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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

#51

Post by JollySharp0 »

zozbot234 wrote: post #47
JollySharp0 wrote: post #41

There are ups and downs in the prices of components. Often people forget that during COVID prices were high for SBCs because of supply chain issues. Video cards just were not available in the UK and afterwards (every supplier had long lead times) and are still relatively expensive (at least there are now lower priced options). Raspberry Pis you couldn't get hold of and many people (Jeff Included) was using a website…

> People are quick to forget that during COVID prices were high for SBCs because of supply chain issues. inb4 AI has the same supply chain effects as a worldwide pandemic. I guess those AI doomers that talked about it being the end of the world had it right!

Doomers IMO are just click baiting.

There is a saying that is often trotted out my economists "That the cure for high prices, is high prices".

There is a consumer market and business need for DRAM outside of AI. Someone will fulfil the need as there is a high incentive to. It just going to take a bit of time for this to happen. My equipment is going to be fine for another few years. So I am going to just hang tight and make do with what I got for now.

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#52

Post by zozbot234 »

tempest_ wrote: post #44
Venn1 wrote: post #31

Is there anything (technically) preventing SBC manufacturers adding SODIMM slots? I was expecting the Milk V Titan to avoid this memory nonsense since it has two unpopulated DDR4 slots, but it has fallen off the radar like several other SBCs.

DDR4 is also crazy expensive right now so this just depends on you having some around from a previous build

It actually seems to be slightly less expensive than DDR5, perhaps due to the lower throughput that makes it uncompetitive for AI-adjacent workloads.

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#53

Post by jorvi »

Lwrless wrote: post #37

Got my RPi 5 16GB quite a while ago for around $160 and already thought that was expensive... It’s still powerful enough for almost everything I throw at it, honestly a bit overkill in most scenarios. With prices steadily going up, for me it's starting to feel more sensible to repurpose the RAM sticks I've collected from old PC builds / laptops and just throw together small amd64 boxes instead of buying more RPis.

I wonder if there are low power Intel or AMD boards that accept DDR3. So many sticks of 2 / 4 / 8GB DDR3 inside laptops going into recycling or landfills which would do perfectly fine for low power purposes. Hell, performance for standard workloads scales with access times, not bandwidth, and DDR3 sits nicely at CAS8 1600MHz and CAS10 2133MHz..

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#54

Post by murderfs »

Venn1 wrote: post #31

Is there anything (technically) preventing SBC manufacturers adding SODIMM slots? I was expecting the Milk V Titan to avoid this memory nonsense since it has two unpopulated DDR4 slots, but it has fallen off the radar like several other SBCs.

SODIMMs are huge compared to a BGA memory package which is a problem if your goal is to minimize your board size (e.g. I don't think there's a reasonable way to fit it into a Raspberry Pi form factor without something weird and expensive like a mezzanine connector). Routing the signals is also somewhat more annoying because they all come out of one edge of the connector compared to a BGA package which has them fan out in every direction, giving more space for length matching traces, etc. You'll likely need additional PCB layers compared to a BGA chip.

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#55

Post by elwebmaster »

mhb wrote: post #23
elwebmaster wrote: post #21

It's terrible. Fake money is fueling the exhaustion of real resources in search of questionable outcomes ("AGI"). Imagine if all of these money were invested in curing cancer.

Imagine if AI cures cancer.

You don't have to imagine, it will hallucinate you a slop with full confidence every time.

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#56

Post by michaelt »

CTDOCodebases wrote: post #30
dangus wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Fuel price rises = logistics price rises.

You're right that fuel prices have risen. But usually the impact of fuel prices is mostly felt on bulkier, lower cost items first.

After all, a truck can carry a 10kg sack of rice, or a 10kg nvidia gpu. If shipping costs for 10kg rise by $15 the sack of rice has doubled in price, but the GPU is only 0.5% more expensive.

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#58

Post by msy »

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?

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

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#59

Post by siruwastaken »

tempest_ wrote: post #36
rat9988 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The art is not lost, just not funded. Feel free to fund the programmers for your own software projects.

It isnt lost but it also isnt a common skill set in programmers any more. Most programmers are JS web devs writing client side code or server side CRUD. I would guess < 10% of programmers writing code today get perf / valgrind out on the regular. I know I dont.

Most people don't have the chance to do that, but hopefully we can see some other languages get first class access on the web. At least there is the whole WASM project.

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#60

Post by geerlingguy »

mhitza wrote: post #27
ls612 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SSDs and HDDs are being squeezed as well.

Don't forget SDCards "Memory card prices have TRIPLED in the last few months: when will this madness stop?!" https://www.digitalcameraworld.com/cameras/memory-cards/memo...

Sony stopped making their cards entirely, which stinks because I'd settled on their pro cards for all my camera bodies.
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