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.
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.
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.
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+).
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.