frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Made with ♥ by @iamnishanth

Open Source @Github

fp.

Open in hackernews

Ask HN: Why don't GPU/TPU manufacturers commoditize their RAM complement

4•DoctorOetker•2mo ago
Wouldn't say nvidia sell more GPU's if RAM prices were lowered? What prevents them from buying up IP / RAM fab labs and commoditizing the blueprints for its manufacture? Perhaps to the public at large, or perhaps just relicensing it for very low prices to entities in friendly nations?

Comments

theandrewbailey•2mo ago
RAM isn't their business, and that market has lots of ups and downs. What happens to Nvidia's hypothetical RAM investments when the AI rush is over and RAM is cheap and can't compete in that market? They've come to the logical conclusion to let the RAM companies do their thing.
onion2k•2mo ago
They spend a billion or twenty persuading everyone that they need more RAM, and software developers bloat their apps until it's true. The market for memory continues to thrive.
DoctorOetker•2mo ago
Sure the market will have ups and downs, commoditizing your complement is not an investment in the complement, its an investment in their business to increase sales of their primary market by decreasing costs for their customers.

They can choose how strong they commoditize their complement: perhaps buying up and expanding operations of RAM manufacture (an investment indeed, or a revenue insurance if a GPU competitor springs up), or more expensive buying up IP and licensing IP below market prices to novel RAM factories in friendly nations perhaps with exclusive priority or agreed prices for RAM at specified volumes etc., or even more expensive buying up IP and putting in public domain. The most optimal depth of commoditization would have to be calculated by such a GPU manufacturer.

raw_anon_1111•2mo ago
No commoditizing your complements is buying up your complements, it’s either working with a standards committee together with the also rans to take on the market leader or open sourcing your competitive product to sell more of what you care about.
Sevii•2mo ago
RAM is already a commodity.
DoctorOetker•2mo ago
"commoditize your complement" is an expression, and thus means more than just the individual meanings of the words combined.
nrhrjrjrjtntbt•2mo ago
This is the reference for anyone interested: https://gwern.net/complement

I think commoditize means "make cheaper, maybe by commoditizing" in this context.

Memory is and was commoditized. It just got more expensive.

wmf•2mo ago
I don't think there are any steps they could take to sustainably reduce DRAM prices.
kristianp•2mo ago
In terms of data centre gpus, HBM is far from a commodity as only a one or two manufacturers can fabricate the stacks of RAM.

https://newsletter.semianalysis.com/p/scaling-the-memory-wal...

axegon_•2mo ago
Everything that is currently going on is a result of people who are convinced they know what they are doing. Spoilers: they don't. The sooner the AI bubble bursts, the better.
brudgers•2mo ago
Ok, I'll byte...

Nvidia's business is cored on selling hardware to price insensitive customers. Those customers are price insensitive because the value created with Nvidia's GPU's is a non-fractional multiple of their capital cost and the capital cost of the GPU's is a fraction of the capital cost of the overall infrastructure.

And this is really important: if you maintain your margins, higher prices mean more net revenue. 30% of $2500 is less than 30% of $3000 while logistic and marketing and development costs are the same.

The retail market is price sensitive but is not the core of Nvidia's business. Large price insensitive customers are what drives development direction and what goes into retail is condensed from the exhaust fumes.

As a customer for RAM fabs, Nvidia drives the direction of RAM development without capital expenditure on infrastructure and R&D. It also mitigates the investment risks from political changes and disruption caused by technological breakthrough (the inertia of obsolescent RAM fabs driving design decisions).

Or to put it more simply, the age where near-leading-edge GPU hardware was readily accessible to consumers are past. The leading edge is increasingly military-industrial scale...with all that implies. Good luck.

Slint: Cross Platform UI Library

https://slint.dev/
1•Palmik•59s ago•0 comments

AI and Education: Generative AI and the Future of Critical Thinking

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7PvscqGD24
1•nyc111•1m ago•0 comments

Maple Mono: Smooth your coding flow

https://font.subf.dev/en/
1•signa11•2m ago•0 comments

Moltbook isn't real but it can still hurt you

https://12gramsofcarbon.com/p/tech-things-moltbook-isnt-real-but
1•theahura•5m ago•0 comments

Take Back the Em Dash–and Your Voice

https://spin.atomicobject.com/take-back-em-dash/
1•ingve•6m ago•0 comments

Show HN: 289x speedup over MLP using Spectral Graphs

https://zenodo.org/login/?next=%2Fme%2Fuploads%3Fq%3D%26f%3Dshared_with_me%25253Afalse%26l%3Dlist...
1•andrespi•7m ago•0 comments

Teaching Mathematics

https://www.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/~spurny/doc/articles/arnold.htm
1•samuel246•9m ago•0 comments

3D Printed Microfluidic Multiplexing [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZ2ZcOzLnGg
2•downboots•9m ago•0 comments

Abstractions Are in the Eye of the Beholder

https://software.rajivprab.com/2019/08/29/abstractions-are-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder/
2•whack•10m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Routed Attention – 75-99% savings by routing between O(N) and O(N²)

https://zenodo.org/records/18518956
1•MikeBee•10m ago•0 comments

We didn't ask for this internet – Ezra Klein show [video]

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ve02F0gyfjY
1•softwaredoug•11m ago•0 comments

The Real AI Talent War Is for Plumbers and Electricians

https://www.wired.com/story/why-there-arent-enough-electricians-and-plumbers-to-build-ai-data-cen...
2•geox•14m ago•0 comments

Show HN: MimiClaw, OpenClaw(Clawdbot)on $5 Chips

https://github.com/memovai/mimiclaw
1•ssslvky1•14m ago•0 comments

I Maintain My Blog in the Age of Agents

https://www.jerpint.io/blog/2026-02-07-how-i-maintain-my-blog-in-the-age-of-agents/
2•jerpint•14m ago•0 comments

The Fall of the Nerds

https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/the-fall-of-the-nerds
1•otoolep•16m ago•0 comments

I'm 15 and built a free tool for reading Greek/Latin texts. Would love feedback

https://the-lexicon-project.netlify.app/
2•breadwithjam•19m ago•0 comments

How close is AI to taking my job?

https://epoch.ai/gradient-updates/how-close-is-ai-to-taking-my-job
1•cjbarber•19m ago•0 comments

You are the reason I am not reviewing this PR

https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/479442
2•midzer•21m ago•1 comments

Show HN: FamilyMemories.video – Turn static old photos into 5s AI videos

https://familymemories.video
1•tareq_•22m ago•0 comments

How Meta Made Linux a Planet-Scale Load Balancer

https://softwarefrontier.substack.com/p/how-meta-turned-the-linux-kernel
1•CortexFlow•22m ago•0 comments

A Turing Test for AI Coding

https://t-cadet.github.io/programming-wisdom/#2026-02-06-a-turing-test-for-ai-coding
2•phi-system•23m ago•0 comments

How to Identify and Eliminate Unused AWS Resources

https://medium.com/@vkelk/how-to-identify-and-eliminate-unused-aws-resources-b0e2040b4de8
3•vkelk•23m ago•0 comments

A2CDVI – HDMI output from from the Apple IIc's digital video output connector

https://github.com/MrTechGadget/A2C_DVI_SMD
2•mmoogle•24m ago•0 comments

CLI for Common Playwright Actions

https://github.com/microsoft/playwright-cli
3•saikatsg•25m ago•0 comments

Would you use an e-commerce platform that shares transaction fees with users?

https://moondala.one/
1•HamoodBahzar•27m ago•1 comments

Show HN: SafeClaw – a way to manage multiple Claude Code instances in containers

https://github.com/ykdojo/safeclaw
3•ykdojo•30m ago•0 comments

The Future of the Global Open-Source AI Ecosystem: From DeepSeek to AI+

https://huggingface.co/blog/huggingface/one-year-since-the-deepseek-moment-blog-3
3•gmays•30m ago•0 comments

The Evolution of the Interface

https://www.asktog.com/columns/038MacUITrends.html
2•dhruv3006•32m ago•1 comments

Azure: Virtual network routing appliance overview

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-network/virtual-network-routing-appliance-overview
3•mariuz•32m ago•0 comments

Seedance2 – multi-shot AI video generation

https://www.genstory.app/story-template/seedance2-ai-story-generator
2•RyanMu•36m ago•1 comments