Altman: RAM Is Better Used in Data Centers Than in Home Computers
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in an interview that it is inefficient to place the world's limited DRAM supply in personal computers that use it only rarely. He argues resources should be concentrated in data centers.
Sam Altman, chief executive of OpenAI, the artificial intelligence company behind ChatGPT, has argued that during the current shortage of random-access memory (RAM), the chips are better used in data centers than in personal computers. He made the remarks on the Cheeky Pint podcast, where he also discussed AI's impact on mathematics.
What Altman said
Altman noted that many people want to run AI models locally on their own devices. In his description, there is an assumption that the problem is solved because open-source models exist that can be run on personal computers, so data centers would supposedly be less necessary.
From a global allocation standpoint, however, Altman called it "quite terrible" for everyone to hold a share of the world's limited DRAM supply in their own machine, where it is used about five percent of the time. He said that in a supply-constrained environment, the goal should be maximum utilization in the cloud, and that many people's intuition runs the opposite way.
The memory market
Whether the comment concerns gaming PCs or developer hardware such as the Surface RTX Spark Dev Box or the new touchscreen MacBook Pro, the outcome is similar. Memory makers Samsung and SK Hynix have long-term agreements with cloud service operators and with projects such as OpenAI's Stargate. These deals have reserved much of the world's RAM output for the next few years.
The billions that companies are prepared to spend on chips are one reason laptops, phones and other devices are becoming more expensive at the moment.
