and they refused to refund our tickets because the flight technically ran even though we weren’t legally allowed to leave our homes. Lesson learned, I’ve got travel insurance now


Have you tried a credit card charge back?


Did it on debit card, another lesson learned.


Not nearly enough randomly capitalised words


Thought this was a browser for my e-reader


I won't be surprised if B&N does a C&D on this particular trademark infringement.

Nook is a well-known brand in consumer tech, ereaders aren't that far removed from Web browsers, Nooks have a Web browser, and B&N also has a "Nook for Web".


I was hoping for an Animal Crossing themed browser where instead of an AI assistant, we'd get Tom Nook.


I still want something constructive to do with mine - what a sweet bit of hardware.


read books?


Same.


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