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

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#531

Post by CamperBob2 » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 4:09 PM UTC

15155 wrote: post #493

gzread wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All modern technology becomes unobtainable.

Wow, I wasn't aware Samsung, Intel, SMSC were unable to produce "modern technology." Not everything needs to be on a 3nm TSMC process, believe it or not.

TSMC makes a lot of stuff besides the EUV-scale parts that all the YouTube videos talk about.

Almost everything you own that runs on electricity has some parts from Taiwan in it. TSMC alone makes MEMS components, CMOS image sensors, NVRAM, and mixed-signal/RF/analog parts to name a few.

Also, people seem to assume that TSMC is an autonomous entity that receives sand at one loading dock and ships wafers out at another. That's not how fabs work. Their processes depend on a continuous supply of exotic materials and proprietary maintenance support from other countries, many of them US-aligned. There is no need to booby-trap any equipment at TSMC; it will grind to an unrecoverable halt soon after the first Chinese soldier fires a rifle or launches a missile.

Hopefully Xi understands that. But some say it's a personal beef/legacy thing with him, and that he doesn't even care about TSMC.

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#532

Post by davemp » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 4:10 PM UTC

dendix wrote: post #252

davemp wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

let foo = [1, 2, 3]; unsafe { *foo.get_unchecked_mut(4) = 5; } Not sure why Rust evangelists always seem to ignore that unsafe exists.

Hmmm... where could the oob access possibly be I can't tell

Easy to spot in a contrived example is not:

> impossible to express in Rust

I’m not going to argue with Rust folks who misrepresent the language.

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#533

Post by parl_match » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 4:18 PM UTC

megous wrote: post #464

parl_match wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can just as well not run docker. this is naive "just as well"? lmao sure i guess i could just manually set up the environment and have differences from what im hoping to use in productio > 1GiB machine can run a lot of server software, this is naive it really depends if you're crapping out some basic web app versus doing something that's actually complicated and has a need for higher performance than synchronou…

Yes, it's exactly how docker works if you use it for where it matters for a hobbyist - which is where you are installing random third-party apps/containers that you want to run on your SBC locally. I don't know why people instantly forget the context of the discussion, when their favorite way of doing things gets threatened. :) Context is hobbyists and SBC market (mostly various ARM boards). Maybe I'm weird, but I re…

> Yes, it's exactly how docker works if you use it for where it matters for a hobbyist

What you described is exactly the opposite of how it works. There is no reasonable scenario in how that is how it works. In fact, what you're saying is opposite of the whole point of containers versus using a VM.

> when their favorite way of doing things gets threatened

No, it's when someone (like you) thinks they have an absolute answer without knowing the context.

And by the way, in my scenario, container overhead is in the range of under a hundred MiB total . The thing I'm working on HAPPENS to require a fair amount of RAM.

But you confidently asserted that "1GiB machine can run a lot of server software". And that's true for many people (like you), but not true for a lot of other people (like me).

> most hobbyist run services will not work with a shitton of data or have to handle 1000s of parallel clients

neither of these are true for me but you need to take a step back and maybe stop making absolute statements about what people are doing or working on :)

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#534

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 4:23 PM UTC

homebrewer wrote: post #25

dangus wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are talking about brand new latest gen hardware here. People with low budgets are always scraping and saving for deals and don’t need to buy something brand new from a pricey brand name like raspberry pi. You can still jump on eBay and buy all kinds of dirt cheap used pieces of hardware. My buddy just bought a used ThinkPad T14 with 32GB of RAM and 1TB of storage for about $500. You can get by with a whole lot les…

Have you looked at how expensive international shipping is? eBay covers just a few countries, the rest of us can't buy there because we'll be paying 10 times the cost of hardware to get it over here. I already moaned about this recently, but to briefly reiterate: the only hardware that's becoming available for most people in my region are Frankenstein desktops built from heavily used 10+ year old Xeons running on sus…

[deleted]

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#535

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 4:26 PM UTC

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #334

The Raspberry Pi 4B 2GB is $55 on CanaKit, PiShop, Seeed Studio, and MicroCenter. The Raspberry Pi 3B 1GB is $35 on CanaKit, Adafruit. The 3B+ is on PiShop for $40. The Raspberry Pi 3A+ 512MB is $25 on CanaKit, Adafruit, PiShop, SparkFun. The Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W is $16.35 on CanaKit, $17.25 on PiShop. We are unavoidably headed at financial collapse, authoritarianism, and potentially the collapse of Western civiliza…

[deleted]

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#536

Post by bigwheels » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 4:31 PM UTC

reenorap wrote: post #314

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…

This is an extinction event for the low-cost cell phone companies. How are they going to survive if they can't sell their $100 phones profitably for 2 years? I think many of the low-end companies will simply sell their allocations of RAM and close up shop.

Thanks a lot, Sam Altman / OpenAI. Their little $100bn war chest being used for obstructive / destructive purposes will wipe out multiples of that amount via economic ripple effects. All in an attempt to keep a stranglehold over AI via competitive resource starvation. Basic.

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#537

Post by romaniv » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 4:34 PM UTC

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #334

The Raspberry Pi 4B 2GB is $55 on CanaKit, PiShop, Seeed Studio, and MicroCenter. The Raspberry Pi 3B 1GB is $35 on CanaKit, Adafruit. The 3B+ is on PiShop for $40. The Raspberry Pi 3A+ 512MB is $25 on CanaKit, Adafruit, PiShop, SparkFun. The Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W is $16.35 on CanaKit, $17.25 on PiShop. We are unavoidably headed at financial collapse, authoritarianism, and potentially the collapse of Western civiliza…

> use less RAM.

The same accounts that defended and promoted LLM use just a few weeks ago are now telling RPi users to use less RAM.

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#538

Post by crote » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 4:36 PM UTC

aembleton wrote: post #480

crote wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows 11 requiring a TPM is still going to force a decent number of replacements: extended support on W10 is $61 Y1, $122 Y2, $244 Y3. Delaying that refresh might actually end up the more expensive option.

I recently did an install of Windows 11 on a machine without TPM To bypass the check during installation: Boot the laptop from your USB. When you see the "This PC can't run Windows 11" screen, press Shift + F10 to open a command prompt. Type regedit and hit Enter. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Setup. Right-click Setup, create a new Key named LabConfig. Inside LabConfig, create two DWORD (32-bit) values: Bypas…

It's a never-ending cat-and-mouse game, and unsupported hacks like these usually aren't well-received in corporate environments. Decent stop-gap for home use, though!

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#539

Post by xenadu02 » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 5:20 PM UTC

JollySharp0 wrote: post #51

zozbot234 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 a…

> Someone will fulfil the need as there is a high incentive to.

Unless the capital cost to compete is too high and the risk of the existing manufacturers undercutting you is very real. Plus it can take 5-10 years or more to build a new fab, debug/iterate your process, then start shipping product.

Markets are prone to natural distortions. This is one form of that. It can be perfectly natural for all potential competitors to choose not to compete no matter how much demand exists.

Frankly I'd expect nationalization of some of the DRAM makers before we see the rise of useful competitors. The more likely scenario is government pressure, up to and including arresting executives, to rattle the cages of the existing players who are way better placed to expand production quickly for relatively low capex. Not that I think any action is likely in the short term. My guess is the existing players are betting on an AI bubble pop so they don't see the use in really expanding capacity only to be left with idle fabs later. None of us really knows.

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#540

Post by rounce » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 5:38 PM UTC

stackghost wrote: post #331

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.)

For me it's primarily the ability to run a full TCP/IP stack. For hobby projects, I'd rather use a Pi or a Beaglebone with IRC or HTTP for data egress than, say, I2C or SPI. The ease of debugging alone makes it worth it.

How is this a barrier to using a microcontroller? I've sent http requests from many different microcontrollers.