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Think the Pine guys are doing what the Raspberry peeps should have done long ago: releasing products with 3-4GB of RAM. This way consumer facing devices are not

Think the Pine guys are doing what the Raspberry peeps should have done long ago: releasing products with 3-4GB of RAM. This way consumer facing devices are not constantly disk trashing for swap disk when browsing the web.

StreamBright 8y ago
We need 8-16G options for smoother experience once you start up desktop applications.
alias_neo 8y ago
RAM is, relatively speaking, one of the most expensive components of an SBC. Raspberry Pi _could_ have offered 4GB+ of it, and they could also have quadrupled the price. As much as I'd love a Pi with 4GB+ of RAM, is quite obvious why the $35 computer doesn't have it.
- patrickg_zill 8y ago
  16GB of RAM is $89 retail at the local Microcenter, in 2x8gb sticks. Not seeing how adding a bit more RAM would quadruple the price. Pine sells a 4gb RAM sbc for what, $59? Edit : "Pricing will remain the same with the 1GB model priced at $24.95, the 2GB model at $34.95, and the 4GB model at $44.95." QED.
- wolfgke 8y ago
  > Raspberry Pi _could_ have offered 4GB+ of it, and they could also have quadrupled the price. Raspberry Pi's SoC does not support more RAM than the 1 GiB that it now has. This is as far as I am aware considered a serious problem by the Raspberry Pi Foundation. I don't know by what they thus plan to replace the SoC in the future.
  - alias_neo 8y ago
    This is what I was alluding to. There was an interview recently with Eben, where he explained that the SoC needs an upgrade to give them more (faster) peripherals and the ability to add more RAM. I can't find the source at the moment. As I understand it the SoC in the Pi was some older IP that was licensed to them (RPF/Eben) for free (or close to) by Broadcom. The RPF will have to sink so significant cost into a new SoC (and I choose to believe that this is already happening, as we speak).
- imtringued 8y ago
  >As much as I'd love a Pi with 4GB+ of RAM, is quite obvious why the $35 computer doesn't have it. The reason is because it can't. Almost all SBCs are based on TV boxes (including the Rasberry Pi) which don't need more than 4 GB of RAM and are designed to only support that much.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
0815test 8y ago
IME, 1GB can be enough to browse modern websites without swapping, and 2GB allows you to do so while keeping lots of tabs open. Of course having more RAM than that is always nice, but even these "low RAM" specs are far from useless.
pjmlp 8y ago
Except that isn't the target market for the PI, there are other SoCs for that.
detaro 8y ago
Not everything needs to be a desktop system.
jsight 8y ago
That's the thing, everyone has different things that they want. Some want higher bus speeds but consider the current CPU speeds and RAM to be sufficient. Others need more CPU, but don't need the RAM. Still others would like to have more RAM, but don't necessarily need dramatically faster processors. I don't see how the Pi Foundation can cater to all of them. Although, I do expect the Pi 4 next year to address at least some of them. In the mean time, there are great devices, like the RockPro64.

StreamBright 8y ago

We need 8-16G options for smoother experience once you start up desktop applications.

alias_neo 8y ago

RAM is, relatively speaking, one of the most expensive components of an SBC. Raspberry Pi _could_ have offered 4GB+ of it, and they could also have quadrupled the price. As much as I'd love a Pi with 4GB+ of RAM, is quite obvious why the $35 computer doesn't have it.

patrickg_zill 8y ago
16GB of RAM is $89 retail at the local Microcenter, in 2x8gb sticks. Not seeing how adding a bit more RAM would quadruple the price. Pine sells a 4gb RAM sbc for what, $59? Edit : "Pricing will remain the same with the 1GB model priced at $24.95, the 2GB model at $34.95, and the 4GB model at $44.95." QED.
wolfgke 8y ago
> Raspberry Pi _could_ have offered 4GB+ of it, and they could also have quadrupled the price. Raspberry Pi's SoC does not support more RAM than the 1 GiB that it now has. This is as far as I am aware considered a serious problem by the Raspberry Pi Foundation. I don't know by what they thus plan to replace the SoC in the future.
- alias_neo 8y ago
  This is what I was alluding to. There was an interview recently with Eben, where he explained that the SoC needs an upgrade to give them more (faster) peripherals and the ability to add more RAM. I can't find the source at the moment. As I understand it the SoC in the Pi was some older IP that was licensed to them (RPF/Eben) for free (or close to) by Broadcom. The RPF will have to sink so significant cost into a new SoC (and I choose to believe that this is already happening, as we speak).
imtringued 8y ago
>As much as I'd love a Pi with 4GB+ of RAM, is quite obvious why the $35 computer doesn't have it. The reason is because it can't. Almost all SBCs are based on TV boxes (including the Rasberry Pi) which don't need more than 4 GB of RAM and are designed to only support that much.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

0815test 8y ago

IME, 1GB can be enough to browse modern websites without swapping, and 2GB allows you to do so while keeping lots of tabs open. Of course having more RAM than that is always nice, but even these "low RAM" specs are far from useless.

pjmlp 8y ago

Except that isn't the target market for the PI, there are other SoCs for that.

detaro 8y ago

Not everything needs to be a desktop system.

jsight 8y ago

That's the thing, everyone has different things that they want. Some want higher bus speeds but consider the current CPU speeds and RAM to be sufficient. Others need more CPU, but don't need the RAM. Still others would like to have more RAM, but don't necessarily need dramatically faster processors. I don't see how the Pi Foundation can cater to all of them. Although, I do expect the Pi 4 next year to address at least some of them. In the mean time, there are great devices, like the RockPro64.