[HN Gopher] Hetzner Prices increase 30-40%
___________________________________________________________________
Hetzner Prices increase 30-40%
Author : williausrohr
Score : 463 points
Date : 2026-02-23 09:52 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (docs.hetzner.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (docs.hetzner.com)
| dayson wrote:
| with no explanation of why?
| zeeZ wrote:
| https://www.hetzner.com/pressroom/statement-price-adjustment...
|
| Text in full:
|
| > There have been drastic price increases in various areas in
| the IT branch recently. That is why, unfortunately, we must
| also increase the prices of our products.
|
| > The costs to operate our infrastructure and to buy new
| hardware have both increased dramatically. Therefore, our price
| changes will affect both existing products and new orders and
| will take effect starting on 1 April 2026.
|
| > We have genuinely tried hard to optimize our costs and to
| prevent increasing our prices for as long as possible. But we
| can no longer compensate for the strain that it has placed on
| our operations. We want to continue to deliver quality products
| that meet both our standards and your expectations, so we must
| take this step.
|
| > The price changes take effect on 1 April 2026 and are for
| both new orders and existing products. There is list of
| affected prices on Hetzner Docs at
| https://docs.hetzner.com/general/infrastructure-and-
| availabi....
| danpalmer wrote:
| A hosting company referring to the core of their business as
| "the IT branch" doesn't instil confidence.
| F-W-M wrote:
| I guess it's just a bad translation and means IT sector.
| German word: "IT-Branche"
| Hetzner_OL wrote:
| Hi there, That's actually my bad. I'm a native speaker,
| but I've lived in Germany too long apparently. Thanks for
| bringing it to my attention. --Katie
| zeeZ wrote:
| It's a German hosting company making a translation error
| from the German "IT-Branche". The wording doesn't appear in
| the German version, but very well could have at some point
| in the process.
| jaapz wrote:
| yes, "IT-Branche" means "the IT industry"
| ndom91 wrote:
| Thats just what we call it in Germany.. It's still a bit of
| backwater when it comes to some aspects of tech haha
| PurpleRamen wrote:
| Seems poor translation. The German version only speaks
| about rising costs in various areas, no mention of any IT
| branch. They probably meant the whole IT market in general,
| not specifically their own company or some branch of it.
| mi_lk wrote:
| this should be the link instead. @dang
| pseudalopex wrote:
| Send it to hn@ycombinator.com.[1]
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| citrin_ru wrote:
| AI race pushed up prices for the hardware (and likely
| everything you need to build/maintain a DC). Rising cloud costs
| was only matter of when, not if.
| piva00 wrote:
| Knock-down effects from the RAM shortage, starting to see CPUs
| shortage (lead times for Intel at 6 months for server-class
| CPUs, AMD also notified enterprise customers about a crunch),
| GPUs shortage, storage prices are increasing a lot as well.
|
| Everything is much more expensive on the hardware-side at this
| moment, I think we will see these price increases across any
| provider that requires hardware, I'm just waiting until
| Backblaze notifies they will also need to increase pricing due
| to this.
|
| AI is sucking money from everything, not only financial
| markets, it includes all of us consumers of anything that
| requires hardware to run on.
|
| Hopefully this craze dies down in the next 1-2 years because it
| will be untenable to be paying 2-3x prices for the same
| technology we had for quite cheap just a year ago...
| mnewme wrote:
| Still 90% cheaper than using AWS
| agilob wrote:
| AWS and Azure will have to increase prices soon too, they just
| have more existing hardware to postpone it for a bit longer.
| andersmurphy wrote:
| I didn't think it was possible for Vercel to get more
| expensive, but I guess we're going to find out.
| tasuki wrote:
| > AWS and Azure will have to increase prices soon too, they
| just have more existing hardware to postpone it for a bit
| longer.
|
| Also, like the parent said, they _already_ charge ten times
| more.
| alt227 wrote:
| I assume this is a symptom of the wider ai hardware issue.
|
| This is starting to feel a bit like universal paperclips to me,
| and we are on the verge of the next stage of industrialisation
| multiplication.
|
| I guess its either quantum computing or the hypnodrones which
| will get us out of this mess one way or another...
| joe_mamba wrote:
| AI bubble won't last forever when a lot of compute is burned at
| a loss just so people can generate AI videos of sharks driving
| cars for social media shorts. It will burst at some point, at
| which HW manufacturing will have to lower prices if they still
| want to have enough sales to stay in business, since most of
| their current sales boom comes from HW they haven't even made
| yet.
|
| OpenAI can't keep losing investor money forever with nothing to
| show for, at some point the first domino will fall, then the
| rest of the industry will go too from investor panic.
| echelon wrote:
| I really don't think so. I feel like we're at a takeoff.
|
| Senior engineers using AI coding are 10x more productive. My
| output has jumped dramatically. I'm a senior engineer and
| built six nines, active-active systems that moved billions of
| dollars a day. I am absolutely a beast with these models. I
| can replace an entire team just by myself. I'm literally
| shipping an entire week of features in half a day. I'm
| reviewing the code and planning the architecture - I am _not_
| dialing this in.
|
| Video editors using video models can replace entire studio
| production departments. Writer-directors who know how to
| direct are essentially now Hollywood studios in their own
| right. I know a lot about this in particular because I've
| been making films as a hobby for 15+ years and work with a
| lot of industry professionals.
|
| You'll see a lot of slop, but that's the same thing we got
| when we gave the masses cell phones with cameras attached to
| them. We still have plenty of amazing photographers in the
| world, and the means of creation are only getting
| cheaper/easier and the scope of creation for any individual
| is growing and growing and growing.
|
| This _is_ the next industrial revolution.
| iamtheworstdev wrote:
| Yea but are you paying a profitable amount of money to your
| service provider for you to do it? I find it hard to
| believe that Anthropic is profiting off of my $100/mo
| subscription based on how active I keep my machines
| running.
| mrweasel wrote:
| The numbers mentioned by Ed Zitron in his podcast Better
| Offline recently suggested that a $200/mo Claude
| subscription allows you to spend $2300 - $2700 worth of
| Anthropic tokens. That's pretty bad, but better than I
| expected.
|
| I don't see it being unreasonable that models and
| infrastructure could improve enough to bridge the cost
| gap within five to ten years. It's just that the AI
| companies already spend so much money that it might not
| matter.
| joe_mamba wrote:
| _> Senior engineers using AI coding are 10x more
| productive._
|
| Are the subscriptions of those engineers enough to make
| their use-case profitable and on top to also be subsidizing
| the cost of AI video slop generation and keep the company
| profitable?
|
| _> Video editors using video models can replace entire
| studio production departments. _
|
| Then why is OpenAI losing more an more money?
|
| _> This is the next industrial revolution._
|
| I'm not saying it isn't, but we did have the .com bubble
| burst even though that was also revolution. Something can
| be a bubble and a revolution simultaneously. The internet
| didn't go away after the .com bubble burst, just the crazy
| speculations did, which is what I was saying will happen
| with the AI bauble. The bubble will burst and only the
| profit generating parts of AI will remain.
| sz4kerto wrote:
| So prices will need to increase -- if it makes a senior
| engineer 10x more productive then coding assistants could
| easily cost 20x-100x more then what they cost today. Same
| for video generation.
| echelon wrote:
| Given that 10x engineers cost in the millions and that
| movies cost in the hundreds of millions - _this is okay!_
|
| Edit: HN rate limit won't let me reply, so here -
|
| I'm saying that hiring ten senior engineer costs
| millions. (Not a single 10xer - that's such a debated
| thing anyway, Fabrice Bellard or not.)
|
| AI companies will make bank when they've hooked us all on
| the tools and raise prices.
|
| Companies would likely rather pay $500k/yr to Anthropic
| and $750k/yr to engineers than $2M/yr to an uneven team
| of humans with HR, taxes, and other expenses, attrition,
| etc.
|
| Anthropic is going to make bank.
| joe_mamba wrote:
| How many 10x engineers paid millions are out there? How
| can you stay in business as an AI company by only
| charging those 10x engineers 200/month?
|
| Edit: Fabrice Bellard is a 10x engineers because he
| invents cool and innovative tools that didn't exist, not
| because he can bang out code 10x faster. AI can't replace
| fabrice Ballard.
| Bombthecat wrote:
| Yap, that's what people don't want to hear.
|
| Right now we are in the cheap phase.
|
| Price can easily triple
| s1mplicissimus wrote:
| > Price can easily triple
|
| They can just as easily plummet to a fraction. Really
| depends on wether there's value for the entities that are
| paying
| fauigerzigerk wrote:
| The price of tools isn't determined by how much money
| they make or save the user. That's just the price cap.
| The price floor (in the long run) is the cost of making
| the tool. The actual price will be somewhere in between
| depending on competition.
| alt227 wrote:
| > Edit: HN rate limit won't let me reply, so here -
|
| There is a reason for that...
| mirsadm wrote:
| This is yet to be seen. Certainly feels like I'm more
| productive but I'm not seeing any faster results. It would
| be nice for this to be studied more.
| jacquesm wrote:
| What people mostly see is the _illusion_ of productivity.
| But the measure should be outcomes, not the amount of
| stuff made. If a factory produces 10x the product but it
| is only 1 /3rd the quality of what it was before that is
| long term unsustainable and leaves the door open for a
| competitor to attack them on quality.
|
| This is the key driver behind all those
| 'enshittification' problems that we see. Quantity over
| quality is almost always a balance and not a binary, if
| you start treating it as if one should always trump at
| the expense of the other then sooner or later it will
| catch up with you.
| GlacierFox wrote:
| _Video editors using video models can replace entire studio
| production departments. Writer-directors who know how to
| direct are essentially now Hollywood studios in their own
| right. I know a lot about this in particular because I 've
| been making films as a hobby for 15+ years and work with a
| lot of industry professionals._
|
| This is soul destroying. Literally made my day worse
| thinking about this.
| joe_mamba wrote:
| _> This is soul destroying._
|
| Why?
| echelon wrote:
| 10,000 students go to film school every year. A handful
| of them will have the autonomy and scope they want. The
| rest of their dreams die on the vine.
|
| This is my friends' lives.
|
| _That_ should make your day worse.
| re-thc wrote:
| > I can replace an entire team just by myself. I'm
| literally shipping an entire week of features in half a
| day. I'm reviewing the code and planning the architecture -
| I am not dialing this in.
|
| So you can review so much code so fast? Are you sure?
|
| In many companies code reviews (properly) are the
| bottleneck. This was the case without AI. Now you're saying
| AI is giving you 10x more code reviews and you're even
| faster.
|
| What am I missing?
|
| p.s. I agree AI can make you and things faster just not
| suddenly god mode.
| oohbkkb wrote:
| 10x AI speed up only happens when you stop reading the
| code (or start skimming it, etc). This is pretty obvious
| to anyone that uses the tools and many vibe coding
| proponents have said as much.
|
| Sacrificing quality for quantity makes these tools much
| less impressive. I say this as I tab over to my bug
| ridden memory hog CC tmux tab.
| ndr42 wrote:
| If you are able now to create 10 products instead of 1 in
| the same time frame you will have to plan, review and
| maintain 10 things instead of 1. How can this work? I mean
| to double your productivity is a huge jump but 10x sounds
| unsustainable.
| hypeatei wrote:
| Well, AI fanatics aren't about longevity or maintaining
| things. The fact that the LLM spit out a bunch of code is
| good enough for them. Drive-by PRs and vaporware are
| their bread & butter.
| lm28469 wrote:
| Do you get paid 10x? Does your company make 10x?
|
| Nope, because the only companies making money on this bs
| are companies selling pickaxes and shovels
| jbxntuehineoh wrote:
| > I'm thoroughly reviewing a week's worth of code in (less
| than) half a day
|
| no you aren't lmfao
| arisAlexis wrote:
| Nothing has ever burst when production can't meet demand
| joe_mamba wrote:
| It always bursts when demand stops. Current demand is
| artificially pumped up and financially unsustainable aka a
| bubble,
| lm28469 wrote:
| The demand being: "trust me bro we will pay you when we're
| profitable"
|
| All it'll take is one company to go bust, oracle for
| example, for the whole thing to deflate
|
| Plus you're factually wrong, it happened for fiber optics
| and railroads
| joe_mamba wrote:
| _> All it'll take is one company to go bust, oracle for
| example, for the whole thing to deflate_
|
| Provided that of course, the US administration will be
| incorruptible enough to not bail out these tech companies
| with taxpayer money when they do eventually fail.
|
| But when you see the connection between Larry Ellison and
| Trump, you realize the whole "free market competition" is
| a scam for suckers. Always has been, just that now they
| don't even bother to hide it via some complex facades and
| shell games to garner a veneer of legitimacy, it's
| straight up banana republic style of corruption.
| alansaber wrote:
| All these macro technology predictions feel very WW2
| Wunderwaffe to me
| embedding-shape wrote:
| Slinging doom and gloom on the internet seems like
| engagement-bait to me at this point. If the suppliers aren't
| increasing production, they clearly see something all these
| armchair doomers do not, I'm sure the prices will normalize
| back to "normal" levels sooner than people think.
| Haven880 wrote:
| More like China-factor to get us out of the mess. We wait for
| Huawei photonics gpus (end of this year), CXMT and YMTC ramping
| up production to flood the market or as Janet coined it
| overcapacity. You know China will undercut the price
| significantly.
| re-thc wrote:
| China doesn't have enough to supply itself.
| monster_truck wrote:
| Neither does anyone else. Key difference being they planned
| for this 5 years ago instead of last quarter
| re-thc wrote:
| Planned doesn't mean achievable. The yields are still
| low.
| alt227 wrote:
| Low is better than nothing.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Low yields means their production can cost more than they
| sell it for, which is not sustainable. They have to have
| yields good enough that they can make money, otherwise
| the government is just subsidizing a give away, which is
| fine if they don't export them but wouldn't make sense if
| they do.
| Incipient wrote:
| China has plenty of money to subside low yields while
| they improve their technology.
| piva00 wrote:
| That's where capitalism-with-Chinese-characteristics
| comes into play, since the CCP knows it's a capacity they
| want to get some independence from the government creates
| incentives to develop it until it becomes self-
| sustainable.
|
| They have a strategic goal which the government will
| support while at the same time letting competition do its
| thing, it's a step above from what other governments used
| to do with government-backed R&D that would eventually be
| developed by the private sector into products.
|
| Not sure why other countries aren't adopting this model
| adapted to their own needs, seems very effective so far.
| Well, I'm not sure but have a big hunch it's the usual
| big business blocking it since it'd create more
| competition in a more level playing field.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Why would the CPC (the correct acronym) subsidize cheap
| GPUs to America? You won't see huawei GPUs here until
| their yields are decent enough to make it profitable.
| piva00 wrote:
| CCP is the common one even though not the official,
| either use is fine and understandable (as you've
| understood it clearly).
|
| What do you mean? I'm talking about the CCP funding
| projects to increase yield for their fabs, not buying
| GPUs from NVidia...
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| It's CPC because the official name of the party is
| Communist Party, China, a hold over to when China was
| more aligned with the soviets before Stalin died. As long
| as they subsidize GPUs for domestic use, it makes sense.
| But we won't see them for export until their yields are
| good enough to make them profitable. They will also have
| a hard time scaling with bad yields, leading to a
| continued need for GPU imports to meet demand.
| piva00 wrote:
| > It's CPC because the official name of the party is
| Communist Party
|
| I'm very aware of that but it's commonly referred to as
| CCP which is understandable for any reader, I don't need
| to change it to CPC to be understood at all. Not sure why
| you insist on nitpicking this point, rather pointless,
| it's just a common way to refer to it.
| alt227 wrote:
| > CPC (the correct acronym)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Communist_Party
|
| Read the very first sentence.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Yes, the western world has basically told the Chinese
| what the proper acronym should be even if the Chinese
| disagree.
| alexgieg wrote:
| Chinese planning revolves around mastering a technology
| no matter the cost, then monopolozing the global market
| no matter the cost, then bankrupting existing foreigner
| competitors or entirely preventing them from arising in
| the first place no matter the cost, to only _then_ caring
| about costs and to start profiting from it all.
| mentalgear wrote:
| Sounds like SV VC culture.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Chinese strategy of monopolizing markets via low prices
| is strange, it has no moat, they win simply because they
| provide the best value. I mean, its great for us, I'm all
| for it, but it doesn't have an end game where they can
| actually ever set prices.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| They win because it leverages their strategic asset: a
| vast labor pool.
|
| Right now they're trying to avoid the other side of that
| coin (low value trap) by integrating vertically.
| skrebbel wrote:
| My compliments for the hypnodrones reference
| alt227 wrote:
| Thankyou, I have played many games of Universal Paperclips as
| I imagine you have as well.
|
| Releasing the Hypnodrones is always a very satisfying
| milestone.
| dagi3d wrote:
| Why are they increasing the prices on already existing
| infrastructure? Is that a way to "subsidize" the new purchases?
| pella wrote:
| Even existing hardware can fail, and swapping out memory or
| disks is expensive these days. :-(
| ahofmann wrote:
| Hetzner mostly ate up the rising energy prices in germany for
| the last 3 years and they have big problems with their hardware
| supply since then. It is hard to get cloud instances in nbg and
| fsn. So an increase in pricing is very much expected from my
| side.
| eigenspace wrote:
| German electricity prices have been falling for the last 3
| years. They've been below the pre-war levels for a while now.
|
| Hardware prices, especially with the current chaos, and the
| huge spike in demand they've doubtless seen is more than
| enough to explain this price hike though.
| citrin_ru wrote:
| I would expect a large provider like Hetzner to refresh
| hardware continuously - every year a fraction of old hardware
| is retired and replaced by new. Given price shock they could
| stop doing this but older hardware is less energy efficient and
| has limited life anyway.
| alt227 wrote:
| But they cant refresh hardware already sold to customers can
| they?
|
| So increasing prices on existing cutomer hardware is what,
| subsidising hardware refreshes elsewhere in the datacenter?
| 1718627440 wrote:
| Often they do not actually sell you hardware servers, but
| VMs running on them, with designated properties.
| gizzlon wrote:
| Hetzner do both.. well rent, not sell, afaik
| 1718627440 wrote:
| I ment selling time-shares, so yeah rent.
| alt227 wrote:
| I agree but this is not only easy to tell, you also
| specify when you buy AFAIK.
|
| You either buy VPS or bare metal servers.
| nottorp wrote:
| Hosting providers do not sell hardware. They rent it.
| dizhn wrote:
| In their email they say their operating costs increased too.
| Whether it actually did or not, that is their reasoning to
| increase prices on already sold products.
| miyuru wrote:
| Looks like this is IPv6-only pricing, by the way.
|
| $0.60 will be added for the IPv4.
| _s_a_m_ wrote:
| Nice, so we finally know who's actually paying the costs for the
| AI boom, while the returns go exclusively to the scamers.
| gerty wrote:
| As a customer, I am OK with most increases but not the object
| storage one. This one has some quality issues and is no longer
| competitive in price either. I'm thinking of moving S3 part to
| OVH.
| bobince wrote:
| OVH are putting up prices in the same way, with the same
| reasoning. (I don't know about storage, but VPS stuff I'm using
| is going up ~20%.)
|
| Used to be every VPS refresh cycle you'd get more server for
| less money. This is miserable
| indigodaddy wrote:
| Is that why I recently got an out of nowhere 1.40 bill on my
| 4.90/mo OVHcloud VPS?
| anonzzzies wrote:
| I have been buying older servers by the truckloads. Older being a
| year or so. It will be enough to host whatever outside AI that we
| need for the coming 15-20 years. And the all were great deals,
| will have them paid for within a month per server. I have my own
| cage full with empty racks bought from a bankrupt company in AMS.
| tasuki wrote:
| > enough to host whatever outside AI that we need for the
| coming 15-20 years.
|
| Not sure who "we" is, but I highly doubt you'll use those
| servers for 15-20 years.
| anonzzzies wrote:
| We run production on servers 15 years old for our
| company/clients. Servers now are far faster and the software
| barely changes performance characteristic wise. We run Java,
| Perl & PHP ERP/departmental type projects; nothing that gets
| added makes anything slower and I don't see that happening
| either. Unless clients will want vastly different things,
| which, you know, they won't as they are big sluggish
| companies.
| ed_mercer wrote:
| There's no mention of RAM upgrades. If we bought RAM already at
| the old prices, are they being increased as well? The current
| pricing for RAM has more than quadrupled since January.
| Hetzner_OL wrote:
| Hi there, To the best of my knowledge, anyone with *existing*
| RAM *add-ons* that were affected by price changes should have
| received a separate email. Please carefully check your email
| inbox/trash/spam. The general price changes we announced today
| will affect both new and existing products, like dedicated
| servers and cloud servers:
| https://docs.hetzner.com/general/infrastructure-and-availabi...
| Those prices will take effect on 1 April 2026. --Katie
| Havoc wrote:
| This comes after OVH sent emails with really spicy increases too.
| Like north of 50
| antonyh wrote:
| I got no such email, was this for VPS or dedicated servers?
| Havoc wrote:
| Not sure which products but Reddit etc was in uproar
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/OVHcloud/comments/1ra5jzg/ovh_doubl.
| ..
| BoingBoomTschak wrote:
| Same, still 5EUR/month for my (now discontinued, apparently)
| VLE-2 box. Current VPS line-up (Intel based, though) is still
| quite cheap: https://www.ovhcloud.com/fr/vps/
| embedding-shape wrote:
| The post seems to indicate this is just for VPSs, which doesn't
| seem true, the email I just received from Hetzner mentions price
| increases for dedicated servers too.
|
| The ones I'm affected by seemingly: Product ->
| previous price -> New price as of 1 April 2026 EX42-NVMe
| (FSN1) -> EUR 49.65 -> EUR 51.13 AX41 (FSN1) -> EUR 49.73
| -> EUR 51.22 AX41-NVMe (FSN1) -> EUR 49.73 -> EUR 51.18
| Server Auction -> EUR 65.22 -> EUR 67.18
|
| Still cheap compared to the performance + unmetered bandwidth, so
| I'm personally not super upset about it, my monthly bill in total
| goes up maybe 40-50 EUR in total, not that outrageous.
|
| Here is the full list of the updated prices:
| https://docs.hetzner.com/general/infrastructure-and-availabi...
|
| Seems it's because of increased cost of hardware, and they
| seemingly tried to avoid increasing the prices but they couldn't.
| From the email:
|
| > The underlying causes of the increased costs are, among others,
| the exploding demand for AI-related computing power and for cloud
| services. In addition, raw material prices and production costs
| have also generally risen for manufacturers. The costs for RAM
| and SSDs especially have risen by a large amount. For example,
| the cost for DRAM memory has increased up to 500% since September
| 2025. And according to market researchers like TrendForce, this
| price trend will continue throughout the year.
|
| > We have genuinely tried hard to optimize our costs and to
| prevent increasing our prices for as long as possible. But we can
| no longer compensate for the strain that it has placed on our
| operations. We want to continue to deliver quality products that
| meet both our standards and your expectations, so we must take
| this step.
| nozzlegear wrote:
| I'm not particularly tied to Hetzner as an American using their
| Ashburn servers, so I figured maybe this price increase puts
| them a little closer to DigitalOcean's pricing. The pricing is
| still pretty heavily in Hetzner's favor though: the CCX23s that
| I use will be $39.99 USD after April 1, but the closest DO
| equivalent is $126 USD with a third of the disk space.
| zipy124 wrote:
| I would imagine we are going to see a DO price increase soon,
| given the crazy costs of RAM and now storage. Given the usual
| life cycle of server hardware, they will need to start
| preparing their increases for the next cycle.
| re-thc wrote:
| > puts them a little closer to DigitalOcean's pricing
|
| DigitalOcean has been losing out to hardware inflation for a
| long time. Most of their fleet is very old except maybe the
| very top tier and that's still old.
|
| They're really overdue for a refresh but now the hardware is
| so expensive.
| jbb67 wrote:
| Yes, my dedicated server is going up by 3% this year. That
| doesn't seem bad at all. It's still cheap!
| clouedoc wrote:
| Same. This price increases is making me think about switching
| all the workload that I have on Hetzner Cloud into dedicated
| auctions server.
| tcldr wrote:
| The price increases for dedicated servers are reflected in the
| higher setup costs. For example, I believe AX102 setup was EUR
| 39.00 now EUR 269.00.
| qwertox wrote:
| It does list the dedicated servers price increase:
|
| https://docs.hetzner.com/general/infrastructure-and-availabi...
| 100agsh16 wrote:
| > the cost for DRAM memory has increased up to 500% since
| September 2025
|
| How to ruin the entire Internet, software engineering and
| personal servers just because some billionaire man children
| watched Star Trek 30 years ago.
|
| They are coming for everyone, including those who promote this
| AI nonsense here and who will be disposed of first, because
| they are the least competent.
| slashdev wrote:
| While I have written elsewhere[1] that I think AI is causing
| a bubble right now, AI is also the biggest technological
| change to the world since the Internet.
|
| I'm a software engineer, and I don't write code anymore. I'm
| still coming to terms with that, grieving the loss of my old
| career and getting used to the new career which is more like
| a technical lead and product person than a computer
| programmer.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47037421
| ezst wrote:
| Stop calling LLMs AI. We have LLMs as a product, now, but
| not AI. AI does exist as a research field, and so do
| "flying cars" and "nuclear fusion" (with arguably those two
| being much closer to materiality than AI).
|
| And no, that doesn't make me some kind of "AI hater", or
| someone unable to see value in LLMs.
| devops000 wrote:
| Still cheaper than US cloud computing.
|
| In EU there are: Hetzner, OVH and Seeweb.
| personality0 wrote:
| Also Scaleway
| raphaelj wrote:
| I like Scaleway a lot too.
| CryptoBanker wrote:
| Also Contabo
| s_dev wrote:
| https://european-alternatives.eu/
| ozgune wrote:
| These changes are effective April 1st for existing and new
| customers. The price increase ratios are also different across
| product lines.
|
| * Cloud (VMs): 38%
|
| * Bare metal: 15%
|
| * Memory add-on for bare metal: 575% (effective immediately)
|
| It feels like memory add-on is intentionally set high to
| discourage customers from adding more memory.
|
| AX102 (128 GB RAM) costs EUR124, AX162 (256 GB RAM) costs EUR244,
| but the 128 GB memory add-on alone costs EUR264. If we ignore the
| setup fee, it's more cost-effective to provision additional
| servers instead of adding RAM to bare metal instances.
|
| Here's the link to cloud and bare metal pricing changes:
| https://docs.hetzner.com/general/infrastructure-and-availabi...
| rozenmd wrote:
| Have you seen the price of RAM recently?
| embedding-shape wrote:
| AFAIK, it's been stabilizing lately at the current price, so
| at least it's not increasing anymore:
| https://pcpartpicker.com/trends/price/memory/
|
| By the same time next year the prices likely gone down,
| although maybe not to the pre-increase, but surely much lower
| than currently. Putting it in my calendar to revisit this
| comment in a year :)
| Forgeties79 wrote:
| Stabilized at 5x (or more), a change that occurred over
| like 3mo.
|
| Grocery prices have also stabilized but I'm still paying
| too much ha
| embedding-shape wrote:
| Well, if all the doomers and gloomers were correct that
| this is the end of hardware at home, we'd see the price
| continue to increase, and suppliers trying to ramp up
| production, even if it'd take long time.
|
| The fact that it stabilized (at whatever price) and that
| suppliers aren't even thinking about ramping up
| production, should tell people that the doomers and
| gloomers were yet again over-reacting to things they
| don't fully understand themselves.
|
| > Grocery prices have also stabilized but I'm still
| paying too much
|
| I think that's a local problem, if you happen to live in
| a country that's trying to move over to isolationism
| rather than globalism as of late. In other modern
| countries the prices are also increasing, but at least
| following inflation somewhat so the increase doesn't seem
| as bad for us. Maybe at least yet? Who knows.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| > Well, if all the doomers and gloomers were correct that
| this is the end of hardware at home, we'd see the price
| continue to increase, and suppliers trying to ramp up
| production, even if it'd take long time.
|
| Ramping up production takes months and paying back the
| price to ramp up production takes years. Manufacturers
| have started investing in more production capacity but
| it'll take a while before supply can be sold off.
|
| Based on interviews with industry professionals, I
| believe the forecast is that RAM prices will start going
| down again between August and the end of next year. Until
| then, prices will climb as stock depletes and RAM
| production is capped.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > Manufacturers have started investing in more production
| capacity
|
| Where are you getting this from? Because that's not what
| I've seen, if anything the industry seems to lowering the
| production capacity, not increasing it.
|
| And even if it takes years, if they thought it was a
| sustainable growth in demand, they'd at least be moving
| in that direction which again, doesn't seem to be
| happening.
|
| > I believe the forecast is that RAM prices will start
| going down again between August and the end of next year.
| Until then, prices will climb as stock depletes and RAM
| production is capped.
|
| You're already wrong with this today, prices stopped
| climbing already and have been stabilizing at the current
| prices... https://pcpartpicker.com/trends/price/memory/
| lenkite wrote:
| That is a mere short-term growth plateau as buyers
| curtail back spending - which has already happened twice
| - not true stabilization. Analyst firms like Trendforce
| expect 15-20% more increase well into end of Q2/Q3.
|
| https://www.trendforce.com/price/dram/dram_contract
| https://www.trendforce.com/price/dram/dram_spot
| Forgeties79 wrote:
| Smart money says by Jan 2026 ram prices will not be
| anywhere near where they were 6mo ago, but we'll see I
| suppose.
| jsheard wrote:
| > * Memory add-on for bare metal: 575% (effective immediately)
|
| > It feels like memory add-on is intentionally set very high to
| discourage customers from adding more memory.
|
| Memory prices are so stupid now that 575% is pretty close to
| their actual costs.
|
| https://pcpartpicker.com/trends/price/memory/
|
| DDR5-6000 2x32GB: ~$200 -> ~$1000
| ed_mercer wrote:
| > * Memory add-on for bare metal: 575% (effective immediately)
|
| I don't see this anywhere, source?
| embedding-shape wrote:
| Yeah, not sure where they're getting those from.
|
| From the Robot UI, I tried ordering a new EX44 or EX63:
|
| - EX63 comes with 64 GB DDR5 by default, can be upgraded to
| 192 GB DDR5 ECC for added EUR42.35
|
| - EX44 comes with 64 GB by default, can be upgraded to 128 GB
| DDR4 Non-ECC for added EUR 16.94 max. per month
| ffsm8 wrote:
| > These changes are effective April 1st for existing and
| new customers.
|
| Checking today doesn't really indicate anything.
|
| It's worth noting that the hardware price of RAM is up at
| least 550% yoy, so this was always going to happen as soon
| as their existing contracts had to be renewed
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > > These changes are effective April 1st for existing
| and new customers.
|
| I thought the "effective immediately" mean that April 1st
| threshold wasn't for the memory...
| ffsm8 wrote:
| Mmh, true...
|
| I suspect there are errors on their announcement anyway,
| I mean there are rows like this on it
| GEX131 (256 GB RAM) 1232,05 GEX131 (512 GB RAM)
| 1230,82 GEX131 (768 GB RAM) 2114,75
|
| Which would mean the 256 version is slightly more
| expensive then the 512.
|
| Hetzner often feels more like a mom-and-pop store then a
| corporation because of stuff like that
| ozgune wrote:
| I used Hetzner's pricing calculator.
|
| https://www.hetzner.com/dedicated-
| rootserver/ax162-r/configu...
|
| Before today, we used to be able to order an AX162-R for
| EUR207 and add 128 GB of RAM for EUR46. Starting today, the
| same calculator provides EUR207 for an AX162-R (*) and EUR264
| for the 128 GB RAM add-on. Sadly, HN doesn't let me upload
| screenshots.
|
| (*) The price change for AX162-R machines is effective
| starting April 1st.
| bluedino wrote:
| > * Memory add-on for bare metal: 575% (effective immediately)
|
| > It feels like memory add-on is intentionally set high to
| discourage customers from adding more memory.
|
| List price on Dell's website for servers is about $100/GB for
| RAM. Woof.
| bootsmann wrote:
| A significant part of this is probably just the hockey-stick
| growth in the price of memory we have seen in the past 6 months.
| Would be surprised if this wasn't impacting their bottom line for
| maintenance.
| fabian2k wrote:
| RAM increased the most, but also SSD and HDD prices increased
| significantly. And it seems there are also supply problems, so
| you can't even be sure if you get the components you want at
| higher prices.
| jacquesm wrote:
| There is another factor at play here: EU hosting providers that
| are not owned lock, stock & barrel are few and far between and
| Hetzner has a very nice sales representative in the White
| House.
| stavros wrote:
| Can you expound on that? I'm not sure I get what you're
| implying.
| capitol_ wrote:
| That Trump makes us very motivated to stop relying on
| American tech.
| okanat wrote:
| This doesn't solve the issue that globalism caused.
| Europe doesn't make DRAM nor has the know-how to quickly
| bring factories online which usually take 10+ years.
|
| We are tied to American economy and if AI companies start
| driving prices up not only DRAM but basically everything
| will become more expensive.
| x_may wrote:
| Isn't there also basically 0 American DRAM?
| UltraSane wrote:
| Micron Technology, Inc. is an American semiconductor
| company that manufactures computer memory
| input_sh wrote:
| They don't produce them _within the US_. They 're
| building some factories to do so in the future, but as of
| now their output is 0.
| okanat wrote:
| However, the US government has / can have control over
| Micron's production. They are headquartered in the US.
| They have the intellectual property and know-how to erect
| a vertically integrated supply chain. Europe doesn't have
| this strategic investment.
| dangus wrote:
| The newfound desire to move away from American cloud
| providers isn't related to pricing, it's about the
| perception of growing instability within the American
| government, the perception of deteriorating freedom of
| speech, and the perception of an increasingly non-neutral
| business environment.
|
| E.g., if I'm running a business in the US and I don't
| kiss Trump's ring (and pay bribes), if he becomes
| dictator for life in 2028, all bets are off for my
| business.
|
| Both the EU and USA import the majority of their computer
| equipment, and the USA is placing heavy and unpredictable
| tariffs on those goods. It's hard to argue that a
| business should bet that data centers will be cheaper in
| the US than in the EU if Trump is the last democratically
| elected president.
|
| The most stable places to do business in 2026 are
| probably the EU and China.
| bootsmann wrote:
| America doesn't manufacture DRAM either, this is all
| South Korea and Taiwan.
| spockz wrote:
| And China with IXMT.
| petcat wrote:
| ??? Micron has DRAM megafabs in both Idaho and New York
| state.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micron_Technology
| bootsmann wrote:
| Are those plants still functional after CHIPS act was
| axed? I thought they mainly produce in Asia now.
| petcat wrote:
| Well first of all, the CHIPS Act was not "axed", it is
| federal law passed by an overwhelming bipartisan majority
| of the House and Senate. It would take a complete
| reversal of congress to repeal it and it's still _very
| popular_ among both parties.
|
| Where do you get your information from?
| bootsmann wrote:
| > Well first of all, the CHIPS Act was not "axed", it is
| federal law passed by an overwhelming bipartisan majority
| of the House and Senate. It would take a complete
| reversal of congress to repeal it and it's still very
| popular among both parties.
|
| DOGE cut basically all staff from the CHIPS Program
| Office, congress passed the money but Trump is choosing
| to turn it into a slush-fund the admin spends on
| industrial policy (such as buying a stake in Intel).
| Wolfspeed went into bankruptcy in part because the admin
| delayed CHIPS funding agreed by the previous admin [1]
| (it's unclear whether they received the grant now that
| they have left it).
|
| [1] https://www.ft.com/content/4aac09f9-19df-401a-9ab3-ef
| 14a47bb...
| petcat wrote:
| Once again, where do you get your information from? The
| only thing that _doesn 't exist anymore_ is DOGE itself.
|
| https://wtop.com/government/2025/11/doge-quietly-
| disbands-8-...
| anonymars wrote:
| Does eliminating DOGE magically put Humpty Dumpty back
| together again?
| oblio wrote:
| If Doge disbanded but its actions haven't been undone, it
| doesn't matter if Doge doesn't exist anymore.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Just like executing a serial killer brings back all the
| victims, right? No harm done!
| vel0city wrote:
| You hire someone to reqire a few outlets in your kitchen.
| They burn down half your house. You fire the crappy
| electrician.
|
| What's the state of your house now?
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| > after CHIPS act was axed
|
| This is news to a lot of Americans! The 2022 CHIPS and
| Science Act is codified federal law. I think a lot of
| states (Arizona, Idaho, New York) would be very
| interested to learn that the funding for the
| infrastructure that _they are already building_ has
| somehow gone _poof_.
| voganmother42 wrote:
| Intel is now partially government owned(10%), they got
| rid of some of the milestones. The current administration
| has been extremely poor about communicating changes as
| well as constantly yanking funding (or threatening to)
| for projects - the chances of funding going poof are
| higher than ever.
| petesergeant wrote:
| > Currently, 100% of leading-edge DRAM production occurs
| overseas, primarily in East Asia.[0]
|
| They make DRAM for cars, not computers, in the USA.
| They've promised they'll bring manufacturing onshore any
| time soon, which effectively means they'll wait until
| Trump forgets about it.
|
| 0: https://www.nist.gov/news-
| events/news/2025/06/president-trum...
| zozbot234 wrote:
| That's not how it works, DRAM substrate (the actual chip
| that contains memory cells) is shared. It's only the
| packaging that differs.
| input_sh wrote:
| They don't "have them", they're _building them_.
|
| https://www.micron.com/us-expansion/id
|
| > Micron has already achieved key construction milestones
| on its first Idaho fab with DRAM output scheduled to
| begin in 2027.
|
| https://investors.micron.com/news-releases/news-release-
| deta...
|
| > Production is expected to start in 2030 with the fabs
| ramping throughout the decade.
|
| Until they start outputting DRAM in any meaningful
| quantity, they're not relevant.
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| It looks like it's still a big difference between how the
| US and EU are responding to the chip supply wars. The US
| is actually building their own manufacturing capabilities
| domestically while the EU is apparently doing nothing,
| which is unfortunate.
| bootsmann wrote:
| Infineon is _opening_ its fab plant in Dresden this year
| which was supported by around 1bn euros from the EU
| equivalent of the CHIPS Act. They started building this
| fab in 2023, while TSMC, who started building its fab in
| the US right after covid just delayed the opening to 2027
| petcat wrote:
| The fab that Infineon is building is vastly smaller in
| scale, and their tech isn't really relevant to this
| discussion. For instance, it doesn't produce CPU/GPU
| microchips or DRAM. Also only 300mm wafer technology,
| which isn't competitive for anything except for some
| narrow industrial use-cases. Glad to see the EU is doing
| it, but it's a completely different thing.
| addaon wrote:
| Pretty much everyone is on 300 mm wafers for everything
| now, and has been for a while. Are you perhaps reading
| this as 300 nm process (which would usually be called 0.3
| micron)?
| lyu07282 wrote:
| But in the context of what we are talking about it's
| still true that nobody in the EU is making cutting edge
| CPU/GPU/DRAM and there are no plans to do so either
| (including that Infineon fab).
| ac29 wrote:
| > They don't "have them", they're building them.
|
| According to wikipedia Micron Fab 6 in Virginia started
| production in 1997 and is still operating
| input_sh wrote:
| > "in any meaningful capacity"
|
| Building a factory is one thing, they can have 50 of them
| built, but that doesn't mean much if all 50 together
| amount to like 0.1% of the company's output.
|
| Once those factories scale up to 1-2%, _then_ we can
| start considering that they 've actually built a domestic
| supply, but that's a whole different goal than simply
| building the factories. Building factories is trivial.
| Making them output _something_ is also "trivial".
| Scaling that up to a meaningful amount is a whole
| different, much harder goal to accomplish.
| direwolf20 wrote:
| Are you sure? I'd think producing any RAM chips at all is
| much harder than scaling up a working production process.
| input_sh wrote:
| Yes, I'm pretty confident you don't know anything about
| manufacturing at scale.
|
| Say you use a magic wand and build 15 new state-of-the-
| art factories tomorrow. Who's gonna run them? Does _any_
| location in the US have enough qualified workers that can
| simply take over and produce RAM in them from day 1 with
| no major fuckups?
|
| No, you need a ton of time to teach thousands of people
| how to run those 15 factories. To even begin to teach
| people, you need to have 1 factory up and running. That 1
| factory is at first going to be run by some of their
| existent workforce that they temporarily migrate from
| South Asia. Only _then_ can they start to teach local
| populace how to run those factories on their own.
|
| This is why it's much cheaper to simply build an
| additional one in South Asia than it is to build more
| than one in a whole new location. South Asia already has
| a bunch of workers that know what they're doing because
| they've been doing it for a long time. Build a new
| factory, promote some of your existent workforce up the
| chain, fill the lowest positions with fresh graduates
| that are gonna be equally good every year and you're good
| to go. It's nowhere near that simple in a brand new
| location, where even the most optimistic scenario would
| take longer than a decade to produce a meaningful amount
| of output.
| subw00f wrote:
| Wow, so it's almost like the workers are a key piece in
| producing any value at all.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| Not to mention, given recent US immigration enforcement
| actions at various manufacturing plants, you can't even
| safely bring in overseas workers to train your domestic
| workforce...
| okanat wrote:
| American companies are driving global economy insane.
| Currently the American political administration sides
| with the AI companies since it gives the inspiration that
| the economy is doing well. If things start to go side
| ways, the US government can put pressure on its local
| companies like Micron to supply other fields.
|
| Europe doesn't have local manufacturers. So it cannot
| exert control over the manufacturers to keep its internal
| / strategic market sane. All European hardware
| manufacturers have to put up with and compete in
| irrationality inflated prices.
| adrian_b wrote:
| Europe has stopped making DRAM relatively recently
| (Qimonda).
|
| This should have not been allowed to happen.
| okanat wrote:
| Guess who bought Qimonda's patents?
| oblio wrote:
| Who?
| adrian_b wrote:
| Micron
| okanat wrote:
| and facilities went to China's Inspur.
| Mad_ad wrote:
| America doesn't really produce RAM either.
| UltraSane wrote:
| You waited far too long.
| sincerely wrote:
| Pretty sure they are implying that the actions of the
| current president/administration are causing people to re-
| evaluate US dependencies. I don't really understand the
| first half
| fifilura wrote:
| I think in the first part they are implying that there
| are very few independent companies to turn to.
|
| (I also prefer comments that are clear without
| insinuations).
| abirch wrote:
| Precisely like code Clarity > Cleverness
| Gormo wrote:
| What about all of the long-tail providers that are often
| listed on lowendbox.com and similar sites?
| stavros wrote:
| Ahh, the sales rep is Trump, that makes sense, thank you.
| I thought Jacques meant they had lobbyists somehow.
| Tadpole9181 wrote:
| 1. There's no meaningful European competition.
|
| 2. Trump is making everyone scared to use US hosting.
|
| So they're leveraging for extra profits.
| hsuduebc2 wrote:
| The ridiculous prices of memory surely does not help.
| wongarsu wrote:
| That is indeed what the comment seems to be implying.
|
| "No meaningful European competition" might be a bit too
| strong. There are many great EU hosters. OVH, Netcup,
| Scaleway, Strato, Ionos, Exoscale, to name a few. But
| Hetzner is probably the biggest and has the best name
| recognition. Doesn't hurt that their prices are among the
| best in the industry
| jacquesm wrote:
| That the USA is no longer seen as a stable partner for the
| long term and that Trump with his idiotic policies and
| tariffs is driving sales for the few EU hosting scale-ups
| that are not somehow owned by America.
| rmoriz wrote:
| The strongest reaction of EU would be to subsidize RIPE small
| LIR fees to 0EUR and embrace decentralization.
| g-mork wrote:
| What would that achieve? Here, have 1.5% discount on your
| subnet purchase
| thyristan wrote:
| Maybe that could help a little, but on the other hand,
| there are just no more IPv4 addresses at RIPE. And European
| businesses seem to be very hesitant at adopting IPv6.
| AdamN wrote:
| Yeah, also Hetzner is smart enough to realize that a lot of
| people are moving to them who are "Buy EU"-driven and are
| less price sensitive (certainly the most valuable ones are).
| Hopefully they can take these higher prices and further
| invest into the platform.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| Here's to hoping the IOU purchase orders for RAM and SSDs get
| cancelled... Though I think folks are hedging that this will
| happen and limiting new suppliers.
| gbuk2013 wrote:
| Right, this is what they said in the customer notification
| email I got today:
|
| "The underlying causes of the increased costs are, among
| others, the exploding demand for AI-related computing power and
| for cloud services. In addition, raw material prices and
| production costs have also generally risen for manufacturers.
| The costs for RAM and SSDs especially have risen by a large
| amount. For example, the cost for DRAM memory has increased up
| to 500% since September 2025. And according to market
| researchers like TrendForce, this price trend will continue
| throughout the year."
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Is there also an increase in non-US hosting demand?
| jandrese wrote:
| I kinda miss the days of the crazy housing bubble back in late
| 2000s, at least that bubble didn't affect my daily life.
| bityard wrote:
| Count yourself lucky! I took a new job in another city just
| as the bubble hit and had a 3 hour round-trip commute for a
| year and a half due to that mess. We literally couldn't
| afford to sell our house because we were underwater on the
| mortgage. (Would have had to bring more money to the table
| than we had in savings.) And because of that we also missed a
| lot of great deals in the destination city as well and had to
| settle for a house in the suburbs that we weren't thrilled
| with but fit our budget.
|
| I shouldn't complain too much, lots of people had it far
| worse. Millions lost their homes (and their downpayments)
| altogether and took over a decade to recover, if they ever
| did.
| vdupras wrote:
| Silver lining: can you imagine how _dirt cheap_ RAM will be after
| that bubble has popped? Oh my...
| maxboone wrote:
| RAM producers aren't adding more capacity on the non-HBM side
| of things, so we shouldn't see a dramatic drop in pricing if AI
| HBM memory demand drops.
| vdupras wrote:
| If we end up with metric tons of unused HBM memory lying
| around, I'm sure that someone will design a general purpose
| computer using them, or design a HBM-to-DDR interface.
| gck1 wrote:
| No manufacturer is increasing supply though. RAM, SSD, HDD -
| they just reallocated their existing supply to AI.
| Ekaros wrote:
| It won't. Demand is being pushed forward. That means that
| longer this situation take longer it will take for prices to
| recover to same levels.
| vdupras wrote:
| If you delay your iPhone upgrade because of RAM prices,
| you're not going to buy two at once because you were delayed.
| So push, forward, push forward, sure, but to a point.
| agoodusername63 wrote:
| Your home systems can slot in HBM? Doubt that.
| Betelbuddy wrote:
| It seems we will run out of hardware by March?
|
| "Hard drives already sold out for this year" -
| https://www.theregister.com/2026/02/20/ai_blamed_again_as_ha...
|
| Time for an AI tax on the hyperscalers.
| jsheard wrote:
| > It seems we will run out of hardware by March?
|
| What happens when an unstoppable force (building everything in
| Electron because hardware is cheap) meets an immovable object
| (oh no hardware is expensive now)?
| Betelbuddy wrote:
| 2026 will be the year of Rust...
| NoiseBert69 wrote:
| Due to lack of memory leaks which will stop increasing RAM
| prices?
| Betelbuddy wrote:
| The efficiency...
|
| https://users.rust-lang.org/t/energy-consumption-in-
| programm...
| xnorswap wrote:
| I see that's from almost 10 years ago, it would be
| interesting to see how that's changed with improvements
| to V8, python and C# since.
|
| Also, Typescript 5 times worse than Javascript? That
| doesn't really make sense, since they share the same
| runtime.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| Why is that so unbelievable? TypeScript isn't JavaScript,
| and while they have the same runtime, compiled TypeScript
| often don't look like how you'd solve the same problem in
| vanilla JS, where you'd leverage the dynamic typing
| rather than trying to work around it.
|
| See this example as one demonstration:
| https://www.typescriptlang.org/play/?q=8#example/enums
|
| The TS code looks very different from the JS code (which
| obviously is the point), but given that, not hard to
| imagine they have different runtime characteristics,
| especially for people who don't understand the inside and
| outs of JavaScript itself, and have only learned
| TypeScript.
| xnorswap wrote:
| Enums are one of only a few places where there is
| significant deviation, I don't believe that makes it 400%
| less efficient.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| Maybe read the paper and see if you can figure out their
| reasoning/motivation :)
| https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3136014.3136031
|
| One thing to consider, is that with JavaScript you put it
| in a .js file, point a HTML page at it, and that's it.
|
| TypeScript uses a ton more than that, which would impact
| the amount of energy usage too, not to mention everything
| running the package registries and what not. Not sure if
| this is why the difference is bigger, as I haven't read
| the paper myself :)
|
| But if you do, please do share what you find out about
| their methodology.
| Zababa wrote:
| This image comes from running the different versions of
| the benchmark games programs. Some of the difference
| between languages may actually be just algorithmic
| differences, and also those programs are in general not
| representative of most of the software that runs.
| gck1 wrote:
| That, and also because rust compiler is a very good
| guardrail & feedback mechanism for AI. I made 3 little
| tools that I use for myself without knowing how to write
| a single rust line myself.
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| I can see that a reality but I am more comfortable using
| Golang as the language compared to rust given its fast
| compile times and I have found it to be much more easier
| to create no-dependices/fewer-dependencies project plus
| even though I wouldn't consider myself a master in
| golang, maybe mediocre, I feel much easier playing with
| golang than rust.
|
| The resource consumption b/w rust and golang would be
| pretty minimal to figure out actually for most use cases
| imho.
| nicoburns wrote:
| Because it's more memory efficient than most other
| languages. So you can achieve the same result with lower
| RAM requirements.
| throwaw12 wrote:
| consumer RAM is not what's creating shortage. Data centers
| doesn't run electron to train the model or for inference
| malfist wrote:
| Sure, consumer ram isn't causing a shortage, but it's
| affected by the shortage.
| bayindirh wrote:
| Every RAM producer is stopping their consumer grade RAM
| production to provide ECC-RAM and VRAM now. Micron
| _discontinued and closed down_ Crucial brand as a whole.
|
| So, getting systems with higher RAM capacity is getting
| harder (from laptops to smartphones). So, for a couple of
| years, we need to stop using Electron so much and use what
| we have efficiently.
|
| Data centers, esp. AI hyperscalers do not care about
| efficiency for now, because they can suffocate consumer-
| grade part of the hardware marketplace and get anything and
| everything they want. When their bubble pops, or the whole
| capacity ends, they need to learn to be efficient, too.
|
| For reference, a well-optimized cluster runs at ~90%
| efficiency even though they have thousands of users. AI
| hyperscalers are not there. Maybe 60% efficient, at most.
| They waste a lot of resources to keep their momentum.
| spockz wrote:
| I have a silent hope that because of this change we all
| will get ECC ram and that consumer CPUs will get proper
| support for them.
| bayindirh wrote:
| AMD's RYZEN already supports it. ASUStor's latest
| generation of NAS devices come with AMD x86_64 processors
| and ECC RAM as a standard, but ECC RAM in SODIMM format
| was not cheap, even when the RAM was cheap, either.
| spockz wrote:
| I understood that support for ECC ram also depended on
| the motherboard but not sure. When selecting Ryzens, I
| only recall seeing many disclaimers for RAM support. Not
| sure to the causes though.
| eggsome wrote:
| As someone trying to spec out a Ryzen workstation right
| now I can tell you it's actually harder because Ryzen
| (unlike EPIC) uses UDIMM ECC, not RDIMM ECC. It's a niche
| that very few companies wanted to service before AI ram
| madness. Now the only vendor I can find is v-color:
|
| https://v-color.net/products/ddr5-ecc-oc-u-dimm-server-
| memor...
|
| But they no longer have 6000mhz stuff in stock (which is
| ideal for Ryzen due to the 1 to 1 speed match to the
| memory controller).
|
| It's frustrating :(
| blibble wrote:
| ECC ram uses the same chips, just an extra one on the
| dimm
| MagicMoonlight wrote:
| They effectively do. They're trained by brute forcing 100TB
| of training data through them, rather than any logical
| learning technique.
|
| A human doesn't need 100TB of books to learn the alphabet.
| rkomorn wrote:
| > A human doesn't need 100TB of books to learn the
| alphabet.
|
| A human does need 16ish hours per day of audio/video
| content for several years to learn the alphabet.
| bayindirh wrote:
| I used a single letter stencil to learn the alphabet,
| actually, and nobody strapped me to a chair to watch or
| listen something 16h a day.
|
| Living inside a normal home with my parents was enough
| for the audio part.
| rkomorn wrote:
| The 16 hours of audio/video per day was a reference to
| being alive and hearing/seeing things for years before
| you actually could learn the alphabet.
|
| It was not meant as literally sitting at a screen with
| audio/video for 16 hours a day.
| bayindirh wrote:
| I know, but the density of the data is much less in human
| case.
|
| IOW, humans still learn more effectively with less
| information, because there are innate mechanisms which
| process this data continuously and extract new meanings
| from the same data. This is part of both intelligence and
| consciousness.
|
| LLMs lack both.
| rkomorn wrote:
| > humans still learn more effectively with less
| information
|
| > because there are innate mechanisms which process this
| data continuously and extract new meanings from the same
| data
|
| To me, these statements strongly contradict each other,
| but I also really do not care enough to debate it.
| bayindirh wrote:
| I respect your disagreement and desire to leave the
| debate here. So we can agree to disagree.
|
| Have a nice day.
| __turbobrew__ wrote:
| > I know, but the density of the data is much less in
| human case.
|
| Is that really the case? How much data is it for 4k
| video, high bitrate auditory, spacial mapping, internal
| and external nervous system, emotions, and a dataset to
| correlate all of these in time?
| flobosg wrote:
| Then you meant _audiovisual content_.
| mv4 wrote:
| The problem is manufactures are shifting their production
| capacities towards the more profitable, high-performance
| "AI" components.
| fullstop wrote:
| I guess we have to get creative again.
| interleave wrote:
| I actually think you're right here.
|
| Resource constraints have often helped me come up with
| stuff that I'm actually proud of.
| pjmlp wrote:
| We go back to the demoscene days, being creative with what we
| have instead of shipping Electron junk.
| nozzlegear wrote:
| Inshallah
| spiderfarmer wrote:
| If the FSM wills
| UltraSane wrote:
| Stop using Electron to save massive amounts of RAM.
| riku_iki wrote:
| its not easy choice if you want mature crossplatform UI
| framework.
| andix wrote:
| Maybe we need to let go of our auto-scaled 100 pod service
| mesh for a todo list app, and just deploy it bare metal on 2
| servers.
| lima wrote:
| Everything gets more expensive?
| infecto wrote:
| Why tax something that the market will figure out? This is
| normal and things will sort themself out.
| dakolli wrote:
| Because this perfect version of capitalism you think exists,
| doesn't.
|
| We live in a world with markets dominated by cartels of tech
| companies who don't play by the rules. Every other industry
| that impacts society in a negative way typically pays some
| sort of specialized tax to offset that, I don't know why
| these tech oligarchs shouldn't have too. It's wild how people
| just want to let them do whatever they want.
|
| Everyone says we need to deregulate tech, and certain
| industries to get ahead of China.. Isn't it funny how their
| largely government controlled economy (to a degree) is
| annihilating the west on all fronts economically. We need far
| more regulation.
|
| China will defeat the West solely because it regulates its
| billionaires, not the other way around like we have it in the
| West. And I hope so, the world is rooting for you China.
| infecto wrote:
| Way to put words in people mouths. Markets are imperfect
| but I do believe on average they are one of the better
| tools to solve supply and demand issues.
|
| I don't know who will come out winners but I do agree that
| China did well taking the playbook from Singapore and
| navigating their country through incredible amounts of
| growth. They are still facing depressing housing prices and
| deflation in other parts of the economy.
|
| There are absolutely areas where markets breakdown,
| thinking problems where impacts are on longer horizons but
| for simple supply and demand like what we are seeing today,
| things will sort out in a couple years.
| gck1 wrote:
| We see that market is very irrational now and it can stay
| irrational for long enough to destroy everything we know in
| tech.
|
| By the time market figures things out, you may no longer have
| services, and hardware that you use daily. When such amounts
| of stupid money are pumped into a single industry, even if
| all AI companies went out of business tomorrow, it's going to
| take years for things to go back to normal.
|
| FWIW, I'm not advocating taxes, as I think that won't really
| do anything. I don't know what the solution is either.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > it can stay irrational for long enough to destroy
| everything we know in tech
|
| What does this even mean? I know people on the internet
| sometimes exaggerate, but I cannot even begin to find a
| more charitable meaning with this, what exactly will be
| "destroyed" in "tech" because of prices going up for a year
| or two?
| gck1 wrote:
| Here's an easy experiment to conduct: look around the
| room at your home and count all the devices that have a
| CPU, RAM, SSD or HDD.
|
| Then take a look at your bank statement to see what are
| the services you pay for monthly that also require the
| same hardware.
|
| Now, imagine that these devices or services can no longer
| procure RAM, SSD or HDD. There's no more available supply
| for these components, because this is what's happening.
|
| Would you still be able to have these devices if they all
| broke tomorrow? What about your hypothetical Backblaze
| subscription? Would you still be able to have an off-site
| backup?
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > imagine that these devices or services can no longer
| procure RAM, SSD or HDD
|
| Why would I imagine something so far out from what will
| realistically happen?
|
| Again, a lot of doom and gloom over very unrealistic
| scenarios. Where are you even getting this from, YouTube
| channels?
|
| Of course if there is no RAM or flash-storage at all
| available, eventually hardware will be unfeasible. But
| when we've experienced these sort of things before, it
| eventually restores to "normal" prices, and there
| absolutely nothing pointing to what we're experiencing
| now to get even worse, if anything it's already
| stabilized.
| iso1631 wrote:
| You don't have to look too far back in history -- look at
| the supply squeeze during covid, or even just during the
| Suez closure by the Evergiven.
| ErneX wrote:
| Valve had to delay a bunch of new products already. They
| also had to effectively discontinue the non-OLED Steam
| Deck due to the increased prices.
|
| https://www.theverge.com/games/874196/valve-steam-
| machine-fr...
| embedding-shape wrote:
| Yeah, which shows that Valve don't think "these devices
| or services can no longer procure RAM, SSD or HDD" is
| actually what'll happen in reality, because then they'd
| have to cancel the hardware fully. Instead, they're
| delaying it.
| ErneX wrote:
| With a likely price increase.
|
| Regarding OP, I don't think they implied this will last
| forever, but is definitely concerning.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| I jumped into the discussion because of this hyperbole:
|
| > to destroy everything we know in tech
|
| Valve (temporarily) increasing the pricing of yet-to-
| launch hardware wasn't where I thought we'd land at with
| my first comment, I somehow also have the feeling that
| that wasn't what GP had in mind either,.
| iso1631 wrote:
| My laptop's 8 years old, if I can't get memory I'll just
| have to sweat it a little longer. Same with my NAS drive
|
| Same with work -- I've just ordered some replacements for
| 13 year old servers in one office, but if it was more
| economical to repair them
| Silhouette wrote:
| What we're seeing is the natural conclusion of VC
| distortion in a market. There is so much money being pumped
| into AI speculatively now that it's hurting normal and
| sustainable businesses in other parts of the economy.
|
| The solution might have to be mandatory rationing of some
| kind to avoid a situation where only a handful of AI giants
| are able to buy essential components. We can't just throw
| the rest of the economy under a bus to support the AI
| bubble for a few more months.
|
| I'm working with a business right now that would like to
| buy some new servers for sensible, boring business reasons.
| It is having trouble because the prices from their normal
| suppliers are now extremely high - if the components are
| even available at all. This business has nothing to do with
| AI or Big Tech and yet it's at risk of being unable to
| continue normal operations in much the same way that a
| business would be affected if the phone networks were all
| switched off or the water supply to its office was cut. We
| regulate those industries because their continued
| reasonable operation is essential to make sure everyone
| else can continue to operate reasonably as well.
| gck1 wrote:
| I'm seeing the same thing. I was consulting a group of
| people in my city that wanted to digitize massive load of
| old VHS tapes. No AI, no crazy tech, just standard,
| boring storage+network infrastructure.
|
| I'm looking at the procurement sheet that I made for them
| a year ago. Half of the items are no longer available,
| while the other half became so expensive that we'd
| probably build 10 of such labs with these costs a year
| ago.
|
| I'm also looking at my home NAS right now - I pray not
| even a plastic clip breaks inside, because I'd have to
| shut it down.
|
| While these are still likely the first things that you'd
| think of being affected, I'm sure the effects are
| rippling through essentially every industry that utilizes
| these components in their supply chain. Which is probably
| - every industry nowadays?
| infecto wrote:
| I think that's a massive stretch. What we are seeing is a
| new frontier in tech that nobody knows where it will land
| yet. Hyperscalers see a future where if they don't build
| now that they might be left behind.
|
| Absolutely VC money is flowing around but I think it's
| unclear where the cards fall yet.
|
| Not sure what you would regulate here. I hate the tripe
| that America and China are at war but I do think it's not
| a great decision to stop the current work the west is
| doing as China is pushing full steam ahead.
| Silhouette wrote:
| It's not much of a stretch at all. There are already
| normal businesses that can't buy normal equipment at
| normal prices (or can't buy it at all) _right now_
| because the supply chain has been redirected to a small
| number of businesses that can only afford to drain the
| pipeline like that because of the astronomical scale of
| speculative investment they 've received. Similarly there
| already individuals who can't buy normal equipment for
| their own use.
|
| This situation is harmful both economically and for basic
| quality of life. It is rational - and probably now
| necessary - for governments to intervene to counter the
| market distortion and ensure the continued availability
| of normal products to everyone else.
|
| I am fully aware that the West regulating here would
| potentially undermine the VC investment model that these
| big tech firms are relying on. I have no problem with
| this. Business entities are legal fictions that we allow
| to exist for the benefit of real people. If the behaviour
| of those entities is harmful to real people - and I don't
| think anyone can credibly claim otherwise in this case -
| then it's time to change the rules they operate under.
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| I wish this comment can be on the absolute top of this
| page. This really is one of my frustrations with the AI
| bubble.
|
| Fwiw, the days of creating an good ol' reliable hosting
| provider/Vps provider are over. I looked extensively into
| it one time out of curiosity but this would be one of the
| worst times in history to do that.
|
| We would be sort of stuck with the options that we have
| right now and more and more shops in Lowend are even
| shutting down or raising prices with the sheer ram crisis
| and even HDD and storage crisis now.
|
| A provider in LET had a post which said, "what should we
| providers do to deal with the ram shortage/ram prices"
|
| These providers gave competition/had different unique
| features too to have chosen them but they were also
| incredibly price sensitive and the AI bubble blew the
| sensitivity by raising the prices almost 5 times or more.
| This would impact real businesses.
|
| Thank you for creating this comment. I hope more people
| can read this. I genuinely just want this bubble to burst
| asap so that we can see a sense of rationality back
| within the market/the market functioning as expected
| without the immense irrationality/unpredictability of
| future.
|
| another point is this, from my hosting provider idea, I
| shut it down. Why? because it literally makes 0 sense to
| start now, its postponed indefinitely untill the bubble
| bursts/ram prices are decreased.
|
| How many other projects might be going through something
| similar. Gck1's comment next to mine also gives an
| example of a project whose value of cost increased 10
| times.
|
| How many of such projects would simply be unable to be
| built because of the ram inflation can't be
| underestimated imo.
|
| and forget people who wish to game and many other things
| too. Basic comodities in the previous year or two feel
| like luxury now. All because of AI. It's insane.
| infecto wrote:
| 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.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| 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.
| gck1 wrote:
| 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.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > 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.
| Silhouette wrote:
| The "scale might be different" matters quite a lot in
| this case. We're not just talking about demand slightly
| outpacing supply and resulting in prices going up 10%.
| We're talking about large parts of our societies and
| economies no longer having reliable access to technology
| that we now depend on for normal operation.
|
| We wouldn't allow any amount of investor money to buy out
| essential utilities and then exploit their natural
| monopolies to charge the public 10x as much for access to
| water or electricity.
|
| We wouldn't allow any amount of investor money to buy out
| all the companies that maintain our roads or rail
| networks and then charge 10x the established prices for
| maintaining that infrastructure.
|
| We wouldn't allow any amount of investor money to buy out
| all the phone networks and then deny people access to
| communication because they didn't pay some exorbitant
| protection fee.
|
| No-one thinks regulation of these markets and
| interference with these kinds of corporate transactions
| is a crazy idea. Why do so many people here apparently
| think we should let the funny money funded AI giants
| distort the entire global tech supply chain in the hope
| that their silly valuations won't come crashing down for
| a bit longer?
|
| We can't afford to wait "several years" to see whether
| the invisible hand will fix the problem. The markets have
| already allowed this situation to develop over a period
| of several years. The damage is too severe and it's
| happening right now and it's getting worse. Governments
| need to start swinging the regulatory axe now.
| nottorp wrote:
| > it's in reality their first shortage
|
| ... or their first bubble.
| gck1 wrote:
| 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.
| mr_toad wrote:
| > We see that market is very irrational now and it can stay
| irrational
|
| That meme refers to speculation on stock market prices.
| Nobody is buying up RAM with the expectation of making
| speculative gains on it.
| rlpb wrote:
| > ...and it can stay irrational for long enough to destroy
| everything we know in tech.
|
| Nah. For decades software engineers have been more
| expensive than the cost of buying the extra hardware needed
| for vastly inefficient software. There are orders of
| magnitude of inefficiency there. So there's a ton of slack
| in the world's software that can be taken up by software
| engineers while hardware is scarce, pushing back the date
| where there will really be a problem probably by decades
| more.
|
| Of course software engineers will see a problem though,
| because they'll have to learn to to write efficient
| software again.
|
| ie. "Great, but now make it work with less RAM" will be a
| thing again, instead of "It needs more RAM so order some as
| it's cheaper than your time to fix the code".
| rchaud wrote:
| Markets only "figure things out" in a petri dish economy
| where:
|
| 1) There are no barriers to entry for competitors (e.g.
| protectionist tariffs, equal access to capital for everyone)
|
| 2) There are perfect substitutes available, so transitioning
| to a competitor is seamless and free (e.g. no requirement to
| store data in Country X, no vendor lock-in, no security
| compliance)
|
| 3) The industry is not a "natural monopoly" when only a
| handful of vendors can operate due to capital investment and
| national/global distribution required (see power utilities,
| telecoms, petrochemicals)
|
| 4) Profitability attracts competitors (won't happen because
| of #3), but heavy competition prevents abnormal profits from
| accumulating to a single player (happens because of #1, #2
| and #3)
|
| When markets don't figure things out, as is the case around
| the world, you get a tangled mess of market failures,
| government intervention and lobbying to neuter proposed
| interventions.
| infecto wrote:
| Markets are never perfect but over the course of history
| they are a pretty good mechanism to solve these type of
| problems. Not sure why we think taxing hyperscalers
| differently is the answer. Government usually does worse
| than the market when it comes to sorting it out.
|
| My argument is not that market is perfect but that the
| alternatives are probably far worse, like a new tax on a
| specific group of companies.
| wolvesechoes wrote:
| Market only exists due to government.
| infecto wrote:
| Yes, and? That still does not mean we should add
| arbitrary taxes for a supply/demand issue.
| rchaud wrote:
| The course of history, from borders to leadership choices
| and technological advances like seafaring has been
| determined to a much greater extent by organized religion
| and state-sanctioned warfare than it has by the open and
| free operation of markets.
| infecto wrote:
| If you have a consistent example of those solving market
| supply and demand pricing I am all ears. I read what you
| said but has little to do with my statement. Over the
| course of history one of the best mechanisms to solve
| imbalance is supply and demand has been the market and
| its ability to eventually set prices correctly. It's not
| perfect and it's not always the best solution but it's
| pretty good for these types of problems.
|
| I am all ears for your examples though but I don't think
| borders, leadership changes or advances are "this type of
| problem"
| Qiu_Zhanxuan wrote:
| it's hard to think when science contradicts your beliefs
| eh ?
| infecto wrote:
| I am not sure what your thesis is here. Would love for
| you to add something constructive so it's less hyperbole
| and more grounded.
| tt24 wrote:
| Not sure what this means
| cmxch wrote:
| They didn't the last two memory crunches. Litigative action
| figured it out first.
| 63stack wrote:
| People keep parroting this but I don't see GPU prices sorting
| themselves out.
| infecto wrote:
| "Parroting" is not very constructive language but I will
| respond.
|
| How would you propose solving it? My opinion is that
| government cannot solve the problem better than the market.
| That's not to say the market is ideal or perfect but one of
| the better tools available. GPU prices might stay high for
| a number of years. I don't think that is inherently bad.
| Constraints breed innovation and help guide market
| participants into the right direction.
|
| I think folks often get hung up on the market thinking it's
| a perfect tool or it will realign issues instantly. That's
| not true. Demand is high, price catches up and eventually
| either that thesis behind the demand is correct and
| eventually supply increases or that thesis is proven wrong
| and demand collapses below original baseline.
|
| Obviously that's a simplified version of it above but I
| don't know what folks like yourself are poking. How is a
| tax on hyperscalers effective? I suspect most folks repeat
| this idea because they are in the anti-AI camp. Should we
| tax EV manufacturers because they may be buying up battery
| supply? I don't know if I want the government making those
| kind of decisions.
| 63stack wrote:
| It (GPU prices getting out of hand) started when, 2012?
| What's constructive in saying "the market will correct
| itself" after 14 years of no sign of that happening?
|
| I don't know what the solution is since I'm not an
| economist, but I also don't have to be a pilot to declare
| someone fucked up when I see a helicopter on a tree.
|
| EVs are a very tangible thing that are on the road,
| compare that with crypto and NFT which is ??????
| infecto wrote:
| Can you use less inflammatory language and be more
| critical in your thought? Your point, if there is any, is
| drowned by your lack of command of constructive
| discussion.
|
| Who are you to decide what is tangible and what is not?
| That's my whole point. GPU prices are still not crazy on
| a $ / performance scale, especially if you do a rough
| chart of it over time. Certainly there are carve outs,
| the 5090 is still hard to get and charges $1k+ premium
| over msrp.
| usrusr wrote:
| Reads a bit like the Paperclip Maximizer appearing way ahead of
| schedule? Implemented not as AI, but as emergent behavior in
| the ways of the financial class (that happens to be about AI,
| singularity and all that).
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| > Time for an AI tax on the hyperscalers.
|
| Like the purchase price + increased cost? The thing is that
| these parties are sitting on billions and billions of investor
| money, they don't care that hardware is 400x as expensive.
| Which companies like nvidia have capitalized on a few years
| ago, they were already able to price their hardware at a 400%
| markup compared to pre-crypto times, and shift their focus from
| consumer graphics chips to datacenter compute chips, causing
| their revenue to go up 6x (if my interpretation of [0] is
| correct)
|
| [0]
| https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/NVDA/nvidia/revenu...
| antonyh wrote:
| On one hand this is not good but predictable. I'm on longer-term
| commitments with OVH, so it will be interesting to see how they
| follow. I'm still keeping Hetzner on my shopping list, even with
| the increase the bare-metal offerings are within my budget, and
| now that prices have increases they should be stable for a while
| (also import for budget management).
| FlamingMoe wrote:
| I am confused why the announcement page says CCX33 in USA "Old
| price" is EUR59.49 but their main pricing page shows EUR50.49 for
| CCX33 in USA
|
| Announcement page:
| http://docs.hetzner.com/de/general/infrastructure-and-availa...
|
| Pricing page: https://www.hetzner.com/cloud/
| jsheard wrote:
| I assume that's with/without tax. Those German prices would be
| inclusive of their 19% VAT.
| gck1 wrote:
| This is likely just the first wave. If this component hoarding by
| AI continues, and it likely will, at some point, it will be just
| OpenAI and Anthropic who can afford to have compute.
|
| This has affected SSDs first, then RAM, then HDD and it doesn't
| look like even HDD manufacturers are going to increase
| production. So unless groups of people suddenly learn how to
| manufacture all of this hardware and open factories quickly, it's
| going to be a very fun next few years.
|
| People have been predicting SaaS will die for all the wrong
| reasons. It's not that anyone can ship a SaaS clone by prompting
| an AI, it's that nobody is going to have access to the hardware
| required.
| chasd00 wrote:
| If you just want an app server pick up an hp elitedesk off ebay
| and a ups and run it on your home inet connection.
| data-ottawa wrote:
| Note: your ISP might cut your account, and this might violate
| your home insurance contract -- depending on jurisdiction.
|
| At least where I live there's a stupid amount of red tape for
| these things.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Your ISP will cut your account when you saturate the upstream
| pipe 24/7 for weeks on end... which will only happen if you
| host video.
|
| And your home insurance will not know/care if you're
| operating a desktop-sized computer or even a single server
| (it is perfectly fine and expected a developer might bring an
| actual server home for troubleshooting). Home insurance only
| cares if you're running dozens of them.
| data-ottawa wrote:
| It depends. If you're running a business from home is where
| my local insurance draws the line and you need additional
| professional insurance.
|
| You should be able to do this hassle free, and you probably
| can get away with it, but you may find yourself in a grey
| area later.
|
| It's just one of many types of red tape that stiffles
| innovation.
| dylan604 wrote:
| That's a tricky one. Is working from home considered
| running a business? What if you have formed an LLC that
| you work for and your company is the one hired? That's
| technically a business running from your address, yet is
| nothing different than what would be considered WFH.
| stephenr wrote:
| IF you just want a Pizza, pour some tomato ketchup on sliced
| bread.
|
| If you just want to pilot a 747, drive your car really fast at
| a skate ramp.
| gib444 wrote:
| A 1000 calorie pizza is often overkill for a meal
|
| A 747 is overkill for a fetching some groceries..
| raesene9 wrote:
| I've just been looking in to this as I've got quite a lot of
| older hardware that'll be fine for running some websites lying
| around.
|
| My ISP has a static IP option for PS5/month, but I reckon I can
| save PS30/month+ on server costs even before any rises.
|
| Ofc it does mean I have to do my own sysadmining, but a
| combination of my general knowledge + an LLM should make that
| relatively easy.
| gib444 wrote:
| Watch out for the energy usage. What's electric now, 27p/kWh?
| tasuki wrote:
| I'd have to trust my ISP not to randomly change my IP address.
| Unlikely.
| ReptileMan wrote:
| BuyFromEU is the funniest subreddit there is right now.
| Unintentionally but still entertaining. EU has managed to paint
| itself into unenviable corner. I can't buy from EU even thought I
| want to because for physical goods - cross country shipping costs
| are prohibitive and for digital - they are either subpar, more
| expensive or both.
|
| Try this as experiment - try to buy something like precision
| dowel pins from Poland or DOLD Mechatronik with shipping to
| Greece, Bulgaria or Romania vs the same thing from Aliexpress or
| Temu. Chinese costs are cheaper even if they have to fly here.
| JasonADrury wrote:
| >Try this as experiment - try to buy something like precision
| dowel pins from Poland or DOLD Mechatronik with shipping to
| Greece, Bulgaria or Romania vs the same thing from Aliexpress
| or Temu. Chinese costs are cheaper even if they have to fly
| here.
|
| This is an _awful_ experiment. Only consumers care about
| delivery costs on deliveries like these, and what you 're
| looking at are explicitly not goods aimed at consumers.
| ReptileMan wrote:
| Okay. Then buy pizza oven from Italy and see how shipping
| costs are 60% of the price of the oven.
|
| Anyway - you seems to misunderstand. If transporting
| something from Shenzhen to Franfurt is cheaper than
| transporting the same thing from Krakow to Thessaloniki -
| means that EU has fucked up royally in its main mission - to
| facilitate movement of goods. WE have ungodly patch of local
| carriers and courier companies and a lot of friction in every
| kind of intra eu goods movement.
| JasonADrury wrote:
| > Then buy pizza oven from Italy and see how shipping costs
| are 60% of the price of the oven
|
| Is it even physically possible to deliver at a
| significantly lower cost? Pizza ovens are both very large
| and very heavy, you can't fit many of them in a vehicle.
| They're also tricky to load and unload.
| GJim wrote:
| > If transporting something from Shenzhen to Franfurt is
| cheaper than transporting the same thing from Krakow to
| Thessaloniki - means that EU has fucked up
|
| Ummmm. No.
|
| It means the United Nations _Universal Post Union_
| international treaties which effectively provide China with
| subsidised postage TO THE WORLD (as China is a "developing
| country") needs urgently updating....... Some of the
| postage you pay to send parcels within the boarders of your
| own country is used to subsidise crap posted from China.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Postal_Union
| maxglute wrote:
| UPU reforms were 6 years ago. EU/NA local posts hasn't
| been subsidizing PRC shipments for awhile. PRC volume
| vendors dispatching from local warehouses now, they
| simply sorted out their logistics from mainland to
| bulk/volume air freight to warehouse to private delivery
| for last mile to be more efficient than shipping within
| EU.
| JasonADrury wrote:
| Except shipping from China really isn't cheaper than
| shipping within EU. You just do it from a reasonable hub,
| or get a third party to handle this for you.
|
| Look at how The Hut Group handles logistics for MyProtein
| for example.
| maxglute wrote:
| >You just do it from a reasonable hub
|
| That's not reasonable condition, hence why EU is
| systemically more expensive.
|
| THG logistics looks like warehouse->dispatch, i.e. it's
| for vendors of certain size that can prestock at regional
| warehouse. Private last mile always fast. But it doesn't
| address first mile to hub. Can a bumfuck workshop in a
| hamlet deliver in Greece deliver to warehouse in Poland
| across multiple jurisdictions for peanuts? My
| understanding is EU first mile is fragmented/slow if you
| rely on national post and expensive if you rely on
| private couriers.
|
| PRC has unified mainland logistics, any sized vendor can
| get any standard sized item, in any quantity and PRC
| first mile logistics like Cainiao and JD will consolidate
| for cheap bulk (air)freight to regional hub where last
| mile is also fast.
|
| PRC mainland->overseas complex is a system with low first
| mile + low last mile. EU has no integrated cheap first-
| mile, which raises price on SMEs, i.e. most of producers.
| JasonADrury wrote:
| > But it doesn't address first mile to hub. Can a bumfuck
| workshop in a hamlet deliver in Greece deliver to
| warehouse in Poland across multiple jurisdictions for
| peanuts?
|
| Yes, unless they're doing so at a ludicrously small
| scale. Sending a 20t lorry load from Thessaloniki to
| Warsaw will cost less than 6000 euros. I suspect it can
| be done for around 2400, but I don't know the route very
| well.
|
| >My understanding is EU first mile is fragmented/slow if
| you rely on national post and expensive if you rely on
| private couriers.
|
| Yes, it sucks at ultra-small scale. But that's really
| what that is. The private couriers have super attractive
| volume pricing, even 80% off public (consumer facing)
| rates isn't unusual.
| maxglute wrote:
| So the answer is really no considering vast majorities of
| SMEs i.e. 99%+ of EU business operates at "ludicrously
| small" scale that can't fill a container, i.e. about half
| of EU internal trade. 80% discount off what base price,
| because if after 80% discount off high priced EU courier
| rates and final cost more than one euro, PRC still comes
| out ahead, i.e. PRC domestic first mile prices are like
| 20-80 cents per parcel. Unless private EU courier rates
| are 1-5 euros (they're probably not), they still lose to
| PRC first-mile. (TBF I'm just assuming EU courier prices,
| my knowledge more limited to PRC logistics). If that's
| the case, EU simply can't compete, as in EU systemically
| not capable of matching PRC price floor. Hence IIRC why
| EU plan to add flat custom duty per item on Chinese
| parcels to make them more expensive. Like I'm sure many
| established businesses factor/absorb higher shipping cost
| into opex, but ultimately shipping cost/friction affects
| things like startup formation in first place etc.
| piltdownman wrote:
| QC / Cheap Shipping / TEMU or AliX Pricing
|
| Pick 2.
|
| Not to mention that from July 1, 2026, the EU is abolishing the
| EUR150 duty-free threshold for non-EU shipments. This is
| specifically targeted at the flood of packages from
| marketplaces like Temu and Shein.
|
| From July there will be a flat customs duty of EUR3 for small
| consignments. This fee applies per category. If your package
| contains items from different product groups (e.g., a shirt and
| a cable), you might pay the fee multiple times.
|
| The Goal: To create fair competition for European retailers who
| can't compete with subsidized shipping and tax loopholes from
| massive non-EU sellers.
|
| This will obviously have a knock-on effect for larger shipped
| items which are presumably subsidised at the bottom line by
| these parcels of fast-fashion and eWaste.
| retired wrote:
| As someone that frequently buys low-cost second hand
| electronics from Japan, I am a little frustrated about the
| EUR3 per-category customs duty. That means a EUR80 package of
| various old game cartridges, retro handhelds, digital watches
| and collectables will now have another EUR12 to EUR24 on top
| of the 21% VAT and EUR6 handling fee. For an EUR80 package I
| am now looking at EUR15 for shipping and EUR34 to EUR46 in
| import cost. That kills a fun hobby.
| exceptione wrote:
| The reverse is true too. The shipping costs from US -> EU are
| prohibitively high, oftentimes making ordering stuff from the
| US a no go. I think only Amazon (for certain products at least)
| charges somewhat reasonable shipping costs.
|
| China has an enormous leg wrt shipping.
| flowerthoughts wrote:
| I really love that their notification email includes applicable
| price change for my specific servers.
|
| The worst counter example of this was Mercedes sending me an
| email saying "the terms and conditions have been updated, please
| read them at this link". It linked to the 52 page document I was
| supposed to read through in its entirety and manually diff
| against previous! Good thing they started adding a change log in
| the emails after some customer push back.
| dizhn wrote:
| My ISP sends me an SMS telling me there's work being done in my
| area. I have 3 different accounts with them in different
| citites. No idea which one they are talking about at any given
| time.
| sp4cec0wb0y wrote:
| You guys got a notification??? I did not receive one.
| dizhn wrote:
| They've only ever increased the ipv4 prices for already existing
| customers before if I am not mistaken. This is quite big.
|
| EDIT: It's not a huge increase for dedicated servers. I already
| can't find anything comparable for more than the increased end
| price.
|
| > AX51 (FSN1) EUR 63.10 EUR 64.99
|
| > AX101 (FSN1) EUR 107.10 EUR 110.31
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > They've only ever increased the ipv4 prices for already
| existing customers before if I am not mistaken
|
| No, that's not true, they've done increases before, at least
| for VPSes only, I think that was 1 or 2 years ago or so?
| dizhn wrote:
| You might be right. Sorry. I should have said they haven't
| increased prices for existing dedicated servers since my
| direct experince is only there. Actually until about 3-4
| years ago when the whole world went to shit, using a server
| for a year or two then upgrading to a better server for
| cheaper, was the norm. In that environment, you would
| naturally not have price increases.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| I also don't think you're right that it never happened for
| the dedicated servers :) I'm only using Hetzner for
| dedicated servers, and found an email from 2022 where they
| mention price updates:
|
| > Unfortunately, we are forced to increase the prices on
| these Server Auction models [...] old price 37.60 Euro ->
| 59.29 Euro, comes into effect 2022-03-03
|
| Citing raising energy prices at that time.
| dizhn wrote:
| Probably not for existing customers (their existing
| servers). I don't recall anything other than the IPv4
| related increase in the past. I might be wrong of course
| as I've demonstrated already.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > Probably not for existing customers
|
| Yes, in 2022 I was an existing customers, and my server
| increased in price then, the server affected at that
| point went from 37.60 Euro to 59.29 Euro. Today that same
| server went from 65.22 to 67.18, so there is even more
| price increases seemingly between today and 2022 but I'm
| not finding exactly when that was.
| dakolli wrote:
| I recommend Netcup as a solid EU budget alternative to Hetzner,
| zero complaints from me.
| amiga-workbench wrote:
| Their ARM64 boxes are fantastic, but sold out at the moment.
| this_user wrote:
| They are solid and cheaper, but they don't offer the same level
| of control plane and API access as Hetzner that is really
| helpful when managing a larger number of servers.
| 0x1ch wrote:
| This is probably the best alternative provider for individuals
| that I could find, unless you're orchestrating a fleet of
| servers or something. Personally I'll wait out my next billing
| cycle with hetzner, as I expect other hosts to follow shortly.
| lnsru wrote:
| Can anybody predict this craze? The classical memory
| manufacturers are not yet adding additional manufacturing
| capacity. They learned this hard way in the past. That means, the
| demand is here to stay for years without typical bubble burst. Is
| this a point where Chinese companies will rise worldwide?
| mv4 wrote:
| Hard to predict. If the bubble pops (NVIDIA and "circular
| economy", massive FAANG datacenter expansion plans, huge LLM
| training budgets) the markets will once again be flooded with
| components.
|
| But, the shortages may very well continue into 2027, leading to
| some manufacturers going out of business and yet another
| massive redistribution of wealth.
| alkonaut wrote:
| I just hope the whole thing comes crashing down and we can
| buy GPUs and RAM again.
|
| I mean I might not have a job in that economy, and my pension
| might be screwed but I'll have 192GB ram so I should be fine.
| g-mork wrote:
| The massive DC overbuild matches demand, prices normalise
| somewhat in 3-5 years.
|
| The massive DC overbuild does not match demand, prices tank in
| 3-5 years.
|
| Third possibility: some approach like Taalas renders the
| current storyline meaningless. Would put 3 in 10 odds of this
| happening but I'd looove to see it.
|
| Fourth: entire planet gets profoundly sick of emdashes, we all
| move back into caves and live in eternal gratitude of the
| moment humanity woke up to how little all of this really
| matters.
| queuep wrote:
| Just for info, this is the big hike i received for my dedi.
|
| Previous price: EUR 31.90
|
| New price as of 1 April 2026: EUR 32.86
| zvr wrote:
| Mine is EUR34.51 to EUR35.55 (a 3% increase).
| singpolyma3 wrote:
| ... more customers so they must increase prices? This seems
| backwards from how scale usually works.
| Macha wrote:
| The next set of hardware purchases will cost more than their
| last set of hardware purchases, and that's going to outweigh
| any labour economies of scale given just how many hardware
| components are in shortage this year.
|
| If their growth had been in their projections in say 2024, they
| might have just been able to skip a round of hardware
| purchases, but the combination of growth meaning they must
| expand their hardware and hardware costs made this inevitable.
| benry1 wrote:
| It is, but more customers _at a time of historically high
| component prices_ will do it. If you set your costs assuming
| every user 's hardware is $1, and your customer base doubles
| when the hardware is $2, you're going to have to raise prices
| for everybody
| dwedge wrote:
| My increases were around 4%
| klodolph wrote:
| This mirrors the increased costs of people who already space +
| power in a DC, and want to buy new machines to fill their racks.
| Everybody is being hit.
| HelloUsername wrote:
| " _Edit: It 's 36% ! Can't edit the title typo of 38%_"
| jedisct1 wrote:
| Ouch. OVH are also going to increase their prices.
| CodeCompost wrote:
| How much is the cost for Storage Boxes increasing?
| avian wrote:
| I don't see them listed on the announcement page (BX*
| products), so I'm guessing storage boxes prices will stay the
| same.
| keepamovin wrote:
| Wow. That sucks. hcloud was great for ages and highly
| competitively priced.
|
| Vultr may be a good alternative. If you want to search VPS prices
| across the 6 major clouds (gcloud, aws-cli, hcloud, az, doctl,
| and vultr-cli) I made a wrapper TUI that lets you search, sort,
| and rent VPS.
|
| See it here: https://tui.bluedot.ink
| pier25 wrote:
| I would be very surprised if all hosting providers didn't
| increase their prices eventually.
| moooo99 wrote:
| This is it. Hetzner has always been very price competitive in
| its existence. Given the private ownership, I din't expect
| this to be a sudden outburst of greed, but to actually
| reflect rising costs.
|
| If a provider has higher margins, they may choose to eat some
| of the cost. But I would not expect that to be the case
| across the board
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > Vultr may be a good alternative
|
| I feel like a huge selling point of Hetzner is that they're
| based in Europe, and they're themselves citing that as the
| reason for a huge uptick in sales and new users. In that
| context, I don't Vultr is a realistic alternative.
| keepamovin wrote:
| OK, I never thought of it like that. It was always a price
| thing. For a while Vultr and Hetzner were much better value
| per unit.
|
| What's behind the European push?
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > What's behind the European push?
|
| Obviously the US pushing absolutely everyone away and
| making EU and Europe the new enemy, so now we here want to
| reciprocate that and feel the need to move away from US
| infrastructure ASAP.
|
| Personally I've been on a personal quest to minimize my
| usage of US-based services for many years already, but
| right now it's even part of the mainstream conversations,
| so seems to be ramping up, finally.
| keepamovin wrote:
| Is this voting with dollars (euros) due to views, or is
| there a regulatory reason to avoid US providers in
| Europe?
| embedding-shape wrote:
| For clients, I just do what they wish to do, and a bunch
| of them want to move to European infrastructure because
| they've seen what can happen when you rely on US
| infrastructure today, and don't want it to happen to
| them. Only one so far cited regulatory reasons, and I
| think they were misinformed, but helped them out anyways
| with it.
|
| Personally I do it because it's better aligned with what
| kind of future I want, and not wanting to support hyper-
| captalism environments anymore.
| s_dev wrote:
| Cloud Act directly conflicts with GDPR. To really rub
| salt in the wound Trump overtly threatening to invade the
| EU (Greenland) basically turned the whole of Europe off
| seeing the US as a reliable ally. I don't think Americans
| have caught up to how much damage he has done to the
| image of the US amongst allies. They seem blissfully
| unaware of what's happening. Of course there are plenty
| of astute Americans who are aware but not the public at
| large.
| seydor wrote:
| ... and still remain far too cost-effective. Frankly this says
| more about the rest of the industry than for hetzner
| iSloth wrote:
| Still a fraction of the cost of most other providers, and
| wouldn't shock me if we see the others all doing something
| similar.
| superze wrote:
| Surely that means that as soon as prices of ram drop, Hetzner
| will also drop the prices, right? RIGHT?
| incognito124 wrote:
| Hezner reducing prices is not unprecedented. I think RAM chips
| getting cheaper is a less likely event than Hetzner responding
| with dropping prices
| gib444 wrote:
| At best they would freeze prices for a few years which would be
| a real term decrease
| Ronsenshi wrote:
| Would have to be quite a few years - last time price bump was
| in 2022 by 10% due to increase in energy costs because of the
| war in Ukraine. Naturally prices didn't go down.
| Aldipower wrote:
| Even my more then 11 years old server increases by 80 Eurocent!
| Dare you!
| littlecranky67 wrote:
| My CCX13 (dedicated cores) went from 15EUR to 20EUR now. Looking
| at Netcup as alternative, more cores and more RAM for 12EUR -
| anybody has experience with their root (kvm'ed) servers?
| omnimus wrote:
| It's OK until you get into support troubles. I would say
| Scaleway/OVH might be better contender (but they are french
| hehehe).
| littlecranky67 wrote:
| well personally I do not expect support for a 12EUR/month
| product. Given cost of labour in germany/europe, just talking
| to a person for 10-20minutes destroys their profit margin for
| years. I DO expect uninterrupted service, though.
| hyperionultra wrote:
| This will be as a shockwave in web hosting industry, the same as
| it was with electricity price. There is nowhere to run. Everyone
| will increase their prices, unless hardware crysis ends up.
| spockz wrote:
| OVH increased prices by even more. So no reason to move.
| octoclaw wrote:
| Running a small project on Hetzner from Germany. Got the email
| this morning. Honestly, even after the increase their dedicated
| boxes are still absurdly cheap compared to what you'd pay at AWS
| or GCP for equivalent specs.
|
| The real story here isn't Hetzner being greedy. It's that AI
| companies are vacuuming up every DRAM chip on the planet and the
| rest of us get to pay the tax. I priced out a RAM upgrade for my
| home server last week. Same kit I bought 8 months ago for 90 EUR
| is now 400+. That's not normal market dynamics.
|
| What worries me more is the second-order effects. Startups that
| would normally spin up cheap VPS instances to prototype and
| iterate now face meaningfully higher costs at the exact stage
| where every euro matters. The "just deploy it" culture that made
| European indie dev scene so productive was built on sub-10
| EUR/month boxes. Those days might be over for a while.
| MrBuddyCasino wrote:
| > _That 's not normal market dynamics._
|
| It is, in fact, normal market dynamics.
| adrian_b wrote:
| It's normal market dynamics for markets dominated by quasi-
| monopolies, which is why regulation should have prevented the
| existence of such markets.
| mustyoshi wrote:
| I don't buy that it's because of the monopoly. TSMC has
| been starting a fab for close to 5 years.
|
| It doesn't matter how many companies are in this market, it
| takes a real amount of time to add capacity.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| A single company that never made a profit outbiding the
| entire world is normal?
| YetAnotherNick wrote:
| Yes. In fact that's not just normal, that's very frequent
| in market.
| MBCook wrote:
| Please provide historical examples.
| MrBuddyCasino wrote:
| The first known example is the 6th century BC, where a
| greek philosopher cornered the market on olive oil
| presses, because he predicted a richt harvest via his
| knowledge of astronomy:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornering_the_market#Thales
| _of...
| YetAnotherNick wrote:
| Tyson Foods, Cargill, JBS, and National Beef controls
| roughly 85% of the U.S. beef market
|
| CVS Caremark, Express Scripts, and OptumRx manage over
| 80% of all prescriptions in the U.S
|
| Amazon buys 50% of all books.
|
| These examples are even more extreme than at least 3
| major clouds present in the US buying hardware.
| toraway wrote:
| The parent comment specified a company that has never
| turned a profit cornering the entire market.
| YetAnotherNick wrote:
| Not even sure which company are they referring to. I
| assumed Amazon or Google or Microsoft or Oracle, but all
| of them have turned profit.
|
| I don't think OpenAI purchase even comes even close to
| any of these.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Well, you think wrong. OpenAI is the one that pre-hired
| 40% of the world's memory fab capacity.
|
| And if you are going to protest with the common "OpenAI
| doesn't even build datacenters themselves!", yes, they
| don't, and it's a complete non-sequitur.
| troyvit wrote:
| Maybe not normal market dynamics, but typical human behavior:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_Kosuga#Cornering_the_o.
| ..
| tsak wrote:
| But aren't those the same startups that think they need to run
| on AWS EKS instead of using a single cheap server? The cheapest
| used Hetzner server currently is EUR39.24 / month:
|
| - Intel Core i7-6700 - 32 GB - 2 x 480 GB Datacenter SSD - 1
| GB/s - 20 TB traffic
|
| Their VPS are even cheaper. And you can run _a lot_ on this.
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| Except 40EUR a month is extremely poor value for this CPU
| that's more than a decade old.
| burnte wrote:
| No, that's actually a really good deal for dedicated
| hardware with those specs. For a project sized for hardware
| like that, the CPU is a lot less relevant than the RAM and
| storage and transfer.
| tmtvl wrote:
| 8 threads at 3.4 GHz, 8MB cache. Seems fine, depending on
| your use case.
| Aurornis wrote:
| Measuring CPUs by thread count and clock speed is not a
| good way to gauge performance. A current gen CPU would be
| several times faster than this old CPU.
|
| Depending on workload, this old CPU might be as slow as a
| 2 thread or even 1 thread current gen server.
| yread wrote:
| It does 8000 CPU marks with 4 cores. Sure Xeon 674X does
| 83641 with 28 cores. But show me where can you find it
| for less than 10 times the price? And with 320GB RAM,
| 10TB of NVMe SSD storage and 10 GBit/s of "unlimited"
| bandwidth
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| More than that, compare it to modern cloud CPUs. Epyc
| 9845 gets 153000 but that's with 160 cores / 320 threads.
| Per core it's under 1000 and 4 cores would be 3825 when
| the 11-year-old i7 is 8000.
|
| Because those big systems are optimized for _power
| efficiency_. That Epyc is ~2.4W /core compared to
| ~16W/core for the old i7. It has a lower base clock and
| is Zen5c. If we cut the 8-core Ryzen 9850X3D's score in
| half, 4 Ryzen cores _from the same generation_ but with a
| higher base clock and six times the L3 cache per core
| would be 20942. But it 's also back up to 15W/core. The
| Epyc still has better performance per watt.
|
| The newer cores are significantly more efficient. That
| doesn't mean they're unconditionally faster independent
| of all other variables.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > And with 320GB RAM, 10TB of NVMe SSD storage and 10
| GBit/s of "unlimited" bandwidth
|
| I think you're talking about something else. The comment
| above was about a machine that didn't have 10TB of
| storage, 320GB RAM, or unlimited bandwidth.
|
| If you find 320GB of RAM and unlimited bandwidth for 40
| Euro monthly then send it over!
| yread wrote:
| The 39 eur machine has 32GB of RAM ~1TB of storage and
| 1gbit/s. So to make it a fair comparison the 10 times
| faster cpu should also have 10 times of those resources
| mkesper wrote:
| Yes, e.g. for AWS it pays off to have a look at the
| 'CoreMark Score' column at https://instances.vantage.sh/
| mkesper wrote:
| If you need more power check out the AX line of dedicated
| servers: https://www.hetzner.com/dedicated-
| rootserver/matrix-ax/
| locknitpicker wrote:
| > Except 40EUR a month is extremely poor value for this CPU
| that's more than a decade old.
|
| This is a rather baffling opinion to have. All cloud
| providers charge far more for a virtualized instance
| running on God knows what hardware. You are faced with a
| deal where you can run your software on bare metal, and you
| complain about... About what exactly?
| c16 wrote:
| For the 5 api requests a second most projects will get,
| it'll probably do.
| dijit wrote:
| Is it? It's 10x the price on GCP:
|
| https://cloud.google.com/products/calculator?dl=CjhDaVEyWWp
| J...
|
| The CPU is the same generation;
| https://docs.cloud.google.com/compute/docs/general-
| purpose-m...
| ErroneousBosh wrote:
| Except you're getting a couple of disks, many GB of RAM,
| and some on-site 24/7 support, limitless network traffic,
| and your electricity bill.
|
| Not too bad considering.
| Aurornis wrote:
| If your only need is a lot of bandwidth with very low server
| CPU use that's fine.
|
| That CPU is ancient, though. Over a decade old. That DRAM is
| 2-channel DDR3.
|
| This could be a good deal for someone, but entrusting your
| startup's operations to a 10 year old slow computer in
| Germany instead of using EKS would be an extremely short
| sighted move. A startup should be developing software and
| shipping it quickly to validate the market, not pinching
| pennies to save the equivalent of a couple hours of developer
| salary.
| antonkochubey wrote:
| >That CPU is ancient, though. Over a decade old.
|
| Coincidentally so are the t3 / t3a instances on AWS that
| everyone loves to use especially for dev/staging
| environments
| Aurornis wrote:
| 10 years is where hardware failure rates start ramping
| quickly, in my experience.
|
| Not necessarily obvious failures, but subtle errors,
| memory problems (like this case without an ECC capable
| CPU) and little instabilities.
|
| With cloud instances I can migrate to a new instance with
| a couple clicks if I want.
|
| Trying to save a couple hundred euros per month on
| hosting costs needs to be balanced against the risks and
| extra developer time.
|
| For personal projects these old instances can be an
| excellent deal though.
| antonkochubey wrote:
| Right, for exactly that reason Hetzner offers brand new
| AX42 / EX63 servers with ECC memory and modern (Zen 4 /
| Arrow Lake) CPUs for just a little bit more.
| raxxorraxor wrote:
| I would guess that 99.9% of startups wouldn't notice the
| age of the CPU if they aren't in the business for CPU
| compute power.
|
| Also, if you don't want to provision software systems, you
| probably shouldn't use Kubernetes at all. Both this and
| compute are niche businesses and neither would rent a
| budget server anyway.
| oaiey wrote:
| While I agree with the last sentence, I would suggest you
| buy what is needed not what is latest.
| kasabali wrote:
| > That CPU is ancient, though. Over a decade old. That DRAM
| is 2-channel DDR3.
|
| 6700 should be DDR4 unless they're using some weird-ass
| setup.
| dijit wrote:
| I said the same thing to myself.
|
| But then I remembered that what AWS gives you is the same
| generation of CPU, just obfuscated.
|
| GCP Also obfuscates it, but not as much:
| https://docs.cloud.google.com/compute/docs/general-
| purpose-m...
|
| (note: skylake is 10 years old)
| Roark66 wrote:
| Similar to my favourite OVH servers, but I have unlimited
| traffic at 0.5Gb/s 64gb ram and dual mics. Similar price
| (with vat in Poland).
|
| If you wanted to run same workloads on Aws it would cost you
| few hundred euro a month.
|
| I see a silver lining to all this. At least maybe the silly
| "throw more horizontal scaling at it" will stop being a
| default response to all performance problems and people that
| are able to squeeze more processing out of the same hardware
| will be sought after again.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > It's that AI companies are vacuuming up every DRAM chip on
| the planet and the rest of us get to pay the tax.
|
| DRAM is priced based on supply and demand, like every other
| market.
|
| When demand goes up, the price goes up for everyone. It's not a
| "tax" on the rest of us in any sense. There's just a lot of
| demand everywhere.
|
| > That's not normal market dynamics.
|
| This is actually a textbook example of markets functioning in
| response to a demand shock where supply cannot be increased
| rapidly.
|
| I do find it interesting that so many people think "market
| rate" means the opposite of what economics teaches, and that
| prices should stay stable and not change much when the economic
| conditions change.
|
| I also find it interesting to read all of the "we shouldn't let
| them..." takes in response to this situation. The DRAM market
| is international. Trying to restrict it in one country would
| just see the data centers get built in another country.
| bparsons wrote:
| Most markets don't have three purchasers trying to corner the
| entire supply of one product.
| Aurornis wrote:
| Economic history is full of examples of demand shocks. This
| is not some unique situation that has never occurred
| before.
|
| This is actually a clean commodity price spike because it's
| specifically not for market manipulation or financial
| engineering. It's because demand for this product really
| did explode overnight.
| fao_ wrote:
| > This is actually a clean commodity price spike because
| it's specifically not for market manipulation or
| financial engineering. It's because demand for this
| product really did explode overnight.
|
| Based on how the same 3 billion has been circiling
| between Anthropic, OpenAI, Nvidia, Google, Microsoft,
| Amazon, and a few other companies... I really doubt that
| this is the case, to be honest.
| zerkten wrote:
| I think it's reasonable to distinguish which side drove
| this. RAM prices are going up but it's not engineered
| primarily by RAM manufacturers. They are naturally
| jumping on the bandwagon and responding, but they aren't
| the drivers. Of course, how they respond matters. They
| could make other choices. Over time we'll see how this
| goes because AI could cool and then RAM manufacturers end
| up in a spot where they choose to manipulate prices to
| keep them higher.
| Juliate wrote:
| By 3 buyers who have no known plan to finance the
| purchase orders they have made.
|
| Economic history is also full of examples of bubble
| bursts.
| browningstreet wrote:
| You're being exceedingly pedantic over the use of the
| colloquialism "DRAM tax" but then you allow "demand
| shocks". So yeah, everyone's shocked.
|
| Weird hill..
| Aurornis wrote:
| Demand shock is not a colloquialism. It's an real
| economic term that describes the situation.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demand_shock
|
| Tax is also an economic term, which is not what's
| happening. Calling it a "tax on consumers" doesn't make
| sense because any data centers buying RAM right now are
| also buying from the same global market.
|
| If commenters just want to be outraged and throw words
| around then use whatever words you want, I suppose.
| throwaway5465 wrote:
| It is manipulation when wafers are purchased in order to
| not process further a la OpenAI.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| I guess we'd call this oligopsony?
|
| The monopsony (single buyer of a good) equivalent of an
| oligopoly?
|
| Phew, it is a word, but not a highly studied one!
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligopsony
| dev_l1x_be wrote:
| Factory capacity does not follow market dynamics easily
| ambicapter wrote:
| I think the usefulness of market dynamics is their ability
| to follow things like factory capacity, which are
| themselves hard to follow, not the other way around.
| polypphonics wrote:
| For things that aren't inherently limited in production
| it is supposed to work both ways..
|
| A key element is that China still acts as a block.. So
| Chinese firms have lost a big opportunity by not making
| DDR4 yet aren't ready with DDR5. When they are ready it
| will probably tank the market which is less profitable
| than selling at high prices with actual availability of
| something the whole time.
| avemuri wrote:
| Can't agree more. We can also predict with some confidence
| that in a year or two, supply would have adjusted and ram
| will be cheaper in the long run. We benefit from the expanded
| demand even if the fact that it first lands as a shock is
| disruptive to prices.
| account42 wrote:
| If the last five or so years are to go by, we'll just have
| another pricing shock by then. So yay.
| doom2 wrote:
| GPU prices went through the roof for crypto and then the
| pandemic and never really recovered to pre-pandemic prices
| before once again spiking because of AI demand. So where's
| the increased supply of Nvidia cards to account for all the
| continued demand? And why haven't RAM manufacturers
| announced plans for increased production (instead of
| pulling out of the consumer market altogether)?
|
| The past 6 years of GPU pricing (the 5080 launched at
| $1000, currently $1500-1800 at Microcenter) don't exactly
| fill me with confidence that RAM manufacturers will
| increase supply to meet demand and bring down prices again.
| moduspol wrote:
| > Trying to restrict it in one country would just see the
| data centers get built in another country.
|
| I'm surprised this isn't already what's being done. Inference
| doesn't require super low latency with the client, and the
| population's support of AI (and especially data centers for
| it) is waning quickly. This feels like another ideal use case
| for outsourcing the stuff Americans don't want to see to
| somewhere that it'll be someone else's problem.
| Betelbuddy wrote:
| > Trying to restrict it in one country would just see the
| data centers get built in another country.
|
| Sounds like not stressing the electricity infrastructure in
| Spain, to run inference for Facebook North American posts,
| should be seen as a positive...
| Betelbuddy wrote:
| Saying this is just the market...is like saying housing is a
| free market after hedge funds buy your entire neighborhood...
| anthonypasq wrote:
| correct, both of those things are examples of free markets
| Betelbuddy wrote:
| Adam Smith had already clarified free market refers to a
| market free from all forms of economic privilege,
| monopolies and artificial scarcities.
|
| You are confusing market outcome with market structure.
| Xunjin wrote:
| Good point, however we can't miss the history which shows
| that free market are not achievable, in some fields of
| economic is seen as "fairy tale".
| Betelbuddy wrote:
| Even dumb Greenspan already knew we dont want
| unregulated..."free" markets:
| https://youtu.be/AWM0l8_F_X0?t=412
| Aurornis wrote:
| But where is the monopoly here? Nobody has a monopoly on
| housing supply _or_ DRAM production.
|
| Nobody is making an artificial scarcity. They're
| producing as much as they can.
|
| You can buy the exact same DRAM that the data centers are
| bidding on.
| blactuary wrote:
| There is absolutely artificial scarcity in the housing
| market, it is one of the biggest problems we face as a
| country
| blactuary wrote:
| Incumbent owners preventing the construction of more
| supply to maintain their own property values is not "free
| market". This is very basic stuff
| nradov wrote:
| Which neighborhoods are now entirely owned by hedge funds?
| Betelbuddy wrote:
| I should point out the relevance of my argument, is
| completely independent from the fact the reply to this
| questions of yours, is higher than zero.
|
| So dont see this reply as a justification. Just as a note
| that you failed to do basic diligence on distortions that
| are well known. And as I said, that are not relevant to
| the analogy.
|
| "When Wall Street Is Your Landlord" - https://www.theatla
| ntic.com/technology/archive/2019/02/singl...
|
| "In one Atlanta zip code, they bought almost 90 percent
| of the 7,500 homes sold between January 2011 and June
| 2012"
| nradov wrote:
| That article doesn't support your point. Only a small
| fraction of the homes in that area are actually owned by
| hedge funds. You should check the facts before
| commenting.
| Betelbuddy wrote:
| You misunderstood me for the second time...
| xp84 wrote:
| People love to say that but they own a very small
| percentage of housing in reality. What's driving housing
| costs is also supply and demand. Especially supply, since
| we're not allowed to build any houses in most places people
| want to live.
| atomicnumber3 wrote:
| Prices are decided at the margins. Having PE and REITs at
| every single table, even if their actual ownership is
| small as a %, makes huge differences.
| Aurornis wrote:
| You're still missing the key point: Hedge funds and REITs
| aren't arbitrarily buying housing at any cost.
|
| They are responding to the market. If they overbuy then
| they will lose money and have to sell at a loss, at which
| point you could snap up some good deals.
| blactuary wrote:
| This is ridiculously oversimplified, because there is no
| real market in housing. It is illegal to build in all of
| the places people want to buy. The purchase of housing by
| hedge funds isn't a problem on its own, it's simply a
| symptom of the bigger problem of supply restrictions.
|
| The funds themselves say in their financials that they
| view housing as profitable because of the various
| restrictions on supply in every desirable city. They
| explicitly say that if those restrictions were lifted
| they would not be able to make money in that business and
| they would exit.
| atomicnumber3 wrote:
| Any attempt to apply supply and demand and market
| theoreticals in housing is fundamentally misplaced, as
| the other commenter noted, because there are far too many
| forces that distort both supply and demand.
| Betelbuddy wrote:
| Read your response again. You are reinforcing my argument
| in case you did not notice...
| cassepipe wrote:
| > not allowed to build any houses in most places people
| want to live
|
| Or to convert them into apartment buildings
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| Which doesn't sound like a free market to me. Capping
| production to keep asset price high is one of the most
| straightforward default examples of market-distorting
| interventions there is.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| But... They're not wrong. That IS the market. Unrestricted,
| gloriously free market with its historically predictable
| outcomes - yay!
|
| That's not where the interesting discussion is. The
| interesting discussion is with the notion that free
| unregulated markets are universally good and will naturally
| lead to positive outcomes because... I don't know, I'm
| personally not religious, but somebody here will help me
| :-).
| pluralmonad wrote:
| Where are these unregulated markets? Are you trading with
| your neighbor? If so, good, the more of that the better.
| nutjob2 wrote:
| An example of unregulated market is where I come to your
| house and put a gun to your head and in exchange for not
| pulling the trigger you give me your various items of
| value.
|
| That's one form of trading with your neighbor.
| Xunjin wrote:
| I think you have gone in the end of the spectrum, in a
| sense that even a state law's are being broken, we are
| talking about rules in the market itself.
| SR2Z wrote:
| An unrelated market is an oxymoron. You could come to my
| house and put a gun to my head, but that's not a
| consensual trade. That's just thuggery; the point of a
| market is that both sides benefit from trade.
|
| For markets to exist, property rights also need to be
| respected.
| nutjob2 wrote:
| The gun was an analogy and the comment satire, but the
| thuggery is real and the weapon is money.
|
| For markets to exist they indeed need to be regulated and
| when they aren't you get something other than a market,
| you get thuggery.
| SR2Z wrote:
| But this is my point. People say "unregulated market" and
| assume that means reverting to feudalism, but what it
| actually means is just... less regulation.
| nutjob2 wrote:
| You should try speaking to the Libertarian bros.
| WarmWash wrote:
| While you are technically correct, you are neglecting
| that it would a be a bad idea, because in such a market I
| would likely answer the door with a shotgun or I would
| have an agreement with my other neighbor to shoot you if
| you come to my door brandishing.
|
| This is actually also how global diplomacy works. Either
| have big guns or big friends.
| shmeeed wrote:
| Username checks out
|
| Edit: upvoted because it's true
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| If you're relying on threats of violence to make your
| trades then you've become the regulator.
| hvb2 wrote:
| Commodities used to be proper free markets. Many
| suppliers and many buyers of a product that was the same
| regardless of the supplier.
|
| This lead to low prices and/or differentiation with new
| products.
|
| Most of these markets were too good, so in general we now
| have a few big companies buying up the lion share of the
| supply so they can set the price regardless. For example
| soy, just to name one
| jgalt212 wrote:
| But these markets are only "free" if you ignore the net
| $5.5 trillion the Fed has printed post GFC.
|
| https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WALCL
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| Don't forget the Republican policy of starve the beast
| that includes Republicans happily putting the US into un-
| sustainable debt as a matter of policy, hoping to break
| the government so badly that Republicans can then enforce
| unpopular policy they can't get any other way.
| nurettin wrote:
| See this is why we can't have cheap tinfoil.
| seertaak wrote:
| Sorry, when you say "gloriously free market", do you mean
| _whatever it takes_ EU, _helicopter money_ (or, rewinding
| a decade, _Greenspan put_ ) US, or _factory of the world_
| China? :)
|
| My point is that it's not a real market economy if the
| risk premium -- and in China's case, the exchange rate --
| is rigged. And it has been, since the 90s.
|
| EDIT: For clarity, I'm agreeing with you, since you were
| being facetious.
| rodrigodlu wrote:
| What about even earlier? Like the petrodollar?
| seertaak wrote:
| Absolutely! -- and we could play this game for a _long_
| time ;)
|
| The right way of looking at it is, there was tiny little
| interlude of something vaguely approaching the free
| market -- back when Volcker was in charge.
| nurettin wrote:
| What they probably mean is that it is not a fair market,
| that there is no balance in purchasing power, pushing
| small scale buyers away while supply slowly catches up
| (or doesn't)
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| I'm not disagreeing with you, but I have not frequently
| heard the phrase "fair market" (as opposed to a far more
| limited and specific term "fair market value", where
| "fair" I believe applies to "value" and not "market") and
| would be interested in hearing more of its definition and
| criteria.
|
| Trivially, I would assume proponents of "free market" and
| "fair market" are a tiny if not zero Venn diagram, and
| that terms are at least somewhat opposing, but will
| withhold my judgement :-).
| nurettin wrote:
| Oh I made it up on the spot, actually. It is just
| something to complain about.
| StopDisinfo910 wrote:
| > That's not where the interesting discussion is. The
| interesting discussion is with the notion that free
| unregulated markets are universally good and will
| naturally lead to positive outcomes because...
|
| The textbook desirable outcome is that competitive
| markets minimize suppliers'surplus which is good for
| consumers.
|
| Not that this doesn't mean unregulated markets.
| Monopolies and oligopolies acting like a monopoly are
| textbook examples of pathological markets where suppliers
| can maximize their surplus.
|
| I think pretty much everyone would agree that the current
| situation is a failure of regulation not over regulation.
| Regulator and legislation have been constantly weakened
| in the name of international competitiveness since
| Reagan.
| Aurornis wrote:
| Hedge funds don't have as high of institutional ownership
| as you assume. It's actually pretty small.
|
| That said, nothing about the situation you described is at
| odds with "free market". You're describing the operation of
| a free market.
|
| I think a lot of people want "free market" to mean the
| opposite: A highly restricted market where they are
| protected from any supply and demand inputs from anyone
| else. They just want cheap things and don't want to compete
| with anyone.
|
| There are two sides to a free market, though. In your
| example where a hedge fund comes in and buys your entire
| neighborhood, they would have to do so by outbidding
| everyone. This drives up the price. If it's an economically
| irrational move you'd be smart to sell your house to them
| at an inflated rate, too! Then move back in when the prices
| crash down.
| Seattle3503 wrote:
| Are there regulatory barriers to entering the DRAM market
| like there are in housing?
| slaw wrote:
| China blocked from buying ASML machines?
| StopDisinfo910 wrote:
| > When demand goes up, the price goes up for everyone. It's
| not a "tax" on the rest of us in any sense. There's just a
| lot of demand everywhere.
|
| > This is actually a textbook example of markets functioning
| in response to a demand shock where supply cannot be
| increased rapidly.
|
| You act like it's a competitive market. It's not the case.
| It's an oligopoly with an extremely inelastic supply side.
|
| The market is already completely broken and ineffective due
| to concentration and export controls. The actual response to
| a major demand shock should be investments to increase
| capacities but it's currently extremely limited because
| suppliers want to protect their margins and fear the market
| contracting again.
| hansmayer wrote:
| > DRAM is priced based on supply and demand, like every other
| market.
|
| Please don't explain it away like that - you are referring to
| the theoretical "ideal" market where a bunch of small
| companies compete with low margins to the benefit of the
| wider customer base. This is not what is happening. We have a
| couple of intrinsically worthless, LLM-whale companies,
| working literally to swallow and entshittify literally
| everything in their weird
| transhumanist/accelerationist/weirdo way. To add to the
| insult, the whole creation of artificial scarcity is almost a
| political construct, paid for with "monopoly-the-game-money"
| that these companies DO NOT EARN but instead BORROW based on
| vague and dishonest promises of achieving a "Country of PhDs
| in a datacenter"/"Pocket PhDs"/"AGI by 2025" (oops, now
| apparently by 2028 according to the OpenAI CEO). In their
| weird vision, as humans we should be merely cattle to be
| managed, not independent spirits with interest and
| aspirations. That ghoul Karpathy speaks about "ghost in the
| machine", overlooking the magnificence of the already
| existing "ghost in the machine" in the form of human beings.
| We should not have to swallow the increasingly crappier
| future these folks are insisting on pushing on all of us.
| BunsanSpace wrote:
| > This is actually a textbook example of markets functioning
| in response to a demand shock where supply cannot be
| increased rapidly.
|
| The problem is that demand is being propped up by speculative
| capital. The AI companies are a bubble that is suffocating
| productive parts of the market with the hording of capital
| which they're now using to also hoard hardware. All this
| without making money for data centres that aren't build yet,
| for a handwavy promise that an AGI will magically solve all
| the worlds problems.
|
| This is not normal, and it is not good for the broader
| economy.
| chneu wrote:
| Yeah the dudes argument is bunk when we remember that
| openAI bought CAPACITY and not actual product. The market
| is also heavily manipulated by the big 3 players in the
| market.
|
| OpenAI brazenly used their market position to create
| artificial scarcity. That's not normal market behavior.
| That's manipulation. And now we all suffer.
| fmbb wrote:
| AI demand is subsidized by the bubble. Those operators buying
| the RAM are not paying using money that exists. Market
| economics are not working here.
| Etherlord87 wrote:
| "it happened therefore it's normal"
| lenkite wrote:
| > It's not a "tax" on the rest of us in any sense. There's
| just a lot of demand everywhere.
|
| Curious on whether you will still hold your stance if OpenAI
| gets a taxpayer bailout. Even disregarding a bailout, they
| are already lobbying hard for tax credit expansion.
| jaredklewis wrote:
| A government bailout of OpenAI would be a regressive
| redistribution of wealth to some of the least needy people
| in all of society, which is a horrendously poor use of
| government funds. But that has no bearing on the fact that
| calling high DRAM prices induced by high demand a "tax"
| stretches the meaning of the word beyond all recognition.
|
| There are many horrible things in the world and we don't
| need to label them all as a "tax." If we use words in an
| imprecise way, it obfuscates the truth.
| lenkite wrote:
| Please note that OpenAI Partners and suppliers (Oracle,
| CoreWeave, SoftBank-linked entities) have taken on
| significant debt to fund infrastructure for OpenAI -
| around ~$100 billion reported in late 2025 alone.
|
| Projections show $14-20 billion in losses for OpenAI
| expected just in 2026.
|
| The chances that someone is _not_ going to ask for a debt
| write-off approaches zero as the years go. OpenAI
| _already_ began testing the waters since late last year.
| Senator Warren has already raised alarms about potential
| indirect taxpayer exposure when the "AI bubble" bursts.
|
| When that happens - and it is all but guaranteed to
| happen - it will amount to a horrendous tax, rendering
| everything you've said about 'imprecise words obfuscating
| the truth' complete hogwash.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| In many countries, its illegal to manipulate prices in bulk.
| lucianbr wrote:
| What makes it manipulation? If 5 companies want to buy a
| quadrilion ram chips to build datacenters, why is this
| manipulation moreso than a million companies each wanting
| to buy 100 ram chips?
|
| I think the problem is that both the buyers and producers
| are too large. Governments should not allow companies to
| become this big, because... <gestures broadly at
| everything>. If there were a thousand ram makers and a
| thousand datacenter builders, this particular problem would
| not exist.
|
| But you can't just label any price evolution you dislike as
| "price manipulation".
| Roark66 wrote:
| >What makes it manipulation?
|
| Their size and the effect on the market they have
|
| >xIf 5 companies want to buy a quadrilion ram chips to
| build datacenters, why is this manipulation moreso than a
| million companies each wanting to buy 100 ram chips?
|
| Because they are 5 companies, especially when it can be
| shown they work in unison (formed a cartel)
| dsr_ wrote:
| It's certainly price manipulation, but not likely to be
| intended price manipulation. Your arguments are flawed
| but you have reached the right conclusion.
|
| This is one of the many flaws of badly regulated markets.
|
| (There are no free markets, and there is never perfect
| information, and people often behave remarkably
| irrationally for many reasons.)
| cyanydeez wrote:
| Reading through the Epstein file, it's naive to conclude
| that no collusion is happening.
|
| Remember when FAANG was caught red handed manipulated
| hiring to depress salaries?
|
| Just seems like a lot of astroturf-ish behavior ignoring
| real world happenings:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-
| Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...
| cyanydeez wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel
|
| ---
|
| It's interesting how little you've examined similar
| cases. And you some how assume good faith in their
| behaviors.
| nutjob2 wrote:
| The problem is that OpenAI has cornered the market. Maybe
| they haven't crossed the legal line or more to the point no
| one in this corrupt and incompetent administration is going
| to prosecute them, but buying up 40% of a market which hasn't
| got any additional capacity is cornering by any measure.
|
| So yes, this is not a normal market. Your claim of a
| functioning market is the same as saying my laptop, having
| lit on fire, is a functioning computer after having 10,000
| volts applied across it.
| oldherl wrote:
| Hetzner should not be compared to AWS or GCP for pricing. It
| should be compared to Vultr, Linode or DigitalOcean.
| c16 wrote:
| Of which DigitalOcean is running very outdated prices at 4USD
| for 512mb ram.
|
| The cheapest Kimsufi dedicated server with 32GB ram is
| $11.10/mo.
| xslvrxslwt wrote:
| The reason Hetzner was cheap was bad latency and Arbor.
| handzhiev wrote:
| Excuse me, but if the difference between 10 EUR per month and
| 14 eur per month is going to kill your startup, you probably
| shouldn't try to start it. Might be time to think about using
| and creating less memory-hungry software.
| appsoftware wrote:
| Actually I disagree. I've killed projects because I've run
| out of time for them and didn't like them costing me PS50 a
| month. If I'd been able to keep them going at PS10 a month, I
| might have kept them going until I could get back to them.
| Sometimes startups fail just because the owners get
| distracted by life, and the project just needs more time.
| everdrive wrote:
| "The real story here isn't Hetzner being greedy. It's that AI
| companies are vacuuming up every DRAM chip on the planet and
| the rest of us get to pay the tax."
|
| We might also have our aquifers depleted and our electricity
| prices skyrocket. But at least we see really great benefits,
| such as being able to script some side-project while unemployed
| due to AI.
| daxaxelrod wrote:
| Anyone who thinks modern data centers don't use recirculated
| water can safely have their opinions summarily discarded.
| b40d-48b2-979e wrote:
| Anyone who thinks that modern data centers don't evaporate
| their "recirculated _FRESH_ water " straight into the ocean
| can safely have their opinions summarily discarded.
| Betelbuddy wrote:
| Data centers consume...a lot...of water by design,
| recirculated water, does not means no water consumption.
| Water must be continuously added in evaporative cooling
| systems used by many data centers.
|
| [1] - Cooling towers reject heat through evaporation, which
| uses water, not just recirculates it. Evaporated water is
| lost to the atmosphere and must be replaced with "make-up"
| water. As a result, recirculating cooling loops still
| require new water input to make up evaporation and blowdown
| losses.
|
| [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooling_tower
| 15155 wrote:
| ..so outlaw cooling towers and use dry coolers.. what?
| estimator7292 wrote:
| Please google "datacenter evaporative cooling" and then re-
| evaluate
| 15155 wrote:
| Whoa: is this the only possible form of cooling?
|
| What if there were a cooler that somehow didn't evaporate
| water, you might even call it a "dry cooler" - that would
| be a sweet invention. This might even be required in
| areas where adiabatic cooling isn't effective (humid
| climates)!
| MathMonkeyMan wrote:
| Even if the ambient relative humidity is near 100%,
| water's latent heat of vaporization is nothing to shake a
| stick at.
|
| I like the idea of a giant heat pump into the ground, but
| heat exchangers are expensive and so is digging.
| 15155 wrote:
| Nobody is talking about a giant ground-exchange heat
| pump: liquid-to-air dry coolers exist and are used
| everywhere. Adiabatic cooling is just cheaper.
| 0xy wrote:
| >aquifers depleted
|
| Oh it's this thoroughly debunked talking point again.
|
| https://andymasley.substack.com/p/the-ai-water-issue-is-fake
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| I just can't believe how HN turned into disinformation /
| propaganda machine over last few years. Pretty much every
| topic is politics and disconnected from reality.
| millzlane wrote:
| Can't stop calling it out when you see it. The internet
| is being used for good and for evil. <tinfoilhatoff>
| timcobb wrote:
| Grim
| super256 wrote:
| 1) this reads like it's posted by an LLM
|
| 2) why could they not just up the prices for new deployments,
| like they did with their dedicated servers? I think that would
| be fairer to existing customers
|
| If you have a company, I can recommend leaseweb for cheap
| hosting. I host my personal stuff like my email and my ente.io
| instance there. They are cheaper than Hetzner (already before
| the new price increase) if you don't need managed k8s.
| dist-epoch wrote:
| > Same kit I bought 8 months ago for 90 EUR is now 400+. That's
| not normal market dynamics.
|
| That's exactly normal market dynamics during acute shortage.
| Remember 2020 when filtering face masks went up in price
| 10-100x?
| rob wrote:
| Warning: another bot - check their history.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| On the plus siide, we all get to learn how few new computers
| are needed rather than chase number goes up.
| huijzer wrote:
| I just bought a Raspberry Pi 4 1 GB memory with aluminum case,
| aluminum NVME adapter, and a 64 GB SSD for about 80 euros. With
| microsd it's even cheaper. 4 GB RAM would be about 120 euros.
|
| The 1 GB RAM replaces one Forgejo runner that was in Hetzner.
| With EUR5 per month, I will earn this investment back in less
| than two years. After the price increase, this period will only
| shorten!
|
| I also wrote about this at
| https://huijzer.xyz/posts/148/raspberry-pi-as-forgejo-runner
| faverin wrote:
| I moved from paying 24.50 a month to 25.39 a month for my little
| VPS plus storagebox.
|
| CPX31 Cloud Server (Germany): EUR13.10 - EUR13.99/month
| (+EUR0.89, ~+6.8%) BX21 Storage Box: Unchanged Primary IPv4:
| Stays at EUR0.50/month
| xinayder wrote:
| I haven't received this email, and I have one x64 server that
| costs around 4 EUR/mo, and an ARM server that costs about 6
| EUR/mo. I wonder if I'll still be affected by the price increase.
| andix wrote:
| With the recent price spikes in memory and storage, this was just
| a matter of time.
| volkadav wrote:
| Doesn't seem to apply to older/deprecated gen instances. I've got
| a CX22 there for personal screw-around projects and it's the same
| PS3.95/mo (pre-VAT) afaict. So maybe not much help to folks
| ordering new or running on the current gen as the older kit isn't
| something you can order now, but a small boon for us laggards.
| rm30 wrote:
| Western memory manufacturers decided to chase the AI bubble,
| abandoning the consumer and low-requirement markets entirely.
|
| Chinese manufacturers are now capturing that entire segment with
| full vertical integration. When this bubble stabilizes, because
| it will (it's not going to grow to infinite), Western companies
| won't recapture those markets.
|
| They've already ceded competitive advantage for the next decade.
| This is a structural shift, not a cyclical shortage.
|
| It's another step in the transformation of Western industry that
| began in the '80s: the shift from real economy and human-centric
| production to financialized operations.
| pyrale wrote:
| You're speaking like Hetzner is raising prices to fund Nvidia-
| laden datacenters, while in fact they're mostly providing cheap
| servers and their growth is mostly happening because of US
| admin's insanity.
|
| Memory is going up for everyone, dude. And the people moving to
| Hetzner aren't exiting US clouds to leave for chinese ones.
| rm30 wrote:
| Look at Chinese smartphone brands: Xiaomi, OnePlus took their
| slice from Samsung.
|
| Same pattern will play out with RAM and SSD. In 3-5 years, it
| won't be 'Samsung' on the label, it'll be 'Li Tech' or
| equivalent.
|
| Western manufacturers ceded the market through strategic
| choice; Chinese companies are filling it systematically.
| roelschroeven wrote:
| Samsung isn't exactly a Western manufacturer either though.
| earthnail wrote:
| Somewhat weirdly I'm very happy about this price increase as a
| customer. The messaging is clear and completely understandable.
| Well done.
| Incipient wrote:
| For out 30-40% increase in infra would crucify some companies!
| xslvrxslwt wrote:
| They're using Arbor, they were cheap for that exact reason.
|
| Now that people don't care about Anti DDoS - this happens.
|
| In the past everyone was leaving Hetzner for the OVH/Voxility due
| to terrible latency and nonexistent protection.
| mrmuagi wrote:
| > Now that people don't care about Anti DDoS - this happens.
|
| Could I prod why that is? I'm dealing with a ovh server and
| using their anti-ddos detection for an issue currently so this
| topic I'd like to learn about.
| layer8 wrote:
| 36% as per the linked post, 38% was a typo.
| nickandbro wrote:
| Hetzner had the best prices out of any cloud I've used. Sad to
| see that they are raising prices, but was due to happen.
| kevincloudsec wrote:
| companies that haven't turned a profit are outbidding the rest of
| the economy for hardware. that's not a supply shortage, it's a
| subsidy funded by venture capital.
| Shorel wrote:
| Good. This means the market is healthy.
|
| Hopefully this also means new providers appear in Europe, to
| handle the increase in demand.
| ilaksh wrote:
| For some reason I didn't get an email from them about this, even
| though one of my VPSs is in Helsinki.
|
| Anyway, let's all please pretend that Hetzner is now way
| overpriced if anyone asks about it. :P
| conradfr wrote:
| I almost didn't see their email because it's sent by
| "notification" (notification@hetzner.com, no name set). Title
| is "Update on our pricing".
|
| Anyway my increase is: EX44 (HEL1) EUR 44.76 -> EUR 50.76
|
| Not pleased especially as the reason for the increase for
| existing customers is a nebulous "The costs to operate our
| infrastructure has increased dramatically."
|
| Why?
| ilaksh wrote:
| Maybe I have email notifications off.
|
| I think it's RAM and server prices globally shooting up.
| Extreme RAM shortage and increasing hoarding of all types of
| hardware supplies.
| Stevvo wrote:
| It's not just Hetzner cloud; got an email about increase prices
| on my dedicated server.
| hnroo99 wrote:
| Hm the pricing increase stresses me out out less than the server
| shortages. My impulse reaction is to buy a few cheap cloud VPS
| instances even though I don't need them right now... Anyone have
| any wisdom to encourage/discourage this?
| Roark66 wrote:
| This excuse "we need to raise prices because we have more demand"
| is BS. They should be truthful and say "we can increase prices
| and people will pay it because they want to be EU based"
|
| To be honest for anything more serious than a personal Minecraft
| server hetzner has been beaten by ovh for ages (on bandwidth -
| you get all you can eat data limited by speed from ovh - for
| example 500mbit, instead of 20tb from hetzner).
|
| For this reason hetzner is always a "backup DC" in my eyes and
| never the primary.
|
| Also I heard they are extremely sensitive regarding abuse
| allegations so don't even think of hosting something someone may
| not like seeing...
|
| They get a lot of hype, but there are many competitors worth
| looking at.
| pmdr wrote:
| Ah yes, the abundance of AI that keeps on giving.
| someguyornotidk wrote:
| Hetzner is currently cheaper than getting a static IP from my ISP
| + electricity, but just barely. I have a ton of local compute and
| can easily allocate one or two servers to take over if
| sufficiently motivated.
|
| I wonder how many of Hetzner's customers are like me. I hope DRAM
| doesn't kill off cheap VPS providers like this one.
| jp1016 wrote:
| Been running a handful of dedicated boxes on Hetzner for about 5
| years now. Even with the increase, the price/performance ratio is
| still way better than anything comparable from the big three US
| clouds. Their AX-series auction servers especially.
|
| What concerns me more than the price hike itself is the trend.
| Memory prices spiking, hard drives selling out, and now this. If
| you're running anything with serious storage or RAM needs, it's
| worth locking in what you can now. I grabbed an extra auction
| server last month just because the specs were good and I figured
| prices were only going up.
|
| For anyone panicking about alternatives: OVH and Netcup are
| decent in Europe but have their own tradeoffs. OVH's network has
| been flaky for me, and Netcup's support is basically nonexistent.
| Hetzner's support has been solid every time I've needed it, which
| is worth something.
| jwildeboer wrote:
| TL;DR Monthly prices for VPSes up around 30% on average, for
| dedicated servers 14% on average, based on the stated old and new
| prices in EUR.
|
| Location/type, Average increase: Germany Dedi 14,1 % Finland Dedi
| 14,8 % USA VPS 30,9 % Singapore VPS 30,8 % Germany/Finland VPS
| 32,0 % Grand Average 23,8 %
| KnuthIsGod wrote:
| The main benefit seems to be avoiding dealing with the US. A
| TavsiE9s wrote:
| That probably doesn't work with Hetzner, they've got a hosting
| location in the US.
| finnjohnsen2 wrote:
| Sir, your logic is flawed. You can buy Adidas in the US too.
| Adidas is still 0% american.
| rbbydotdev wrote:
| How long before we invent a currency pegged to compute cycles
| engineer_22 wrote:
| $BTC ??
| mdrzn wrote:
| Server auction didn't change at all, the lowest price server is
| still around 33EUR.
| Zekio wrote:
| Not the 1st of April yet, so makes sense the prices haven't
| changed yet
| KronisLV wrote:
| > Note: All "Server Auction" servers have a 3% price increase
| across the board.
|
| Mine went from 36.30 EUR to 37.39 EUR, according to the e-mail
| that I got.
|
| I'm actually very thankful that the Server Auction exists and
| lets some hardware be used like that, instead of becoming
| e-waste or something.
|
| For what I get, those prices are more than reasonable. I feel a
| bit bad about the other prices that saw a way bigger of a hike.
| mdrzn wrote:
| Mine went from EUR33 to EUR33.99, so I definitely cannot
| complain.
| Hasz wrote:
| Market for DDR4 is crazy, but not as crazy as DDR5.
|
| Also a symptom of how inelastic hardware demands are. You would
| expect the purest k8s people to just shove workers on older
| machines and completely dodge this crisis, but we don't see
| that at all. Despite being an almost-commodity, many of the hw
| vendors still have a decent hand.
| medi_naseri wrote:
| Hardware market has become very unpredictable, I have had vendors
| rejecting my replacement orders because new orders where 20% more
| expensive 15 days after I initially ordered the DRAM.
| elric wrote:
| From the email:
|
| > For example, the cost for DRAM memory has increased up to 500%
| since September 2025.
|
| That is an utterly insane price hike. Is production being scaled
| up, and will that take years? Or are producers happy charging 5x
| the price for the same amount of effort?
|
| How much of this is driven by speculation vs actual demand?
| d4rkp4ttern wrote:
| May or may not be related to a surge in VPS hosting of OpenClaws
| on Hetzner. It's a very popular option right now.
| Havoc wrote:
| Netcup cancelled their winter sale as well
| Neil44 wrote:
| I got an email from OVH yesterday, they're putting the prices up
| on a VPS I span up last month by 20% ish.
| dhruv3006 wrote:
| some hetzner alternatives please.
| agnishom wrote:
| It's happening on April 1. Should we take it seriously?
| miohtama wrote:
| For alternative European providers, I recommend OVH. Some euros
| pricier, but good.
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| If your only complaint with Hetzner is the price hike, though,
| it makes no sense to migrate to a more expensive vendor.
| Topgamer7 wrote:
| I have received awful, slow, inaccurate support from ovh.
| Avoid.
| notracks wrote:
| OVH also increased their pricing significantly.
| keraf wrote:
| Used to have my VPS' with OVH a few years back but noticed the
| performance was significantly worse than similarly priced
| Hetzner ones. Not sure if that changed.
|
| Regarding alternative VPS providers, Infomaniak in Switzerland
| have decent prices on their Lite range [0]. I'll stick with
| Hetzner but if I move some day, I might try them out.
|
| [0] https://www.infomaniak.com/en/hosting/vps-lite
| dewey wrote:
| I've been on OVH forever, but recently switched to Hetzner as
| OVH doesn't have their equivalent of their auction servers
| which are great if you are looking for combinations of SSD +
| HDD servers. These don't really exist at OVH unless you pay >
| 200 euro / month.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| I checked yesterday. The cheapest vm I can get from them was
| something like 25 euros/month. The one I get from Hetzner was
| 6/month and now will be 8 per month. That's a 3x difference. A
| little cheaper than GCP/AWS. But not a whole lot. I went with
| Hetzner based on that as I'm trying to reduce an 800 euro/month
| Elastic Cloud + GCP bill to < 100 month. Even with the price
| increases, I should get below 100/month.
| snowhale wrote:
| the 500% DRAM cost jump makes more sense when you factor in that
| Samsung and SK Hynix have been shifting capacity from commodity
| DRAM to HBM for AI accelerators. same fabs, different product
| mix. so consumer/server DRAM supply contracts right when everyone
| is spinning up new cloud infra to run inference workloads. supply
| squeeze from both sides.
| xyst wrote:
| The overhyped AI bubble needs to pop already.
| noisy_boy wrote:
| I tried to sign-up with Hetzner instance last night - after all
| the signup etc, it expects me to enter my passport information
| for "verification". Fuck that.
| dabinat wrote:
| I understand that the market for hardware is insane right now, so
| it's logical for prices to increase. But in a few years, when
| hardware prices are hopefully at a more reasonable level, will
| these providers reduce prices again or will we be eating these
| costs forever?
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| I just started the process of migrating to them yesterday. They
| are still very affordable. But a bit less. I'm estimating that
| our quite lean GCP setup cost is going to be cut to about 20-25%
| when I'm done. So, it doesn't affect my decision to go with them
| literally yesterday morning.
|
| It's all a bit barebones and primitive but I don't mind. I spent
| yesterday tweaking some ansible scripts with codex to setup stuff
| like bastion hosts and nat networking. I expect I have most of
| the rest ready in a few days.
|
| The benefits of having an uncomplicated docker compose and boring
| tech stack. No microservices. Just a monolith.
|
| One issue that I don't have a solution for yet is disk encryption
| and encrypted bucket content. Probably solvable but not natively
| supported. Might trigger compliance issues with some of our
| customers.
| dijit wrote:
| I always found that compliance issue with encrypted drives a
| bit funny.
|
| The provider has the keys.
|
| So, the drives encryption has no practical application.
|
| The drives in, say, GCP aren't even real drives, the blocks are
| chunked over a distributed pool of storage- you can't just grab
| a drive and walk away with an OS or a data volume, you'd just
| get random junk. - So what's the encryption going to do?
|
| I _guess_ it 's harder to attach your drive to someone elses
| VM, but ultimately since the provider has the key it doesn't
| actually change anything there either, except that you need
| another API call to launch a drive and maybe there's different
| permissions on your drives key than on the drive itself?
|
| idk, feels like a weird theatre that the providers get away
| with because they're so big; there's no practical way of even
| checking if they're following up with drive encryption either.
| So it really is "here you can input a secret key, that you
| choose, we promise to use it *wink*".
|
| Totally absent any verifiable outcome, or actual threat model.
| moralestapia wrote:
| Thanks, AI.
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