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DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

jeffgeerling.com

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Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#291

Post by telotortium »

KPGv2 wrote: post #279
chromacity wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 m…

With LLMs, it's potentially a lot easier to use microcontrollers now, depending on how widely available the documentation is now.

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#292

Post by JollySharp0 »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #248
JollySharp0 wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I categorized these situations the way you do, and I said what I'm saying, I would be a pedant. I am not categorising any situation. The vast majority of people would omit unreasonable options. I could buy a racing bike that is £5000 new, for £200 when I live in London (back in 2000s). The bike would most likely would have been stolen. So technically I can buy a £5000 bike for £200. But most people wouldn't want…

> You started the conversation claiming I was outright lying. Then when I clarified to you what I meant you continued claiming I was lying/misstating. That is really annoying. I said "If you were offering anywhere near 6x MSRP" I didn't believe you, and it turns out you weren't offering 6x MSRP. So I wasn't calling you a liar. > If you could have just said "okay that is fair, while you might have been doing X and Y,…

> So if I had explicitly said "I think it's fine you didn't use ebay" that would have fixed everything? Because I never argued about your personal choice, I argued about you calling ebay "unreasonable".

Ebay in itself isn't unreasonable.

Ebay is unreasonable when the only sellers are untrustworthy sellers, when there was a bunch of scams at the time. Which there were.

I've clarified this many times now. I don't care what interpretation is now of what I said.

> Well for the record, I was going to say something like that in response to "If you are going to be a smart arse, I will modify my statement to say "I could not get a card from a reputable online store as they were all out of stock and did not wish to risk buying from a less reputable one"."

I don't believe you. I've had plenty of stupid conversations like this, with plenty of tech nerds. Rarely happens with non-tech people. I spend some time in non-tech hobby spaces that are technical (Classic Car / Bike repairs) and this convo style never happens.

People like yourself think you are being clever buy poking holes in everything that said. I am quite happy to be quite obnoxious in pointing this out. I am tired of it. I am this cantankerous IRL about this btw.

The fact is that you could not buy a new graphics card in the UK for some time during COVID via almost every online retailers. I had conversations with other people in the UK that wanted to buy PC hardware and they were in the same situation. The same was true for the Pi 4 at the time. Making stupid semantic arguments doesn't change that fact.

> Edit: And it doesn't help that you never actually did that modification, and instead keep insisting that what you originally said means the same thing.

For all intents and purposes it is the same thing if you aren't engaging in pedantry and semantics. I try not to engage in it anymore (unless it is tit for tat), because I understand it pisses people off. You obviously don't care.

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#293

Post by telotortium »

KPGv2 wrote: post #280
jfim wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Good thing LLMs exist now

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#294

Post by MBCook »

freetime2 wrote: post #278

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 price…

I bought a pair of 4 TB SSDs for like $300-350/ea two years ago. I don’t remember exactly.

Around Christmas I tried to order one more. They wanted to above MSRP, like $500. Given the price of everything else I decided to just bite the bullet and do it.

After about a month they canceled my order. Whether that’s because they didn’t actually have one and couldn’t get one, or because they just wanted to wait for the prices to go up further I don’t know.

I went looking again two weeks ago. The exact same drive is back in stock. MSRP is now $1000. Amazon has it “on sale” for $900. Other retailers that often have slightly higher prices are asking $1250.

That’s 3-4x price increase in 2 years.

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#295

Post by nl »

tombert wrote: post #288
nl wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had an iPhone 12 and just upgraded to a 17 because I don't see any point waiting - prices will just increase. > It really sucks more because the reason for it--AI--is just so godawful and pointless. Strong disagree. AI is the best thing I've seen in 30 years working in software and expensive RAM for 2 years is a price I think is worth it.

> AI is the best thing I've seen in 30 years working in software and expensive RAM for 2 years is a price I think is worth it. I think generative AI is pretty neat, but I'm not sure it's worth the RAM increases. I use Claude like everyone else does, and it's cool, but I am a little concerned at how much absolute low-effort crap is being produced with it. It has made YouTube considerably worse; there was already a lot…

Listen to the podcast I linked. 2 years is ramp up time for new memory factories (which are currently being built)

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#296

Post by gnabgib »

JollySharp0 wrote: post #243
gnabgib wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only Java qualifies under your arbitrary rules, and even then I imagine it's trying to catch up to .NET (after all.. blu-ray players execute Java).. which can run on embedded systems https://nanoframework.net/

I listed some popular languages that web applications I happened to run dockerised are using. They are not arbitrary. If you run normal web applications they often take many hundreds of megabytes if they are built with some popular languages that I happened to list off the top of my head. That is a fact. Comparing that to cut down frameworks with many limitations meant for embedded devices isn't a valid comparison.

1GB is plenty for almost every case I've seen, 10-20x the need. Yes if you're running a repeated full OS underneath (hello VMs) then it'll waste more.

I run (regular) .NET (8) in Unless you're talking about disk space.. runtimes take space.

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#297

Post by h4kunamata »

jmyeet wrote: post #223
throwatdem12311 wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My iPhone 11 hanging on for dear life…

I had an iPhone 11. It was a good phone. It started giving up in early 2024. I held on with poor battery life until the new iPhones that year and bought the 16 Plus. I'm glad actually because they're discontinued the Plus models, annoyingly. But I'm glad I don't need to upgrade for the next couple of years. I honestly want to get 4-5 years out of any phone going forward. There's basically no difference between models…

>But I'm glad I don't need to upgrade for the next couple of years.

Said the user who didn't learn the lesson.

Apple, you do not own anything, if Apple wanna release an update next month that makes your current phone useless, there is nothing you can do to prevent it.

Apple was caught hacking battery level, hacking users GPS signal, etc.

You don't own an Apple device, Apple owns you!!!

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#298

Post by MBCook »

krallja wrote: post #272
bombcar wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

I’d bet a lot that the Neo has a better SSD in it too.

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#299

Post by tombert »

nl wrote: post #295
tombert wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> AI is the best thing I've seen in 30 years working in software and expensive RAM for 2 years is a price I think is worth it. I think generative AI is pretty neat, but I'm not sure it's worth the RAM increases. I use Claude like everyone else does, and it's cool, but I am a little concerned at how much absolute low-effort crap is being produced with it. It has made YouTube considerably worse; there was already a lot…

Listen to the podcast I linked. 2 years is ramp up time for new memory factories (which are currently being built)

I do not see any linked podcasts.
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