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Once the bubble pops, assuming it doesn't take economies with it, none of the product will be compatible with consumer devices. Manufacturing will have to be reoriented back to consumer products, then those parts will need to be manufactured, then the rush of people trying to get the parts will have to pass. THEN maybe prices will come down.
I suspect the datacenters will just pivot and repurposed to rent consumers "cloud compute" and cloud subscription services and continue to fuck the entire consumer market for years to come.
But then again I now hate everything so maybe I'm just pessimistic.
...why would it need to be?
I mean they already have been and will continue to be, yes.
It doesn't need to, but if it were that would be the only reason I'd say prices might drop anytime soon. A glut of used consumer-compatible parts would push prices down. That or maybe if the rising Chinese suppliers manage to ramp up and find a way to enter the western market.
The price is currently high and is rising because resources and manufacturing capacity are limited. Those who own the capacity have found that providing for a small number of companies that are flush with cash and will throw money around just to ensure their competitors don't gain an advantage is far more lucrative than providing for consumers or businesses that integrate parts into consumer devices. The entire market segment is shifting away from consumer and focusing on datacenter hardware.
The longer this goes on, the further the major players will be from being able to pivot back to consumer products... and there are only major players in the memory and NAND industry. You can't just form a new memory or NAND company and start manufacturing this stuff. It takes years and a lot of investment to build the facilities and the kind of capacity we're used to.
Edit: I've also seen a number of non-tech folks excited for cheap used datacenter memory and gpus to flood the market after the bubble pops, as if the parts were at all compatible with consumer devices. I wanted to make sure that was not part of your calculation.
...how about cratering demand? Basically the opposite of what we have now? That's not enough?
I feel like you didn't read what I wrote. If the bubble pops today, how long do you think it will take for prices to drop?
I mean it would be immediate. Maybe a year to reach a new low.
The hardware being built right now is not usable by consumers. What would you do with a raw HBM chip? You can't put it yourself on a gpu, nor on a ram stick.
Want a gpu? I hope you have a 3k Watt power supply to handle one of them.
They are not making consumer products anymore. Only data centre tier hardware.
Gone are the days of buying hundreds of Gb of ram and older xeon cpu from decom' servers, a cheap motherboard to tie it all together.
None of that will be usable by us pleb.
Even when the AI bubble pops, all hardware manufacturing will still be making datacentre grade hw, and either won't go back to consumers, or it will take months to pivot the factory.
Why would it be immediate? Where is the new supply coming from to alleviate the demand?