Avalon local llm

[Pocster]

1 hour ago, Gone West said:

Lucky sod!!

Buy you a drink if you pop over !

Of course if you stopped (expletive deleted)ing about and finish your build …

[BotusBuild]

I was wondering what had happened to all the water from @Pocster's leak - filling the swimming pools of the world

[Pocster]

1 hour ago, BotusBuild said:

I was wondering what had happened to all the water from @Pocster's leak - filling the swimming pools of the world

You get a (expletive deleted)ing photo for that !

[Gone West]

7 hours ago, Pocster said:

Of course if you stopped (expletive deleted)ing about and finish your build …

Finished mine in 2018. Lived in it, sold it and moved on. I know someone who hasn't finished their's, because they're always on holiday!!

[-rick-]

Seems to echo my earlier thoughts:

 

https://www.wsj.com/tech/personal-tech/apple-mac-mini-supply-3e7a7509

[Pocster]

11 hours ago, Gone West said:

Finished mine in 2018. Lived in it, sold it and moved on. I know someone who hasn't finished their's, because they're always on holiday!!

Lives too short to finish the build ! . I’ll try and do a bit when I get back 

[Pocster]

14 hours ago, -rick- said:

Seems to echo my earlier thoughts:

 

https://www.wsj.com/tech/personal-tech/apple-mac-mini-supply-3e7a7509

Yes we know that . But you have to factor in global ram supply issues . Come wwdc ( assuming released then ) we will see the real world impact of that on Apple . 
 

I think you mis understand me . I want you to be right ! I.e Apple have significantly buffered themselves against ram shortages ( bumped the price a bit already ) - that would mean supply of high memory configs on release day no issue . I want to be wrong . But it simply doesn’t look that way too me .

Edited 5 hours ago by Pocster

[-rick-]

It's entirely possible there will be some impact on Apple this WWDC. Their pre-orders from last year all being consumed and them having to pay higher prices from now on. My argument was always that the shortages we've been witnessing so far have been baked in since before the RAM crisis started and therefore not directly caused by it (just people buying more high memory Apple products).

 

Apple should be able to get supply they are big enough and have high enough margins (can can always raise the price of the Mac Studio*). Price is the big question.

 

*The people buying high ram Mac Studios almost all want them for AI and therefore will pay over the odds for them if they can get them.

[Pocster]

23 minutes ago, -rick- said:

It's entirely possible there will be some impact on Apple this WWDC. Their pre-orders from last year all being consumed and them having to pay higher prices from now on. My argument was always that the shortages we've been witnessing so far have been baked in since before the RAM crisis started and therefore not directly caused by it (just people buying more high memory Apple products).

 

Apple should be able to get supply they are big enough and have high enough margins (can can always raise the price of the Mac Studio*). Price is the big question.

 

*The people buying high ram Mac Studios almost all want them for AI and therefore will pay over the odds for them if they can get them.

Absolutely! . Apple could deliberately up their Apple ram tax even more . This would also push people to take a tier lower I.e I’d love 512gb but if price and delivery is horrible would take 256gb.

Think I saw meta have also price increased due to ram shortages/costs on their vr system .

My main concern is that AI cloud operators will pay whatever it takes to lock in RAM, while a relatively niche market like Apple’s high-end machines could end up squeezed as a result.

[-rick-]

35 minutes ago, Pocster said:

My main concern is that AI cloud operators will pay whatever it takes to lock in RAM, while a relatively niche market like Apple’s high-end machines could end up squeezed as a result.

 

My main argument is that Apple places bigger orders than the AI companies and is a well established long term customer. The memory manufacturers will make whatever their customers are willing to pay for. If Apple wants it and is willing to pay, it will get.

[Pocster]

8 minutes ago, -rick- said:

 

My main argument is that Apple places bigger orders than the AI companies and is a well established long term customer. The memory manufacturers will make whatever their customers are willing to pay for. If Apple wants it and is willing to pay, it will get.

But AI cloud buyers have already distorted the RAM market. Apple may be a major long-term customer, but that does not insulate it from higher input costs. If memory prices are pushed up by AI demand, Apple will likely pass much of that on to buyers — especially on high-end configurations. And unlike most consumers, AI cloud operators can justify paying extreme premiums to secure supply. That can also reduce the amount of top-end memory available to Apple for niche high-RAM Macs, leading to longer delivery times or higher bins becoming temporarily unavailable.

[-rick-]

1 minute ago, Pocster said:

But AI cloud buyers have already distorted the RAM market. Apple may be a major long-term customer, but that does not insulate it from higher input costs. If memory prices are pushed up by AI demand, Apple will likely pass much of that on to buyers — especially on high-end configurations.

 

Agree, Apple will have to pay and therefore so will Apple's customers.

 

1 minute ago, Pocster said:

And unlike most consumers, AI cloud operators can justify paying extreme premiums to secure supply.

 

They have been suggesting this so far, but the economics are not yet stacking up. OpenAI just pulled back on it's memory order and has recently changed CFO due to accounting issues. They are struggling to complete funding rounds. A lot of the 'orders' placed so far may not get executed (orders in OpenAI case not actually being orders but rather letters of intent). Datacenters that were supposed to be complete by now are delayed to late 2027 (no datacenter to host the server, no point buying the ram for the server).

 

But even if the AI companies are able and willing to pay (and they have datacentre space), so will a lot of Apples customers. Especially those who are buying big memory Studios. These are literally the same pool of people. AI developers spending investor money. Maybe the big labs aren't buying Studios but the smaller startups trying to come up with unique/differentiated products will.

 

1 minute ago, Pocster said:

That can also reduce the amount of top-end memory available to Apple for niche high-RAM Macs, leading to longer delivery times or higher bins becoming temporarily unavailable.

 

This I disagree with. Apple is big enough that the makers will build whatever Apple wants.

 

Micron can produce x amount of wafers per month. Apple commits to buy 20% of the wafers. Micron asks what patterns do you want on them? I was wrong earlier in the thread when I said the dies on the large mac's are not common. Having read more I believe its more that each package/chip has a taller stack of more standard dies (still not anything like the memory used in by Nvidia for their AI chips but likely the same as used in iPhones).

 

So Apple sells 250 million iPhones a year. Both the iPhone and Mac Studio use LPDDR5. One 512GB Mac Studio is equivalent to 64 iPhones (8GB).

 

If Apple is limited by how many wafers it can get, then availability of product is a purely business decision for them, where can they make the most profit. If they can make more profit selling a Mac Studio than selling 64 iPhones they will sell the Mac Studio. I suspect any limitations on Apples supply will be minimal if they are willing to pay because they are a long term customer.

 

Lead times will always be long for Apple. The packaging of these dies onto ICs and then those ICs onto the CPU package adds many steps. So if Apple misjudges quantities it takes a lot of time to correct.

[Pocster]

10 minutes ago, -rick- said:

 

Agree, Apple will have to pay and therefore so will Apple's customers.

 

 

They have been suggesting this so far, but the economics are not yet stacking up. OpenAI just pulled back on it's memory order and has recently changed CFO due to accounting issues. They are struggling to complete funding rounds. A lot of the 'orders' placed so far may not get executed (orders in OpenAI case not actually being orders but rather letters of intent). Datacenters that were supposed to be complete by now are delayed to late 2027 (no datacenter to host the server, no point buying the ram for the server).

 

But even if the AI companies are able and willing to pay (and they have datacentre space), so will a lot of Apples customers. Especially those who are buying big memory Studios. These are literally the same pool of people. AI developers spending investor money. Maybe the big labs aren't buying Studios but the smaller startups trying to come up with unique/differentiated products will.

 

 

This I disagree with. Apple is big enough that the makers will build whatever Apple wants.

 

Micron can produce x amount of wafers per month. Apple commits to buy 20% of the wafers. Micron asks what patterns do you want on them? I was wrong earlier in the thread when I said the dies on the large mac's are not common. Having read more I believe its more that each package/chip has a taller stack of more standard dies (still not anything like the memory used in by Nvidia for their AI chips but likely the same as used in iPhones).

 

So Apple sells 250 million iPhones a year. Both the iPhone and Mac Studio use LPDDR5. One 512GB Mac Studio is equivalent to 64 iPhones (8GB).

 

If Apple is limited by how many wafers it can get, then availability of product is a purely business decision for them, where can they make the most profit. If they can make more profit selling a Mac Studio than selling 64 iPhones they will sell the Mac Studio. I suspect any limitations on Apples supply will be minimal if they are willing to pay because they are a long term customer.

 

Lead times will always be long for Apple. The packaging of these dies onto ICs and then those ICs onto the CPU package adds many steps. So if Apple misjudges quantities it takes a lot of time to correct.

Fair points, and I agree Apple is probably too important a customer to be left without supply altogether.

My concern is more that AI demand has already distorted the memory market. So even if Apple can get what it wants, it may be doing so at a much higher cost, and that cost is most likely to show up in high-end Mac pricing rather than in total unavailability. In other words, Apple probably still gets the RAM — the question is how brutally it prices the top bins, and whether the niche 256GB/512GB configs end up with longer lead times because Apple allocates supply where it makes the most commercial sense.