DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market • Hacker News Board

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#271

Post by vmg12 » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 2:52 AM UTC

IncreasePosts wrote: post #49

zozbot234 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just rewrite your biggest memory hogs in Rust, it routinely slashes RAM footprint and demand for RAM throughput. The effect is even bigger than the typical reduction in CPU use. You can even ask AI to help you with the task, it will use a lot less RAM for it than the rewrite will save down the road.

Why would we need rust, if the AI can just write really good code in C that doesn't exhibit any of the issues that rust protects you from?

> if the AI can just write really good code in C that doesn't exhibit any of the issues that rust protects you from?

"if"

If it could you wouldn't need to use Rust. It can't, qed.

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#272

Post by krallja » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 2:53 AM UTC

bombcar wrote: post #255

Wingy wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The MacBook Neo’s education price of $499

It blows my mind that a Pi is a significant portion of the cost of it.

And the Pi doesn't even come with a monitor, keyboard, speakers, or power supply!

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#273

Post by TheScaryOne » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 2:55 AM UTC

zozbot234 wrote: post #180

nl wrote: post #165

In the Dwarkesh podcast with Semi-Analysis's Dylan Patel they forecast the phone market will shrink by 50% this year because of RAM prices: But that’s the high end of the market, which is only a few hundred million phones a year. Apple sells two or three hundred million phones annually. The bulk of the market is mid-range and low-end. It used to be that 1.4 billion smartphones were sold a year. Now we’re at about 1.1…

Smartphones are widely available on the used goods market though, perhaps even more so than second-hand SBCs or old PCs. The "low and mid range" can be filled by the former high end.

My Samsung Galaxy S3 died after 8 years. EMMC failure. Just started boot looping while I was asleep. Everything gone. Known issue.

My Samsung Galaxy S8 died at 7 years. Some kind of thermal failure, I was able to recover my data by keeping the phone in the freezer while I copied. Known issue.

My Samsung Galaxy S21? I figure I've got another year or two in it before it, too, dies.

Having beautiful dead phones that have never had a broken screen or a hard drop is pretty depressing.

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#274

Post by Joe_Cool » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 2:58 AM UTC

TheScaryOne wrote: post #273

zozbot234 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Smartphones are widely available on the used goods market though, perhaps even more so than second-hand SBCs or old PCs. The "low and mid range" can be filled by the former high end.

My Samsung Galaxy S3 died after 8 years. EMMC failure. Just started boot looping while I was asleep. Everything gone. Known issue. My Samsung Galaxy S8 died at 7 years. Some kind of thermal failure, I was able to recover my data by keeping the phone in the freezer while I copied. Known issue. My Samsung Galaxy S21? I figure I've got another year or two in it before it, too, dies. Having beautiful dead phones that hav…

I am noticing something those devices have in common.

My Galaxy Tab also has dead EMMC. My HTC One M8 still works and even holds a day of charge. Too bad Android doesn't support 32bit ARM anymore.

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#275

Post by Fabricio20 » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 2:59 AM UTC

zx8080 wrote: post #206

pilgrim0 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how long these shortages have to last until software developers are required to be mindful of RAM usage like in the decades before,

Probably not. AI code generation will not allow to use memory efficiently.

Quite the opposite i'd wager. Now that AI can figure everything out we can have the AIs do the performance work. Performance work alot of the times also went against developer experience in terms of languages/patterns and such. AI doesn't need to care about DevEx which might also show a shift towards more memory efficient languages and patterns. Only time will tell though.

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#276

Post by jfim » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 3:01 AM UTC

bombcar wrote: post #254

JKCalhoun wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, never understood why I would want an entire OS running just to blink an LED. I was going to make a pro-Arduino comment but I guess my LED example warrants little more than an R/C circuit and a transistor, ha ha. (Anyway, I still remember the thrill of writing assembly for a 68HC11 and getting a pair of hobby servos to respond.)

Familiarity - it’s easy for us Linux dweebs to build a pi that can flip an LED, but programming an arduino is an entire new area.

It's pretty trivial to do so on Arduino though.

  void setup() {
    pinMode(LED_BUILTIN, OUTPUT);
  }
  
  void loop() {
    digitalWrite(LED_BUILTIN, HIGH);  
    delay(1000);                     
    digitalWrite(LED_BUILTIN, LOW);   
    delay(1000);                      
  }

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#277

Post by ghm2199 » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 3:02 AM UTC

People hate AI. This will make them hate it even more. Yet somehow the market has convinced/forced us to use their products even though we might not want to.

A recent nationwide poll[1] shows AI has a poorer approval rating than ICE — ICE! — probably due to their overlords being "those" SV types. Everyday AI features are being shoved down our throats. I can't even choose to not install Gemini related apps on my Android when I select "which apps to install" when booting a new phone.

But people are a weird bunch. They largely don't buy products aligning with their values. No one is jumping up and down for Graphene phones even if they had amazing privacy first software. People buy 6mi/gal hummers and iPhones for fashion, brand, money, convenience/function. The pain threshold of all bad effects still is not high enough to quit their products in a meaningful way. Values and privacy are way down in their list. I wish people would not buy/install AI related features by big tech and be more discerning, but that is likely a pipe dream.

[1] https://pos.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/260072-NBC-March-...

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#278

Post by freetime2 » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 3:04 AM UTC

Just checked my Amazon history, and in late 2020 I bought two Raspberry Pi 4s with 4GB memory for ¥6,500 JPY (~$62 USD) each. At the time, they were in somewhat short supply and I payed a little over the $55 list price from a reseller on Amazon.

It looks like the current price on Amazon for the Raspberry Pi 4 4GB is ¥18,800 (~$117 at current rates), which is indeed expensive AF. Oddly, the Raspberry Pi 5 4GB is priced about the same, at ¥18,950 (~$119).

Considering inflation and the speed increases over the 4, the Raspberry Pi 5 price doesn't seem too unreasonable to me. But having the price go up well over ¥10,000 definitely takes it out of the realm of impulse buy and more into something I would only buy if I had a specific and urgent need. So I can definitely see this killing off a good chunk of the hobbyist market.

As it stands, my two older Pis are currently sitting unused in a closet, so I would definitely try to use those before buying anything new.

My big regret at the moment is not buying a 4TB M.2 SSD last year when prices were dipping down below ¥30,000. Now they have more than doubled to ¥65,000 or more. I had one in my cart, but decided not to buy it with the rationale that "well I still don't need the space right now, and the price per TB will probably come down even further by the time I do need it". That is, after all, the way that prices on computer component have worked for most of my life.

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#279

Post by KPGv2 » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 3:07 AM UTC

chromacity wrote: post #142

fidotron wrote: post #4

OTOH things which belong on microcontrollers are now being pushed back to microcontrollers for cost reasons, so there is a win to be found there.

Even before the hikes, SBCs were $50-$100 a pop, compared to pennies for basic MCUs and maybe $4 for high-performance ones. People were clearly willing to pay 100x more just for familiarity and the ecosystem ("hats", forums, etc). I don't know if 300x is going to make more hobbyists see the light, or just result in fewer of them being able to afford the hobby?

> People were clearly willing to pay 100x more just for familiarity and the ecosystem

This is obviously logical. If I know how to program in Python or JS but not C and am familiar with SSH, I can do something with a SBC in a few minutes.

I get paid $200/hr. If I spent even one hour to learn what I need to deal with a microcontroller, the time cost is four times the cost of materials if I stick with what I know.

How many small projects do I need to do in my free time before it's financially smart to learn a whole new technology?

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#280

Post by KPGv2 » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 3:09 AM UTC

jfim wrote: post #276

bombcar wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Familiarity - it’s easy for us Linux dweebs to build a pi that can flip an LED, but programming an arduino is an entire new area.

It's pretty trivial to do so on Arduino though. void setup() { pinMode(LED_BUILTIN, OUTPUT); } void loop() { digitalWrite(LED_BUILTIN, HIGH); delay(1000); digitalWrite(LED_BUILTIN, LOW); delay(1000); }

Well first you have to learn the Arduino programming language. And the stdlib.