> The gap between “over 1GB of RAM” and 8MB RSS contains the vast majority of embedded Linux devices.
Of all currently existing Linux devices running around the world right this moment? Maybe.
But of new devices? Absolutely not, and that's what I'm talking about.
> The majority of cost constrained products don’t allow that, though.
They increasingly do allow for it, is the point I'm trying to make.
And when they don't: there are far better non-Linux open source options now than there used to be, which are by design better suited to running in constrained environments than a full blown Linux userland ever can be.
> It increases boot times (mentioned in the article) which is a pretty big deal on certain consumer products that aren’t always powered on. The article makes some good points that you’ve waved away because you’ve been working on a different category of devices.
I've absolutely worked on that category of devices, I almost never run Linux on them because there's usually an easier and better way. Especially where half a second of boot time is important.
> But of new devices? Absolutely not, and that's what I'm talking about.
The trouble with "new" is that it keeps getting old.
There would have been a time when people would have said that 32MB is a crazy high amount of memory -- enough to run Windows NT with an entire GUI! But as the saying goes, "what Andy giveth, Bill taketh away". Only these days the role of Windows is being played by systemd.
By the time the >1GB systems make it into the low end of the embedded market, the systemd requirements will presumably have increased even more.
> there are far better non-Linux open source options now than there used to be, which are by design better suited to running in constrained environments than a full blown Linux userland ever can be.
This seems like assuming the conclusion. The thing people are complaining about is that they want Linux to be good in those environments too.
That's entirely the point. In the days of user devices with 32MB of RAM, embedded devices were expected to make do with 32KB. Now we have desktops with 32GB and the embedded devices have to make do with 32MB. But you don't get to use GB of RAM now just because embedded devices might have that in some years time, and unless something is done to address it, the increase in hardware over time doesn't get you within the budget either because the software bloat increases just as fast.
We've been stuck at ~$10/GB for a decade. There are plenty of devices for which $10 is a significant fraction of the BOM and they're not going to use a GB of RAM if they can get away with less. And if the hardware price isn't giving you a free ride anymore, not only do you have to stop the software from getting even bigger, if you want it to fit in those devices you actually need it to get smaller.
I recently looked up 2x48GB RAM kits and they are around 300€ and more for the overclockable ones. That is 3€ per GB and this is in the more expensive segment in the market since anyone who isn't overclocking their RAM is fine using four slots.
The end of that chart is in 2020 and in the interim the DRAM makers have been thumped for price fixing again, causing a non-trivial short-term reduction in price. But if this is the "real" price then it has declined from ~$10/GB in 2012 to, let's say, $1/GB now, a factor of 10 in twelve years. By way of comparison, between 1995 and 2005 (ten years, not twelve) it fell by a factor of something like 700.
You can say the free lunch is still there, but it's gone from a buffet to a stick of celery.
> We live in the 2020s now and ram is plenty. The small computers we all carry in our pockets (phones) usually have between 4 and 16g GB ram.
I do not think the monster CPUs running Android or iOS nowadays are representative of embedded CPUs.
RAM still requires power to retain its contents. In devices that sleep most of the time, decreasing the amount of RAM can be the easiest way to increase battery life.
I would also think many of the small computers inside my phone have less memory. For example, there probably is at least one CPU inside the phone module, a CPU doing write leveling running inside flash memory modules, a CPU managing the battery, a CPU in the fingerprint reader, etc.
Of all currently existing Linux devices running around the world right this moment? Maybe.
But of new devices? Absolutely not, and that's what I'm talking about.
> The majority of cost constrained products don’t allow that, though.
They increasingly do allow for it, is the point I'm trying to make.
And when they don't: there are far better non-Linux open source options now than there used to be, which are by design better suited to running in constrained environments than a full blown Linux userland ever can be.
> It increases boot times (mentioned in the article) which is a pretty big deal on certain consumer products that aren’t always powered on. The article makes some good points that you’ve waved away because you’ve been working on a different category of devices.
I've absolutely worked on that category of devices, I almost never run Linux on them because there's usually an easier and better way. Especially where half a second of boot time is important.