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Lenovo’s New ThinkPads Score 10/10 for Repairability (www.ifixit.com)
submitted 7 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.ml
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[–] 6 points 7 months ago (13 children)

They will come down after the AI bubble inevitably pops. Maybe not back to where they were before but they will come back down.

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  • [–] 10 points 7 months ago (12 children)

    Once the bubble pops, assuming it doesn't take economies with it, none of the product will be compatible with consumer devices. Manufacturing will have to be reoriented back to consumer products, then those parts will need to be manufactured, then the rush of people trying to get the parts will have to pass. THEN maybe prices will come down.

    I suspect the datacenters will just pivot and repurposed to rent consumers "cloud compute" and cloud subscription services and continue to fuck the entire consumer market for years to come.

    But then again I now hate everything so maybe I'm just pessimistic.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago (11 children)

    none of the product will be compatible with consumer devices.

    ...why would it need to be?

    I suspect the datacenters will just pivot and repurposed to rent consumers "cloud compute" and cloud subscription services and continue to fuck the entire consumer market for years to come.

    I mean they already have been and will continue to be, yes.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago* (10 children)

    ...why would it need to be?

    It doesn't need to, but if it were that would be the only reason I'd say prices might drop anytime soon. A glut of used consumer-compatible parts would push prices down. That or maybe if the rising Chinese suppliers manage to ramp up and find a way to enter the western market.

    The price is currently high and is rising because resources and manufacturing capacity are limited. Those who own the capacity have found that providing for a small number of companies that are flush with cash and will throw money around just to ensure their competitors don't gain an advantage is far more lucrative than providing for consumers or businesses that integrate parts into consumer devices. The entire market segment is shifting away from consumer and focusing on datacenter hardware.

    The longer this goes on, the further the major players will be from being able to pivot back to consumer products... and there are only major players in the memory and NAND industry. You can't just form a new memory or NAND company and start manufacturing this stuff. It takes years and a lot of investment to build the facilities and the kind of capacity we're used to.

    Edit: I've also seen a number of non-tech folks excited for cheap used datacenter memory and gpus to flood the market after the bubble pops, as if the parts were at all compatible with consumer devices. I wanted to make sure that was not part of your calculation.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago (9 children)

    but if it were that would be the only reason I'd say prices might drop anytime soon

    ...how about cratering demand? Basically the opposite of what we have now? That's not enough?

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago (8 children)

    I feel like you didn't read what I wrote. If the bubble pops today, how long do you think it will take for prices to drop?

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago (7 children)

    I mean it would be immediate. Maybe a year to reach a new low.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago (1 child)

    The hardware being built right now is not usable by consumers. What would you do with a raw HBM chip? You can't put it yourself on a gpu, nor on a ram stick.
    Want a gpu? I hope you have a 3k Watt power supply to handle one of them.

    They are not making consumer products anymore. Only data centre tier hardware.

    Gone are the days of buying hundreds of Gb of ram and older xeon cpu from decom' servers, a cheap motherboard to tie it all together.
    None of that will be usable by us pleb.

    Even when the AI bubble pops, all hardware manufacturing will still be making datacentre grade hw, and either won't go back to consumers, or it will take months to pivot the factory.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago (4 children)

    Why would it be immediate? Where is the new supply coming from to alleviate the demand?

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago (3 children)

    There is no new supply. There doesn't need to be. The demand is alleviated by it absolutely cratering. I don't understand why this is confusing.

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  • [–] 0 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    Please indicate the point at which we no longer agree.

    • The price of consumer hardware, like RAM and SSDs, is high right now.

    • Supply for consumer hardware is low right now.

    • The reason that the price of consumer hardware is high right now is because supply is low.

    • The reason this supply is low is because manufacturing capacity that used to be committed to consumer variants of this hardware has been converted to manufacturing datacenter variants of this hardware.

    • The reason for the manufacturing shift is that, because of the AI bubble, demand for datacenter hardware is high.

    • It takes time and money to convert manufacturing capacity between consumer hardware to datacenter hardware.

    • This conversion also includes changing investment, R&D, and employment priorities. Companies like Micron (one of the three major/noteworthy memory suppliers in the world) have cut/gutted their B2C divisions to focus their resources entirely on the more profitable datacenter B2B efforts.

    • Datacenter variants of this hardware are substantially different than consumer variants and are not interchangeable.

    • Higher prices, slimmer margins, and lower sales have caused some consumer electronics businesses to cut back, focus on narrower market segments, pivot to other markets, or exit the market entirely.

    If we agree on all of the above, I'm not sure why you are confused.

    If the bubble pops today, it very well may cause demand for datacenter hardware to crater, assuming they don't get creative and find a way to pivot hard toward other SaaS somehow. Since the parts are not at all compatible with consumer electronics, this would not provide an instant increase in consumer hardware supply nor would it crater consumer hardware demand.

    If the crash is bad enough, some of the businesses that pivoted to B2B/datacenter hardware may fail or have to be bailed out by their governments. Even if they all survived, fewer consumer product businesses exist in the market to sell to consumers and they have fewer product lines in development. Companies like Micron, who abandoned their established brands and/or relationships with resellers or partners that would use their parts in consumer products, will need to rebuild those things. Manufacturing would need to be converted, updated to the latest consumer hardware needs, taking more time and money.

    It would take quite a while to rebuild consumer hardware supply. Without that supply, demand will not be met and prices will be high.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 child)

    hardware has been converted to manufacturing datacenter variants of this hardware.

    Some of it has. Not all of it (except for Micron).

    nor would it crater consumer hardware demand.

    It doesn't have to. It seems we both agree that server hardware demand clearly impacts consumer supply, and yet for some reason you seem to think this is a one-way street?

    It takes time and money to convert manufacturing capacity between consumer hardware to datacenter hardware.

    And yet, they did it, very quickly, and will do so again when the market shifts again.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago

    And yet, they did it, very quickly, and will do so again when the market shifts again.

    These aren't typical conditions. There is a world of difference between "Yo, here is a truckload of money. Give me all your RAM for the next two years!" (AI right now) and "We need to align our capacity to the current needs of the market in order to not flood the market with product we can't sell." (normal conditions).

    Look at the memory market before this AI shitshow. It's cyclical as the fabs try to match demand without flooding the market. It typically takes several quarters to ramp capacity up and down, causing shortages and then oversaturating the market because they can't do it fast enough. Returning to that kind of production is also likely to be more difficult than it would otherwise be to adjust while already in it. There are so many unknowns in this wild situation. How much DRAM should they commit to making?

    Anyway, I'm not even a business person so what the fuck do I know. I'm getting tired of this conversation. It would be great to be optimistic, but that's not something I'm capable of right now. Best of luck. I hope it pops and prices plummet.

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