High end resins and epoxies are in a critical supply shortage right now. I suspect that there are going to be some serious resource driven PCB shortages in the very near future.
10-12 Months ago I had commented here that people are not realising that AI is going to price us normal people out of computer hardware and we need China to actually reach on parity with node size. And sadly it looks like I was correct in my prediction.
At current prices, Chinese companies could even produce everything possible (~anything but current gen CPUs and GPUs) on slightly older nodes and make a stonking profit while lowering market prices.
Hobbyist equipment is still relatively cheap. You can get previous-gen hardware for formerly current-gen prices, you can run lots of “hobbyist” software on low RAM and no GPU.
But in a way I do agree with you, I doubt it is as organized as you imply. Yes, companies and governments do not way anyone on a General Computing Device at all. They want to see exactly what content you are viewing and responding to.
Microsoft and Apple have been slowly adding various forms of spyware and locking down what applications you can use. And Cell Phones ? Those are the Holy Grail of what Microsoft and Apple want to move your Laptop/PC to.
Right now Linux and BSD are the only games in town for non-spyware systems. But the new Age Verification Laws seems to be a first attempt to lock-down even Linux :( Since the Linux Foundation is owned by large corporations, I feel that will succeed. For the BSDs ? Right now seems they are flying under the radar.
Why do you doubt this when the rich also have Signal? They meet and talk out of view? The insider trading coming out of Washington?
Why when emails from discovery in labor disputes between google and apple in the 2010s revealed they engage in exactly the sort of manipulation you disbelieve?
Because they own nothing but make believe stocks and life works great for them.
The mega-rich are 100% decoupled from physical reality. May as well treat them more like tribal shaman, priests, preachers, and rabbis.
Just parroting memes the likewise idiot politicians believe are the magic chants that keep gravity itself pulling together the Earth.
"Omg he said the thing! Cut his taxes! Give him welfare!"
Our generation of leaders were raised in a pre-science and information as world. They rely entirely in cult of personality as their meat suit never sees itself engage in the labor it relies on to live. It's well aware intuitively how fucked it is. Must continue to stand in the pulpit!
Not just motherboards. Cases, PC accessories (fans, etc), consumer SSDs, and more. Cases are especially hard hit, apparently, as they're already quite a low margin business.
Personally, I see little reason to upgrade from my AM4 platform. It's never been easier to hold on to aging hardware with the advent of DLSS stretching older cards further, diminishing returns on the newer gen GPUs, and the 'realism' of video games plateauing.
"Fueled by greed". It would be trivial to say no to AI companies because dollars are dollars, it doesn't matter who pays them, and prioritizing literally all of humanity instead of "five companies" is a choice that every single supplier could make, but decided not to. This problem was 100% manufactured by suppliers.
The brief window between the covid gaming bubble pop/PoS ETH switch and the AI hardware blackhole will be fondly remembered as the last golden age of consumer PC hardware accessibility.
If China keeps releasing decent copies of SOTA models that only take 20% of the resources, then we may get some relief when those models become "good-enough"
>copies of SOTA models that only take 20% of the resources
They might be 20% of the price (because they don't have to invest that much in training), but are probably not 20% of the resources (ie. inference), considering they take more tokens to do the same task, and have slower inference speeds.
I've been using deepseek and it's good enough for my personal use. It takes way more time/tokens/course-correcting to get things done, but I spend in a month what I spend in a day with opus 4.6
Shortage of ram and ssds, and soon, cpus. Motherboards aren’t selling because theres no point buying a motherboard if you can’t by the ram or ssd it needs.
It’s brutal. I’ve just built a workstation with DDR4 and two-gen old cpu. I paid more for the ddr4 than it originally cost, four years ago. The same amount of ram for the latest motherboard would have been 10x ($10,000). So used DDR4 has gone through the roof, which impacts hobbyists who used to rely on “hand-me-downs”.
High end resins and epoxies are in a critical supply shortage right now. I suspect that there are going to be some serious resource driven PCB shortages in the very near future.
...no. If anything the GPU situation would cause it to ease up as less low-middle end gets even build
10-12 Months ago I had commented here that people are not realising that AI is going to price us normal people out of computer hardware and we need China to actually reach on parity with node size. And sadly it looks like I was correct in my prediction.
At current prices, Chinese companies could even produce everything possible (~anything but current gen CPUs and GPUs) on slightly older nodes and make a stonking profit while lowering market prices.
It's an active attack on the Hobbyist space. Qualcomm buying Arduino solidified this idea in my head. They literally want us to own nothing.
Hobbyist equipment is still relatively cheap. You can get previous-gen hardware for formerly current-gen prices, you can run lots of “hobbyist” software on low RAM and no GPU.
It’s bad, but it’s not “literally own nothing”.
Yeah, I'm not sure that fewer people will own computers, I do think people will shift to much longer upgrade cycles.
The second hand market is going to have much much more lag. But it's very unclear that this is going to sustain indefinitely.
Tin foil hat :)
But in a way I do agree with you, I doubt it is as organized as you imply. Yes, companies and governments do not way anyone on a General Computing Device at all. They want to see exactly what content you are viewing and responding to.
Microsoft and Apple have been slowly adding various forms of spyware and locking down what applications you can use. And Cell Phones ? Those are the Holy Grail of what Microsoft and Apple want to move your Laptop/PC to.
Right now Linux and BSD are the only games in town for non-spyware systems. But the new Age Verification Laws seems to be a first attempt to lock-down even Linux :( Since the Linux Foundation is owned by large corporations, I feel that will succeed. For the BSDs ? Right now seems they are flying under the radar.
Why do you doubt this when the rich also have Signal? They meet and talk out of view? The insider trading coming out of Washington?
Why when emails from discovery in labor disputes between google and apple in the 2010s revealed they engage in exactly the sort of manipulation you disbelieve?
Because they own nothing but make believe stocks and life works great for them.
The mega-rich are 100% decoupled from physical reality. May as well treat them more like tribal shaman, priests, preachers, and rabbis.
Just parroting memes the likewise idiot politicians believe are the magic chants that keep gravity itself pulling together the Earth.
"Omg he said the thing! Cut his taxes! Give him welfare!"
Our generation of leaders were raised in a pre-science and information as world. They rely entirely in cult of personality as their meat suit never sees itself engage in the labor it relies on to live. It's well aware intuitively how fucked it is. Must continue to stand in the pulpit!
Not just motherboards. Cases, PC accessories (fans, etc), consumer SSDs, and more. Cases are especially hard hit, apparently, as they're already quite a low margin business.
Personally, I see little reason to upgrade from my AM4 platform. It's never been easier to hold on to aging hardware with the advent of DLSS stretching older cards further, diminishing returns on the newer gen GPUs, and the 'realism' of video games plateauing.
Waiting for the future where the only computing devices you can buy as a consumer are locked-down phones and PCs are simply not available anymore...
This looks like a consumer choice and producers are following up with the demand.
"Fueled by greed". It would be trivial to say no to AI companies because dollars are dollars, it doesn't matter who pays them, and prioritizing literally all of humanity instead of "five companies" is a choice that every single supplier could make, but decided not to. This problem was 100% manufactured by suppliers.
As an example?
Eeey its toms hardware, an embarrassment 20+ years and counting
I can't speak to it now, but it used to be the go to source of CPU and 3D card benchmarking.
They've turned into a pretty unserious, non-critical, non-hardcore ad page.
The brief window between the covid gaming bubble pop/PoS ETH switch and the AI hardware blackhole will be fondly remembered as the last golden age of consumer PC hardware accessibility.
If China keeps releasing decent copies of SOTA models that only take 20% of the resources, then we may get some relief when those models become "good-enough"
>copies of SOTA models that only take 20% of the resources
They might be 20% of the price (because they don't have to invest that much in training), but are probably not 20% of the resources (ie. inference), considering they take more tokens to do the same task, and have slower inference speeds.
https://x.com/scaling01/status/2050616057191072161
Even at 2x the tokens (max from that tweet), that makes them 40% of resources. Which is still only 40% of the resources.
I've been using deepseek and it's good enough for my personal use. It takes way more time/tokens/course-correcting to get things done, but I spend in a month what I spend in a day with opus 4.6
Shortage of ram and ssds, and soon, cpus. Motherboards aren’t selling because theres no point buying a motherboard if you can’t by the ram or ssd it needs.
It’s brutal. I’ve just built a workstation with DDR4 and two-gen old cpu. I paid more for the ddr4 than it originally cost, four years ago. The same amount of ram for the latest motherboard would have been 10x ($10,000). So used DDR4 has gone through the roof, which impacts hobbyists who used to rely on “hand-me-downs”.