What is Digg?38 Comments
- tempusrob, on 10/12/2007, -1/+19"My computer is just over 2 yrs old and works just fine, but now that Vista is out, I have to go buy a new one. "
... If it works just fine, then you don't really need Vista or a new computer now, do you? - mklopez, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11Direct link:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070214/ap_on_hi_te/ibm_chip_memory - tempusrob, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7@evoguy: "With Vista superfetch"
Superfetch or no, how do you think said data gets into RAM?
Processor clock cycles are measured in nanoseconds ... hard disk seek time *alone* is measured in milliseconds. Orders of magnitude different. HDD access is the system I/O bottleneck almost 100% of the time, and no amount of RAM will change that. It will lessen paging to disk, and that's always a good thing, but any disk access is expensive compared to the most other system actions.
@mcduckov: If you want the (somewhat debatable) performance gain of RAID 0, be prepared to accept the fact that possibility of catastrophic failure (and the data loss that goes with it) is effectively doubled! - Illidan, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8Hard drive performance *is* critical. All data eventually has to come off the hard drive, and this is especially important when loading game maps or textures in video games; that four gigabytes of data that comes with your new game?
It doesn't automatically jump from HD to RAM. - diggfinity, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Judging by what it does, they should've called it CRAM.
- randomgeek, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Is it just me or are the snarky articles on Engadget getting worse and worse? I can't even make sense of this last one. "IBM's neo-maxi-zoom-dweebies" wtf? Can't we just link to actual stories instead of the stupid editorials of other websites?
- NanoStuff, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7I'm with chowell18 on this one. Let's halt the progress of technology so we don't have to buy new things.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Are you joking?
Do you even know the difference between DRAM and SRAM? - Vouksh, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5That's why I paid the extra money after my old HDD crashed and opted for the 3 GB/s Seagate. I'll never go back.
- greatblackowl, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7Some of this RAM will go nicely with an 80 core Intel processor.
- mitrovarr, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I'm not sure this is going to benefit processors that much, in terms of speed. The new eDRAM is "nearly" as fast as SRAM, so it's slower to some small degree. The smaller size means that you can put more on a processor die, but I'm not sure that's going to help - processor cache size suffers from diminishing returns at some point (the doubled cache between the core 2 duo E6400 and E6600 is supposed to increase performance less than 5%.) DRAM also eats more power than SRAM, and coupled with the extremely high refresh rates it'll experience inside a processor, this could mean increased power dissipation and greater heat output. More heat could lead to lower clocking of the processor as a whole.
On the other hand, if they can use this technology on DRAM modules, that'd be great - but there's a significant difference between manufacturing a couple of megabytes on a CPU die and several hundred for a memory module. Hopefully this stuff will be as easy to manufacture as standard DRAM. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3@vouksh
Too bad your motherboard will never handle 3Gb/second... Oh, and it's not rated in GigaBytes, it's measured in GigaBITS - mitrovarr, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Unless you absolutely scraped the bottom of the barrel when buying your computer two years ago, it should be able to run vista to some degree. It's probably only an additional 512 mb of ram and a half-decent video card away from doing it well.
- mitrovarr, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Well, the sources I checked (wikipedia as well as some other sites) said that SRAM was lower power because the DRAM refresh cycle uses a lot of energy. They weren't exactly formal sources, so I suppose they could be wrong (and eDRAM could be different.)
- BadgerOU, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1from http://www.physorg.com/news90661936.html (a more informative article, in my opinion)
"IBM’s new eDRAM technology, ... , dramatically improves on-processor memory performance in about one-third the space with one-fifth the standby power of conventional SRAM"
Not only that, but eDRAM is designed for on-chip memories, like caches (and others), not to replace the main memory DRAM (also taken from the above article) - BadgerOU, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@mitrovarr
While I agree with your points about SRAM caches vs the new eDRAM, it seems like IBM is suggesting having the eDRAM replace (at least partially) the separate DRAM chips in the system. Meaning that they're moving towards a system-on-a-chip having no (or little) external memory. This machine would be BLAZINGLY fast compared to a system with a separate memory system. Of course, the problem here is if there's enough room to fit enough memory onto the chip -- and how do we deal with an end user who would want more memory? Do we treat the external memory as a disk cache? Or do we treat the on-chip eDRAM as a large level 3 cache?
Hmmm ... maybe I found a new research topic to explore (new for me at least) - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@Tempus
I think what I really want is some innovation on the HDD array front so that perhaps it would not double failure risk. I have no idea how it would look but i know that I'm almost never waiting on the processor. Once things are loaded up into RAM everything runs fast, even on older systems (granted I'm not a gamer). When I am waiting it is invariably because the HDD needs to load the data into RAM. - unlimitedorb, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4Sounds kind of like my New Year's resolution...
- Bungler, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4"that scandalous DRAM"
Is this just typical bad Digg writing, or has DRAM been scandalous for some reason that I've missed?
Did Britney have some in her thong? - HappyScrappy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I always thought it was neo-maxi-zoon-dweebie.
- sanman, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Cool that the DRAM is much faster, but I hope they'll keep improving it until it's even faster than SRAM.
- jktstance, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Conventional DRAM is very leaky (requires a lot of power, even when not switching), compared to SRAM. It also needs to be refreshed very often, drawing even more power. I guess that's what the "scandalous" adjective is referring to.
- ArcticCelt, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Yeah ok, but are they "perpendiculaaa"?
http://youtube.com/watch?v=JAePp4fPC1g - Urusai, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I rather thought SRAM was the power hog, since it has transistors powered continuously vs. DRAM with a cap that is refreshed once in awhile. At least that was the case back in the discrete DIP component days.
- Flummoxer, on 10/12/2007, -4/+3iPhone?
- teclo, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1God damn it. When you post a story to digg, dont just cut and paste from the article without adding anything yourself.
Out of the 105 words in the engadget post you used 56, or 58% of the original entry without anything added.
I don't know where I am going with this but I know I'm just pissed off. - euphemizeme, on 10/12/2007, -5/+3put this into a metric I can understand... like how much faster will porn get onto my computer
- Dan11023, on 10/12/2007, -3/+0yeah, thats called moore's law
- ButterBuddha, on 10/12/2007, -6/+2I thought the 1990's cliche of adding a lower case "e" or an "i" in front of an IT product name was over....
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -11/+7Why don't computer manufacturers spend some time making systems with dual hard-drive configurations. When I'm waiting for a computer, 9 times out of 10, it is because I'm waiting for data to load off the HDD.
- FoolyCoolyGuy, on 10/12/2007, -7/+2the breakfast club rocks hard
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -5/+0Yeah, let's halt production on everything. No new games. No more new gadgets to make your life more fun, easier, or to annoy your friends with. Let's stick with the amazing world where we still use a keyboard and mouse (and "FAIR" voice recognition technology) to control our computers. Let's never get to a point where we can control the computer and video games with our eyes and minds, without spending a gazillion dollars on all of the top-dollar equipment you need in order to use what we currently have, which isn't perfect. Yeah. Let's stay right here.
Moron.
If you don't want to buy a new computer, don't. If you want to upgrade to Vista, you should be able to with your existing hardware if you throw some more RAM at it. My 5 year old system runs it beautifully. So don't bitch and whine about how technology is changing all the time: THAT IS LIFE. ALWAYS HAS BEEN, ALWAYS WILL BE. - JamesWilson, on 10/12/2007, -6/+1At HP, memory triples eDRAM.
- chowell18, on 10/12/2007, -11/+0Can we get past a point where the computer manufacturers keep making changes to parts & compatibility so that we all have to buy new computers every 2 yrs? Seriously... My computer is just over 2 yrs old and works just fine, but now that Vista is out, I have to go buy a new one.
Yes, it's a business... but do something responsible & respectable. Don't continue to add outdated PCs to the world's trash heaps. - Evoguy, on 10/12/2007, -14/+1Then you don't have enough ram... with 2gigs it's rare that I ever hear my HDD spin up nowdays. With Vista superfetch coming, hdd read/write throughput will be even less of a problem, and faster ram will be the shiz.
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