Sunday, May 30, 2010

What shocks me about the falling prices of tech

Technology gets better and cheaper over time. The advances in computer speed, memory size, hard drive size, networking speed are revolutionary but to some degree expected. While it is still a bit hard to stomach, 32 core machines and 5TB hard drives will arrive.

But the cutting edge stuff like a mobile phone that can surf the web and run for 3+ hours still costs decent money.

What shocks me is you can get a low-end CPU and low-end M/B (motherboard) for $29 ($39 with $10 rebate at Fry's). These days, a low end M/B come standard with audio, networking and video. It supports SATA and USB. The CPU and the integrated video is better, especially cooler, than the best you could buy in 2002 for any amount of money. It's akin to saying wait 8 years and the phone they give away for $5 will be better and smaller than the top end iPhone or Android phone.

The kicker is the price. At $29 this means the M/B and the CPU collectively cost less than this. I can imagine the CPU costs say $8, after all it is just a piece of silicon and some packaging (yes, I'm greatly oversimplifying). But a M/B is a big (from a tech standpoint) item of lots of items. There are at least 100 parts that need to be assembled. The chipset alone is as complicated as the CPU. At this price level there are no margins. Which means this level of technology is so well understood anybody can do it for peanuts.

Amazing.

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