The SBC markets been on life support for a long time. Youtubers making videos about them don't seem to grasp that and keep pumping out reviews and projects like its still 2019. The pi specifically has plummeted in popularity and for most use cases they just aren't a cost effective option when second hand micro pcs are dirt cheap and vastly more capable.
DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market
61–70 of 592 posts
Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market
#62Bought a couple of 32gb SBCs before this all hit the fan. And also built a SSD NAS before the wave hit.
So timed that all pretty great. What worries me is my desktop is up for a full new buy somewhere around early '28. That could be a train wreck depending on how taiwan situation goes
Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market
#63Earlier 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?
Rust's compile-time checks are actually a nice set of guardrails for LLMs.
Nobody who works with LLM generated code believes that LLMs produce fault-free code.
Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
Imagine if AI cures cancer.
You can imagine all you want, but my understanding is there is no credible evidence that scaling LLMs will result in true AGI.
Obviously there's no "evidence". Why would you even think we need AGI? But I'm happy to hear your reasoning if you were one of the few/only? people who imagined that software that could predict the next word could do what it now is doing.
Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market
#65Earlier 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?
It can't, because there is no really good code to train off of.
Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market
#66Earlier 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
And those uses which fall short of the new threshold, e.g. hobbyist SBCs, slowly fall away.
Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market
#67Earlier 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?
Because it can't?
Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market
#68> The price increases bring the 16GB Pi 5 up to $299.99. Meanwhile, a refurbished corporate laptop with 16GB RAM and a 512GB SSD can be yours for $199 [1] I'm sure there will still be people who want the Pi 5 but at these prices, I ain't one of them. [1] https://www.ebay.com/itm/327079631563
Those will dry up soon enough. Corporate laptop refreshes will be drawn out as they try and cost save on the increased price. You also better hope the aliexpress dont figure out a way to get the RAM out of those things because they will start harvesting it for sure if there is money to made.
> Those will dry up soon enough.
We're talking about a pi replacement. The Pi 5 is slower than a 10yo laptop. That's gives us a very vast pool of used laptops.
> You also better hope the aliexpress dont figure out a way to get the RAM
That is a real worry and I can see used machines being gutted because selling DDR3/4/5 sticks is way easier and profitable than the whole machine. Adapters for SODIMM to regular DIMM are readily available and cheap, too.
Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market
#69It'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.
Let's also imagine an alternative reality where some reasonable percentage of the $2.5T in current year AI spending was instead invested in the "general intelligence" researchers we already have for the same purpose. I think it's a pretty reasonable expectation that 1) they'd probably make more progress and 2) that money would help a lot more people in the process (through jobs and economic activity).
Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market
#70what are the barriers to new DRAM supply coming online?
Huge capital outlays and no guarantee the prices stay high.