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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

#141

Post by noosphr »

dangus wrote: post #10
jonathantf2 wrote: post #7

DRAM pricing is killing the everything market. We just had a vendor uplift our quote 50% per unit for some machines because of a mix of memory + supply chain issues.

That’s strange, there aren’t wider market supply chain issues outside of DRAM. Maybe your vendor is just throwing excuses around.

>That’s strange, there aren’t wider market supply chain issues outside of DRAM.

GPUs, ram, ssds, hdds, hell even CPUs are starting to climb in price. It's an everything shortage and it's only getting worse.

A workstation that two years ago cost $3,000 was $10,000 last month and $10,500 this month. There are parts which aren't available at any price.

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#142

Post by chromacity »

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?

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#143

Post by [deleted] »

AngryData wrote: post #138
Dylan16807 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ultra clean rooms with massive air handling systems can't recapture all their helium? Or is this just a temporary thing based on where processing is located?

Helium is almost all captured from gas wells by cryogenically liquefying the nitrogen out of it. I guess you could do technically do that with the fab's air but it is a LOT of volume of air to liquefy and likely costs more than even inflated helium prices. Most helium from most wells is simply vented because it is expensive to separate even with its relatively high concentration, and I imagine even the best case scen…

[deleted]

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#144

Post by JollySharp0 »

megous wrote: post #117
parl_match wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, you are crazy for thinking that. The extra ram is useful for small LLMs and also running lots of dock containers. The very low power consumption makes it ideal for a low end home server. I use the 16GB SKU to host a bunch of containers and some light debugging tools, and the power usage that sips at idle will probably pay for the whole board over my previous home server, within about 5 years.

You can just as well not run docker. 1GiB machine can run a lot of server software, if RAM is not wasted on having duplicate OSes on one machine.

Containers are not Virtual Machines. 1GB cannot run a lot of server software.

If stuff is written in .NET, Java or JavaScript. Hosting a non-trivial web app can use several hundred megabytes of memory.

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#145

Post by msy »

IncreasePosts wrote: post #87
msy wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'rewrite in C, make sure there are no memory leaks'. You first.

Why is that less realistic than saying 'rewrite in rust, make sure there are no memory leaks'? My point, which I should have been clearer with, is that we aren't at a state where you can just one shot a rewrite of a complex application into another language and expect some sort of free savings. Once we are at that state, and it's good enough to pull it off, why wouldn't the AI be able to pull it off in C as well?

You don't have to trust the AI to do it with Rust, you just have to ensure certain conventions are followed and you can formally prove you're 'safe' from certain classes of issue, no AI magic dice-roll.

A lot of people are very excited by the idea that now language capabilities (and almost every other technical nuance) somehow don't matter but much like gravity they will continue to assert themselves whether you believe in them or not.

So far humans have proven unable to write large apps in C without those issues, given their work is the training basis for LLMs this creates two problems, one being that they don't 'know' what a safe app looks like either and any humans reviewing the outputted code will be unable to validate that either.

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#146

Post by hmry »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #113
bashtoni wrote: post #95

Helium supply issues are only going to make this worse. I feel like for the first time in our lives we might have seen peak technology for the next few years. Everyone is going to have to make do instead of depending on ever increasing performance.

Ultra clean rooms with massive air handling systems can't recapture all their helium? Or is this just a temporary thing based on where processing is located?

AFAIK they recapture most, but recapturing all simply isn't possible / financially feasible. And they use a lot of helium, so even if they capture most of it, the losses are still higher than the currently available supply.

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#147

Post by Dylan16807 »

JollySharp0 wrote: post #104
ttul wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This time is different. https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/trends/price/memory/#ram.ddr5.60... The price for a couple of 32GB sticks is now over $1200 after being stable at about $200 for several years until last September. That's not a blip; that's 6-fold hike and there is no sign it is slowing down any time soon.

Did you not read what I said? I couldn't even get a replacement video card at any price during the height of COVID and believe you I had the money to pay for one. I couldn't even get a Raspberry PI (any model) for about a year. They were constantly out of stock. > That's not a blip; that's 6-fold hike and there is no sign it is slowing down any time soon. How does that invalidate anything I said? As states in the art…

> Did you not read what I said? I couldn't even get a replacement video card at any price during the height of COVID and believe you I had the money to pay for one.

You're comparing to memory sticks that went up 6x. If you were offering anywhere near 6x MSRP and you couldn't get a video card... I don't believe you.

https://www.pcmag.com/news/scalpers-have-sold-50000-nvidia-r...

https://www.pcmag.com/news/read-it-and-weep-heres-how-bad-nv...

These show GPUs available for 1.5-2.5x price, which fits what I remember.

> I couldn't even get a Raspberry PI (any model) for about a year.

https://picockpit.com/raspberry-pi/why-are-raspberry-pi-pric...

I didn't look into Pi prices a whole lot, but this suggests they were continuously available for 2-3x price.

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#148

Post by rtpg »

megous wrote: post #117
parl_match wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, you are crazy for thinking that. The extra ram is useful for small LLMs and also running lots of dock containers. The very low power consumption makes it ideal for a low end home server. I use the 16GB SKU to host a bunch of containers and some light debugging tools, and the power usage that sips at idle will probably pay for the whole board over my previous home server, within about 5 years.

You can just as well not run docker. 1GiB machine can run a lot of server software, if RAM is not wasted on having duplicate OSes on one machine.

I think that on linux docker is not nearly as resource intensive as on Mac. Not sure of the actual (for example) memory pressures due to things like not sharing shared libs between processes, granted

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#149

Post by throwaway85825 »

bluescrn wrote: post #130
throwaway85825 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PCs don't have GPIO. They're different markets and the desktop replacement never materialized.

For most projects using GPIO, a <$10 ESP32 board or Arduino clone will suffice

MCUs are great but a lot of projects require linux and an application processor. Pi is the industrial standard.
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