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Data centers are now hoarding SSDs as hard drive supplies dry up (www.techspot.com)
submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by throws_lemy@lemmy.nz to c/technology@lemmy.world
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According to Taiwan tech publication DigiTimes, most AI firms are unwilling to wait two years for HDD supplies to stabilize and are shifting to SSDs instead. To contain costs, they are choosing QLC NAND-based drives over the faster, more durable, and more expensive TLC variants.

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[-] Asafum@lemmy.world 14 points 2 months ago

"Why does the population hate us? We're only completely destroying the consumer electronics market, accelerating climate change, aiming to eliminate countless jobs, increasing power costs, and stealing the works of millions of people to feed our system all so we can get even more obscenely wealthy? Please clap."

[-] DaddleDew@lemmy.world 9 points 2 months ago

You forgot to mention that the product they're sacrificing everything for is widely failing to meet expectations and that they will likely expect taxpayers to bail them out when their investments fail and threaten to take out the entire economy with themselves

[-] CrabAndBroom@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 months ago

Also in a few years when the AI generated nonsense code reaches a critical point and a ton of important systems grind to a halt, we'll expect all of you that we fired to come back and un-fuck it for us so we can keep on making money. On temporary contracts and at reduced wages of course because times are tough.

[-] douglasg14b@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

To be clear, it only wildly fails to meet expectations in sectors that you hear about.

It's most definitely medium expectations in sectors you don't hear about because news and social media have a huge negativity bias because that gets views and engagement.

If we want to fight this scourge, we need to be more informed about it.

[-] frongt@lemmy.zip 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Like what sectors?

[-] gibmiser@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

Law enforcement and military

[-] cecilkorik@piefed.ca 2 points 2 months ago

I think it's more like expectations have been deliberately lowered in those fields to meet exactly what AI can deliver. Unpredictable, arbitrary, non-negotiable decisions are the point, and the goal. It's not about enforcing any laws or achieving any actual outcome other than making innocent people fear for their lives. And it's doing a fine job at that.

[-] VoiHyvaLuojaMitaNyt@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago

Oh yeah I just read how AI keeps suggesting nuking everyone. That sounds like a great success. (I get what you mean, I just wanted to be a wiseass)

[-] zelahdieliekeis@piefed.blahaj.zone 1 points 2 months ago

I certainly expect that the visual models are meeting expectations in the racial profiling department.

[-] douglasg14b@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Contact centers, software development, automation, images and video analysis, data analysis, semantic search, entity recognition, advertising, misinformation campaigns, social media, security scanning & automation...etc

Many of these are cross-cutting across many sectors, some of these are sectors you don't think of as they are driven by government entities.

And many of these have boring quiet tools and integrations that you don't hear about because they "just work".

You only hear about the shit that doesn't work. Not the shit that does work.

Edit: inb4 a reply of a narrow use case or shitty implementation that, obviously, doesn't work, which I already called out as a bias.

[-] ParlimentOfDoom@piefed.zip 2 points 2 months ago

Didn't forget draining all their drinking water. Violating everyone's copyright. Driving teens to suicide. Giving terrible medical advice. And Generating csam.

[-] DarkSideOfTheMoon@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

I am start to think they are going on the acceleroism theory to push the society to the limits and destroy all for change

Some think this could lead to a more equallytary society, some wants to make a more centralized and controlled by one power sort of society, there is 2 different school of thought on this.

But we are clearly going to have big changes

[-] AdamBomb@lemmy.sdf.org 5 points 2 months ago

Man, fuck those guys

[-] mlg@lemmy.world 4 points 2 months ago

Next year's CES is gonna be every AI product from this year's CES but with no progress on release date because they can't even buy the consumer grade hardware to produce it since it all went into data centers lol.

[-] WanderingThoughts@europe.pub 2 points 2 months ago

Back to punch cards we go. Or are they hoarding paper too?

[-] fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 2 months ago

Are now? Haven't they been using flash first?

Hard drives suck for that work load. Their seek times are huge, their throughput is awful, and they're worse storage density than HDDs. You can fit 24 2.5" ssds into a 2u server. 16TB in a 2.5" > 24TB in 3.5" SSDs were first to skyrocket in price vs HDDs.

[-] EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago

No. AI companies have huge storage requirements for training data. Flash storage is not cost efficient for mass storage quantities.

[-] fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.dbzer0.com -1 points 2 months ago

For massive companies space is as costly as the price of the storage. Especially these AI companies don’t care much about the price of things.

[-] EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago

Something tells me you’ve never worked for a massive company.

[-] fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 2 months ago

These aren't massive companies. They're startups. (and some branches inside of massive companies acting like startups)

[-] EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

Bruh, you’re the one who called them massive companies

[-] LodeMike@lemmy.today 0 points 2 months ago

A"I" companies want to store petabytes of "good" training data

[-] TehWorld@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago

Exabytes. Petabytes are easily surpassed by a lot of companies these days.

[-] Ferrous@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

[-] Blaster_M@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

On the upside, we consumers get to have the superior TLC SSDs (better write durability).

[-] neblA@lemmy.zip 1 points 2 months ago

I have one in my basement

[-] Auth@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

the consumer hardware market is so tiny. It has almost no buying power or pull. Its hard to expect them to cater to it when its single digit % of their overall sales.

[-] Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

The silver lining in all this is that when this bubble explodes we'll probably have a glut in the supply of HDDs and SSDs, driving prices down.

Just hold any plans to upgrade your hardware for a year or two and you'll end up better of (for many it will even be a good exercise to wean oneself out of the mindless "instant gratification" impulses one is indoctrinated into by Consumer Society).

[-] ThomasWilliams@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

The devices will be returned to the supplier (they are supplied on credit) and then destroyed.

The manufacturers won't want to flood the market with discounted hardware.

[-] charles@social.charles.wiki 1 points 2 months ago

Actually no. We won't due to anti gray market policies from data centers. For example Google shreds all HDDs after their service life(5years max usually) expires. We have a net loss from the data center hardware fiasco.

[-] Earthman_Jim@lemmy.zip 0 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

The social dynamic would flip overnight if Americans suddenly had self control. The oligarchs control us by controlling our habits, and so many people are mindless about their habits and are impulsive and subservient as a result.

Just buy essentials and make your fun with what you have. Call it "soft striking".

[-] EndlessNightmare@reddthat.com 0 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

The social dynamic would flip overnight if Americans suddenly had self control.

"If only everyone would get together and collectively do " we could actually fix a lot of problems.

There is no solidarity in society. Much of that is by design, but a lot of it is human nature.

[-] Earthman_Jim@lemmy.zip 0 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

More of it is by design than you seem to think. Look at all the effort and money being put into dividing people... if entropy was humanity's natural state, why all the effort to make it happen? And I didn't say some silver bullet would do it, but that the more people take control over their habits, the less they inherently give up control to the wire pullers...

"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, and our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of…. It is they who pull the wires that control the public mind."

Edward 'The Father of Public Relations' Bernays

[-] EndlessNightmare@reddthat.com 0 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Tribalism is an inherent part of human nature. Capitalism and nationalism certainly exacerbate and exploit this though, no doubt about it.

[-] Earthman_Jim@lemmy.zip 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Tribalism is a part, no doubt, but we are more than capable of rising above it and seeing beyond our tribalism, or at the very least seeing humanity as a single tribe/super organism.

[-] MousePotatoDoesStuff@lemmy.world 0 points 2 months ago

How do we make the AI firms bankrupt faster?

[-] ulterno@programming.dev 0 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

It is useless to play this game against them. All the top players are already in.^[they have won against local textiles in almost all places and against little food industries in enough places. They start by destroying the incentive to produce locally and continue with centralising the means of production. All the while, using the fruits of your labour against you. Eventually they want to destroy your ability to walk away, by being the only option everywhere.]
Best, find your own way to create ICs and make them for community purposes.
There will be much less money and you will be tempted to sell to AI chaps, so you will need willpower.
Specially after putting the time and effort to manufacture yourselves.

[-] ChaoticEntropy@feddit.uk 0 points 2 months ago

It does somewhat feel like all the levers of power are in the hands of people who have little to no reliance on the consumer market anymore. Your money is no good here.

They can all enjoy the perfect financial circlejerk with most of the world's money whilst the rest of us scratch at the window.

[-] ulterno@programming.dev 0 points 2 months ago

scratch at the window

I have read this thing 2 times today and I can't find a meaning for this.
What does this idiom mean?

[-] Machinist@lemmy.world 0 points 2 months ago

It's an old saying, longer version I know is:

"Saddest thing in the world is a cat scratching at the window because it used to be an inside cat."

this post was submitted on 25 Feb 2026
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