Comment by infecto
2 months ago
Sounds like hyperbole. Yes the world is connected yes we are seeing shortages, yes the market is imperfect and it lags but this is how things get fixed. Prices are sorted out, manufacturers make bets on long term capacity. Some will be losers, some will be winners.
My guess is that many of the current people saying "technology is over and no one will afford their own computer" might have been born after the previous shortages, so it's in reality their first shortage and they have no memories (nor interest reading about) the previous ones, that all eventually washed over, even if at those points there were also people claiming that "No one will have their own SSD in the future, because prices will always be super expensive for consumers from now on".
That's my hypothesis I spent a whole of 30 seconds thinking about anyways.
This is a different kind of shortage though. Previous ones were cyclical and caused by supply/demand mismatches or natural disasters. This one is structural. The manufacturers are actively choosing to prioritize AI because the margins are dramatically higher, and AI market has virtually unlimited money right now.
> eventually washed over
Eventually is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Several years of constrained supply have real consequences for people and businesses. Hardware manufacturers are saying most of their capacity is already sold out to AI customers through 2026, and possibly even through 2027 and 2028, with the rest of the markets getting what's left over. This is a fundamentally different market dynamic.
> caused by supply/demand mismatches
How is that different from today? The scale might be different, but it's quite literally a "supply/demand mismatch" right now.
I don't think what we're seeing today can be described as "structural", at least because it's way too short to make such proclamations today, if it ossifies, then yeah maybe I'd agree with you, it's become structural.
> Several years of constrained supply have real consequences for people and businesses
Indeed, but lets see if it'll go as far as being "several years", the prices already stopped increasing, and supply still isn't planned to be expanded, if either of those changes you might have a point, but as of today it seems like an exaggeration.
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> it's in reality their first shortage
... or their first bubble.
Market is fixing it. Memory makers prioritized HBM and enterprise NAND, some, like Crucial, went out of consumer business entirely.
At the same time, the rational market is behaving rationally - they're not increasing production because they're fearing AI bubble could burst, leaving them with oversupply and expensive factories.
The market, apart from AI market, is behaving exactly as it's designed and as it should. But it doesn't mean outcome is good for everyone.
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Why not? The point of regulation is to fix things when market forces haven't been sufficient. You keep talking about winners and losers but it's unclear to me who you think is actually winning in this situation.
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