This was news I wasn’t expecting over my Friday morning coffee. Legendary computer memory manufacturer Crucial is exiting the consumer electronics business. Parent company Micron issued this press release.

“The AI-driven growth in the data center has led to a surge in demand for memory and storage. Micron has made the difficult decision to exit the Crucial consumer business in order to improve supply and support for our larger, strategic customers in faster-growing segments,” said Sumit Sadana, EVP and Chief Business Officer.

The news has been met with a mix of sadness and frustration among everyone from desktop hobbyists with a game machine, to sysadmins with fleets of servers, to people like me with feet in both camps. Likewise, the scale of the reaction has also taken people by surprise, with some on social media expressing confusion. Why would nerds be so passionate about a memory manufacturer, of all things?

Let me tell you why.

Et tu, Micron?

I default(ed) to Crucial for memory for two reasons. First, their DIMMs and SSDs are simply better than any else I’ve used. Anecdotes aren’t data, but their hardware has been bulletproof since I started building my own computers in 1998. I’ve had to replace other brands in (and out of) warranty, but not Crucial. The FreeBSD machine upon which I’m typing this has Crucial DIMMs, as does my Homelab sever that will receive backups of this post.

Crucial really made a name for themselves in the late 1990s. My parents used to buy me copies of PC Magazine and PC World when I was a kid, and it was impossible to open an issue without an ad for their memory. During the peak of the Megahertz Wars, Crucial was there to remind us that clockspeed wasn’t everything when it came to performance. They were right.

But it was their indirect advertising that made me a lifelong customer. For as long as I could remember, Crucial had a brilliant tool on their website that would let you select your hardware manufacturer and build, and it would return the memory it supported, and how many DIMMs you could install, and in what configuration. They must have had someone on staff who’s only job was to maintain that exhaustive database; I don’t think I ever threw hardware at it that they didn’t have. It helped me so many times that I rewarded them with my business as soon as I was old enough to buy parts myself.

For the network admins among you, Crucial’s site was the HE Looking Glass but for memory. It was MyAnimeList, or MyFigureCollection, but for the stuff that would help your machine retain the anime in the first place.

(Remember when sites used to be useful? When you could find something with a few clicks without needing to login, or wade through jiggabytes of JavaScript, user-hostile dark patterns, and slop? What is it my American friends say, Pepperidge Farm remembers? Not without RAM they don’t)!

This timeline needs ECC

This is why so many of us have had such a visceral reaction to Micron’s news. Crucial has been a trusted part of our personal and professional lives for decades, and now its being shuttered to feed the insatiable appetite for slot machines (that typo was supposed to be “slop” machines, but I’m keeping it in). The fact there’s no ethical use for large-scale gen-“AI” only adds insult to injury. Imagine what that memory could do if put into something sustainable, productive, or dare I say, fun.

It’s an ignominious, short-sighted end to something special.

When the bottom falls out of this latest electronic tulip misadventure, they’ll wish they had their loyal customer base to fall back on. One they spent thirty years carefully building with great hardware and useful tools, and have now snuffed out at the stroke of a pen. But if I may tug at my non-existent suspenders for a moment, I guess I’m not a fancy, big-city business executive.