• ampersandrew@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      3 days ago

      We’re also losing the ability to shrink our transistors at this point, so the things that made old tech cheaper before don’t really apply anymore.

      • MousePotatoDoesStuff@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        2 days ago

        Hopefully at least competition can catch up. It would be great to have competitive manufacturing capacity here in the EU rather than depend on global trade (Looks at Unprecedented Event Of The Month)

        • ampersandrew@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          2 days ago

          From what I’ve learned on Economics Explained, I don’t think it’s something that necessarily leads to better outcomes than global trade, beyond just redundancy. Competitive manufacturing relies on low costs, which relies on low wages, which favors countries where there aren’t thriving sectors of the economy that pay better than manufacturing. And even once that country is favored, it brings in more money, which leads to higher salaries, raising the quality of living, and eventually making the factory jobs non-viable in that country either. If I didn’t get anything in the above incorrect, I believe that’s called the middle income trap.

      • boonhet@sopuli.xyz
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        2 days ago

        Current gen (TSMC 2nm) is like 50% more dense than the last one and I do believe the next generation will still be a huge leap forward, but we unfortunately don’t know what’s going to happen beyond that one. A few more generations and silicon’s atomic size might become an issue, which is WILD.

    • BygoneNeutrino@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      arrow-down
      3
      ·
      4 days ago

      I think the problem might sort itself out once the data centers are actually built. The impact from maintaining a data center is probably less than from actually building one.

      • Fredselfish@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        13
        ·
        3 days ago

        If they allowed to build all the data centers around me, hardware be less of our issues. We want have any water left in our homes. They literally trying to build 26 of these fucking water draining things in our area.

      • Dead_or_Alive@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        9
        ·
        3 days ago

        No it’s gonna suck. Those data centers will consume fresh water and power driving up costs of both over the long term.

        The chips will also become obsolete or will degrade over time. After 7 years they will require replacement. Same is true with memory and ram.

        It’s never going to end.

        • boonhet@sopuli.xyz
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          2 days ago

          After 7 years they will require replacement

          Oracle depreciates them over 7 years to cook the books for better financial reports. They’re apparently generally replaced after 3-4 because individual GPUs start failing and the next generation’s improved performance and power consumption will make them obsolete anyway.

          They’re essentially throwaway hardware as they can’t really be resold and repurposed for gaming either despite all that glorious VRAM. They only do compute.

          • boonhet@sopuli.xyz
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            2 days ago

            Didn’t one of the 3 memory manufacturers specifically say they’re not going to be raising production as they’d rather have everyone pay the premiums while the shortage lasts?

            When the Chinese DRAM industry really kicks off, we’ll have competition again. But right now they’re not producing high enough volumes and the Chinese RAM sticks on Aliexpress (yes, the ones with actually Chinese DRAM chips) aren’t much cheaper than non-Chinese RAM.

          • Dead_or_Alive@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            3
            ·
            3 days ago

            In a world where inputs to the process of chip creation can scale you would be correct.

            However it takes at least a decade to bring a power plant online restrict power generation. Access to natural gas and oil can be distrupted further restricting access to power. There is a finite supply of water in most areas that can not be expanded . Disruption to trade routes due to war and tariffs make expanding the inputs to production difficult. Reduces access to capital due to a lack of faith in the US government and rising interest rates will restrict that access.

            The world of plenty we lived in was dying even before Covid killed it off. We live in a world of scarcity and disrupted supply and resources now.

          • MacGuffin94@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            3 days ago

            Yes and no. Production capacity takes a long time to build up in manufacturing. Plus these are specialized parts so the build up will take longer. Don’t expect a significant production capacity increase in the US for 5-10 years.