this post was submitted on 04 Dec 2025
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Explain Like I'm Five
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I think when it was GPUs it was also crypto. Also, it's harder for two things to be a bottleneck at the same time
Maybe the current squeeze is because some players decided to set up their farms at the same time. About that I don't know much
As for the purely technical "why RAM" - when they're running a model it has to fit in the memory. A model which weights 8GB on the drive requires at least 8GB of RAM (rest for the os etc). AFAIK there have been some papers how to get more out of smaller weight but in general we are at "more is better" part of development of that technology. And probably, because of the hype, having service throttled outside of any plan might be worse RN than getting worse results. So if I were setting up an AI farm and had the money, "the tendency is to push it as far as we can"
And free market is figuring out who is the highest bidder