Hell we’re even seeing this with modern tech like phones and even hardware now. Look at every iPhone in the last 10 years for example, they’re petty much all identical (and I say this as an iPhone user). Also looking at graphics cards as another example, the difference in power between the 40 series and 50 series is nowhere near the jumps from previous models. But it’s more profitable to sell the same thing and pretend it’s new and improved than it is to actually drastically improve something or try something new.
They're "pretty much identical" because there isn't really anything left to do with phones. The only possible new innovation is folding phones, and Apple waits until new technology is almost perfect until they release their version of it. In-screen fingerprint readers and under screen cameras still have issues as well, and Apple doesn't care about fingerprint scans anymore and the 'dynamic island' is something they like a lot, so I doubt they'd add those things even if they were perfected. Genuinely, what exactly would you expect them to add to their next phone? There isn't anything left to innovate with phones. Better camera, battery, screen is all that is left to do with them.
The 5000-series doesn't have a larger performance uplift because they're still on the same node as the last generation, and they can't move to a smaller one yet. The reason performance was higher with the other generations was because they went with smaller node sizes. 1000 was 16nm, 2000 was 12nm, 3000 was 8nm, 4/5000 is 5nm. It has nothing to do with profits. Nvidia still has a 60% margin on the 5090 (and probably the same % on the other models) and GPU's make up less than 10% of their current business
I mean yeah in Apple phones foldables and under-screen cameras would be fun, I also have an iPhone (and a Huawei Y9 which I love for it’s retractable camera and full screen display, no camera hole or island) and would prefer to buy the new cheaper model than the 16 Pro Max until they change something valuable, they used to push into new tech before it was perfected as it was clear with the fingertip reader and the jump to iPhone X. Camera wise the Android line destroys iPhone cameras with higher zoom and better AI correction. Personally I liked round edges better in the past lol.
With Nvidia GPU’s I’d like a ton of on-package memory including tons of RAM (as a Cerebras on-chip RAM CPU or an Apple M series CPU where it is in the same package) and generally better bandwidth with other components, a new kind of refrigeration system would be nice for a 3 trillion company and maybe something that fixes power issues and general size.
Nvidia does sell cards with more ram, they are just way more expensive and marketed for ai. They correctly decided that gamers wouldn’t want to pay more for something that isn’t a limiting factor for modern games.
As for power and heat, three trillion dollars isn’t going to change the laws of physics. The amount of power used, and therefore heat generated is largely correlated with the size of the transistors, which you bet they are spending billions trying to get smaller. As for refrigeration, most people don’t even use water cooling, and it’s hard to imagine something more effective than that while still being cheap enough for the average consumer.
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u/BluetheNerd Mar 06 '25
Hell we’re even seeing this with modern tech like phones and even hardware now. Look at every iPhone in the last 10 years for example, they’re petty much all identical (and I say this as an iPhone user). Also looking at graphics cards as another example, the difference in power between the 40 series and 50 series is nowhere near the jumps from previous models. But it’s more profitable to sell the same thing and pretend it’s new and improved than it is to actually drastically improve something or try something new.