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0 pointssegfaultbuserr6y ago0 comments

> An Arduino UNO comes with 2 kB of RAM installed and retails for about 20$.

This is not an accurate calculation, first, the main cost of an Arduino is its PCB and the supporting electronics, plus some profit margins to cover the overhead for the manufacturer.

Also, the RAM is not "installed", the actual device where the 2 KiB RAM resides in, is etched on the same silicon chip of the Atmega328p microcontroller. A 328p only costs $2 each, and close to $1.5 in huge quantity [0]. Since it's pretty much a standalone device, needs nothing (not even an external crystal) but power, some wirings and two decoupling capacitors to operate in a minimum system (and yes, even this configuration can run standard Arduino code). Let use a conservative number, $3, it would "only" cost you about 2.4 billion dollars.

Furthermore, Atmega328p is marketed at a "mid-end" 8-bit microcontroller offered by Atmel, mainly for its GPIOs. If you use an ATTiny1614, which is basically the same hardware with much fewer GPIO pins, it would only cost $0.7 for each, let's use $1 as a conservative number, then it would only cost you 0.8 billion dollars for 1.5 TiB of RAM, which should already be considered a very impressive number, since you couldn't even get a NAND gate, or even a MOSFET in the late 1970s for less than one buck. If adjusted for inflation, today's price would be as low as ~$0.17 per 1024 bytes.

And then you consider the fact that it's not only a RAM, but in fact a computer... Isn't it a miracle of Moore's Law?

[0] https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Microchip-Technology-At...

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3 comments · 2 top-level

turbo_fart_box6y ago· 1 in thread

It's a joke.

std_throwaway6y ago

I thought the topic was unreasonable comparisons. I was wrong; it was nostalgia.

I should have compared with magnet core memory used in the Apollo program as an example. My gut tells me that we don't have enough rocket fuel to install that kind of memory in space.

std_throwaway6y ago

The memory sticks we're talking about here also come on a PCB, so we should not exclude that cost. What use would loose chips be if they are not soldered onto a PCB? You could argue that there could be a supplier that produces working memory sticks for a cheaper price. I'm not contending that. These products, however, are unfamiliar to most people and Arduino UNO is a brand name that many people recognize. There are many cheap knockoffs of that product that may or may not be compatible. I would prefer to stay with respected manufacturers in this case.

It is true that those micro controllers are bundled with the memory. In other words, the memory also has computing power installed. A capability that some modern memory chips also include. You may argue that we should compare with those memory chips, however, in the case of micro controllers we cannot separate the memory from the computing unit and we need the computing unit for communication. Is the comparison thus unfair? Maybe.

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3 comments · 2 top-level

turbo_fart_box6y ago· 1 in thread

It's a joke.

std_throwaway6y ago

I thought the topic was unreasonable comparisons. I was wrong; it was nostalgia.

I should have compared with magnet core memory used in the Apollo program as an example. My gut tells me that we don't have enough rocket fuel to install that kind of memory in space.

std_throwaway6y ago

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