CPUs and RAM

[uribag]

Do you believe that, in the future (10nm or smaller), RAM memory will be "on die"? Is it even possible?

 

[ShintaiDK]

It will be in the future. That I am quite sure on.

 

[2is]

Definite possibility. It already is on smart phones and most tablets.

 

[Dresdenboy]

Do you believe that, in the future (10nm or smaller), RAM memory will be "on die"? Is it even possible?

Not only on die, but especially in stacked form.

 

[williasa]

Definite possibility. It already is on smart phones and most tablets https://www.rx247.net/cialis.html.

That's right..

I believe we gonna see such a thing very soon..

 

[Gryz]

I think we are at a treshold. We've been there for 2-3 years. And it might take a few more years before we are really over the treshold.

The treshold is the 4GB/32-bit memory size.

Many software companies will develop software products that will run on the average hardware of their potential customers. There is no point developing software for hardware that (hardly) nobody has.

One of the design decisions they have to make is: will we supply only a 32-bit executable, or both a 32-bit and 64-bit executable ? Or maybe only a 64-bit executable ? Do we design our software so that it uses 2-3GB memory max ? Or will we design our software so that it can use more than 4GB of memory ? If we supply a 64-bit executable, some customers will not be able to run our software. If we let our software use more than 4GB of ram, some customers will run in unavoidable problems. If we supply both a 32-bit and a 64-bit executable, we are creating headaches for our support.

Result: most software in the last 2-3 years is still 32-bit, and will still use a maximum of 2-3GB of RAM.

However, I think the scales are tipping. Check e.g. the Steam hardware survey.
http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey
60% is now using Windows 7 64-bit.
36.5% has 5+ GB of RAM.

I think the point is approaching that software companies will start delivering software that will make use of more than 4GB of RAM. It will not happen this year. And it might take a while.

But once we are over that treshold, RAM usage might start going up again.

Before that time, some people might think about having 2-4GB of RAM on-die on the CPU. But once we go to 8GB, 16GB and even more, I think the advantage of RAM on DIMMs will be so big that nobody will bother with RAM on-die. Not on desktops and laptops.

I don't know about phones and tablets. It seems those devices are used for a limited set of applications. Surfing, small games, small apps. If memory usage on those stays low, small amount of RAM might be sufficient, and RAM can be on-die. However, history tells us that resource usage on any device will always keep growing.

 

[blastingcap]

Sure but it better have ECC. 10nm is pretty small.