GDDR5 RAM vs On-Package Cache RAM to improve IGP performance?

[StrangerGuy]

So what is the general consensus on the BOM for the PS4? Reading the latest posts some say it can be sold with a profit even at $350-$400, and some say it will have to be subsidized at that price. But is the general opinion that the cost of the hardware will at least not be too far away from the expected $350-$450 sales price?

The reason I wonder is that if they can put 8 GB GDDR5 RAM in the PS4 it at that price point, is there any reason not to assume it could also make sense to do so in a $600-800 Kaveri laptop or AIO PC?

Even the 8GB GDDR5 it is not likely to be as expensive as we think. The desktop market is dying, the discrete card market is dying on top of that, couldn't be a better time for Sony to soak up excess GDDR5 supply.

 

[Cerb]

Even the 8GB GDDR5 it is not likely to be as expensive as we think. The desktop market is dying, the discrete card market is dying on top of that, couldn't be a better time for Sony to soak up excess GDDR5 supply.

No, those markets are not dying. They are shrinking, and not all that fast. It looks really bad for startups and some quarterly-earnings-beholden public tech companies, but the reality hasn't been anything like, "dying," yet. Cheap memory technology has not yet reached a point at which it can reasonably happen, nor has battery technology. Also, they love to separate AIOs from desktops in sales numbers, even though that's what consumers are buying them as.

Those market deaths are what they wish would happen, so that they could have excuses to get out of them, because the COTS (usually TAX) desktop is a better market for us consumers, now, than most hardware vendors. Your notebook or tablet you must replace. Your computer with PCI or PCI-e slots you can often upgrade, cheaper. Meanwhile, even the big boys have trouble making profits on their thin margins. But, they can't get out of that market (Hell, remember all the fuss when Dell and HP were making ATX-like proprietary mobos and PSUs?), as it would cause some loss of faith, and that the mobile markets are still largely auxiliary device markets (IE, person X may spend 80% of their time on their notebook or iPad, but would find it much less useful without the stationary computer to provide extra features, storage space, content management, etc.).

Memory maker collusion (100% legal collusion, this time, of course...) will affect the prices more and faster, in either direction, than the slow computer market changes going on.

 

[Ajay]

No, those markets are not dying. They are shrinking, and not all that fast. It looks really bad for startups and some quarterly-earnings-beholden public tech companies, but the reality hasn't been anything like, "dying," yet. Cheap memory technology has not yet reached a point at which it can reasonably happen, nor has battery technology. Also, they love to separate AIOs from desktops in sales numbers, even though that's what consumers are buying them as.

Is the discrete GFX actually shrinking in units ships, or only in relative % sales compared to the past?

 

[Cerb]

Is the discrete GFX actually shrinking in units ships, or only in relative % sales compared to the past?

I'm pretty sure they have...yup, at least for last year:
http://www.legitreviews.com/news/13975/
That one table is all I have yet seen, for the numbers. And yes, I did a double-take, seeing that S3 discrete GPUs are still being sold.

OTOH, here I am in a tech forum, waiting over 5 years to upgrade my CPU, and buying used notebooks and smart phones :awe: (I'm not paying new prices for computers I'm likely to drop and break*). For me, some of these markets are great, due to so many people being willing to pay top dollar, then throw the crap away (figuratively speaking), while it still has plenty of life in it.

* That said, my Thinkpad R60 dented my floor, and sounded like a tree hitting the house, without any ill effects to it but slightly bent hinges (which were already bent a little, anyway), when it landed on its side, while open (which usually results in a ruined display, if not worse).

 

[Tuna-Fish]

GDDR5 runs at GHz speeds, does it not (I'm pretty sure Geforces are coming with it at 1.5GHz)?

No. Don't confuse the frequency of the clock signal with the frequency of the DRAM array. When you do a single access to a 32-bit 1.5Ghz (6GHz effective) GDDR5 chip, internally it turns to a 256-bit access that is done over 2 CK clocks, so internally, the ram runs at 750MHz.

...

Except that high-speed GDDR5 must limit read access to the same bank group into once per 4 CK clocks. So, the way that 750MHz is reached is by having 4 375MHz arrays, and telling the memory controller it always has to interleave accesses across them.

...

Except that even that is not really the DRAM array speed. To read from DRAM, you need to first activate a row. When you do so, 2048 bits in the DRAM array get sensed, amplified, and written into SRAM. Only once that has finished, you can issue read or write commands, which then operate on the row in SRAM. The real speed of the DRAM array in that GDDR5 with a data rate of 6Gbps is something like 40MHz.

Which is roughly what DRAM array speeds were way back before DDR. DRAM does not gain speed from shrinks, because every time you shrink, the capacitor that holds the charge becomes smaller and harder and slower to sense. They only hold a few dozen electrons anymore. However, for throughput this doesn't matter all that much, because a storage device with a million bits in it has a million opportunities for parallelism. Unfortunately, latency stays the same.

 

[Cerb]

I knew the basic addressing issues, but not the other internals. Doing a little more looking on the subject...wow, they're really making the most of those clocks!

 

[ThePeasant]

The real speed of the DRAM array in that GDDR5 with a data rate of 6Gbps is something like 40MHz.

The internal frequency of the DRAM array in the fastest GDDR5 chips is a little over 200 MHz

 

[ShintaiDK]

Even the 8GB GDDR5 it is not likely to be as expensive as we think. The desktop market is dying, the discrete card market is dying on top of that, couldn't be a better time for Sony to soak up excess GDDR5 supply.

Just like the price of DDR3 in a shrinking market?...oh wait..

 

[Fjodor2001]

Just like the price of DDR3 in a shrinking market?...oh wait..

In your graph the y-axis is cut off. Also, what's the source of the graph by the way? And what's the unit on the y-axis?

Here's another graph from EETimes:

http://www.eetimes.com/design/memory-design/4215214/Strategy-can-maximize-profit-in-DRAM

 

[ShintaiDK]

http://www.dramexchange.com/ like the watermark shows.

 

[Idontcare]

In your graph the y-axis is cut off. Also, what's the source of the graph by the way? And what's the unit on the y-axis?

Here's another graph from EETimes:

http://www.eetimes.com/design/memory-design/4215214/Strategy-can-maximize-profit-in-DRAM

Your graph is missing all of 2011 and 2012.

DDR3 prices have nearly doubled in the past 5 months.

 

[antihelten]

Just like the price of DDR3 in a shrinking market?...oh wait..

The DXI (the graph you posted), is a graph of the total volume of DDR, DDR2 and DDR3 sold multiplied by their spot price, so while it is correlated with the price of DDR3 it doesn't directly depict it, and a rising graph (as seen) doesn't necessarily indicate rising DDR3 prices

http://www.dramexchange.com/service/faqs.aspx#b2

Also large volume costumers (like Sony), are most likely paying less than the spot price

 

[ShintaiDK]

But memory ahve increased dramaticly in price. When you buy DIMMs as a regular consumer.

 

[Olikan]

:hmm:

DRAM market have "improved" since Elpida stoped producing

 

[antihelten]

But memory ahve increased dramaticly in price. When you buy DIMMs as a regular consumer.

And the rise seen on the graph is probably depicting this, my point is simply that the graph consists of multiple factors and as such one should be careful with drawing to many conclusions based on it

 

[StrangerGuy]

But memory ahve increased dramaticly in price. When you buy DIMMs as a regular consumer.

Yeah, rising DDR3 prices = rising demand. Geez, some people just don't know how to think.

How much are the prices of DDR2 now compared to 2006-7 again? DDR2 MUST BE REALLY POPULAR AMIRITE

 

[Arachnotronic]

Yeah, rising DDR3 prices = rising demand. Geez, some people just don't know how to think.

How much are the prices of DDR2 now compared to 2006-7 again? DDR2 MUST BE REALLY POPULAR AMIRITE

Is being extremely sarcastic and full of yourself your MO, StrangerGuy? You seem to have a tendency to want to piss in everyone's Cheerios...

 

[Idontcare]

But memory ahve increased dramaticly in price. When you buy DIMMs as a regular consumer.

Memory prices have gone up a lot, it shocked me.

On Dec 10 2012, I bought this exact same 4x8GB DDR3-1866 memory kit $109.90. Today Newegg is selling it for $234.99!

That is more than 2X increase in 5 months.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Memory prices have gone up a lot, it shocked me.

On Dec 10 2012, I bought this exact same 4x8GB DDR3-1866 memory kit $109.90. Today Newegg is selling it for $234.99!

That is more than 2X increase in 5 months.

Capacity was reduced and a memory maker went belly up. I had not seen it coming with a 100% price increase.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Yeah, rising DDR3 prices = rising demand. Geez, some people just don't know how to think.

How much are the prices of DDR2 now compared to 2006-7 again? DDR2 MUST BE REALLY POPULAR AMIRITE

It was the supply that got lower. Not demand rising.

 

[sm625]

And maybe they are seeing something looking ahead, like GDDR5 prices falling. Just look at what has happened to the DDR3 prices. Not that long ago it was quite expensive, but now it's insanely cheap.

4 years ago I bought 4 GB of DDR3 from newegg and paid less than I would today. Four years ago!

 

[Idontcare]

Capacity was reduced and a memory maker went belly up. I had not seen it coming with a 100% price increase.

Yep, Elpida. Same thing happened with graphics memory, Qimonda went belly up and the competition benefited through higher prices as supply shrank.

 

[Ajay]

Well, I know that DRAM prices where too low and that somebody would have to tank so that the industry could make reasonable profits. I imagine that many makers had cut production in order to try and push prices high; that would explain why prices would rise so fast after Elpida shut down. Once would expect that prices would stabilize at a lower price going forward (if the demand is still there). Qimonda is particularly bad since, IIRC, only they and Samsung produce GDDR3/5 - Samsung Memory Execs must be grinning from ear to ear.

 

[Ajay]

I'm pretty sure they have...yup, at least for last year:
http://www.legitreviews.com/news/13975/
That one table is all I have yet seen, for the numbers. And yes, I did a double-take, seeing that S3 discrete GPUs are still being sold.

OTOH, here I am in a tech forum, waiting over 5 years to upgrade my CPU, and buying used notebooks and smart phones :awe: (I'm not paying new prices for computers I'm likely to drop and break*). For me, some of these markets are great, due to so many people being willing to pay top dollar, then throw the crap away (figuratively speaking), while it still has plenty of life in it.

* That said, my Thinkpad R60 dented my floor, and sounded like a tree hitting the house, without any ill effects to it but slightly bent hinges (which were already bent a little, anyway), when it landed on its side, while open (which usually results in a ruined display, if not worse).

Thanks for the info Cerb. BTW, where are you getting the cheap Thinkpads (my favorite notebooks from the few years I worked in IT)?

 

[Cerb]

Thanks for the info Cerb. BTW, where are you getting the cheap Thinkpads (my favorite notebooks from the few years I worked in IT)?

eBay. Most "as-is" ones that look good in pics are perfectly fine (usually only known to boot into the BIOS), except for needing a HDD (had a spare), HDD caddy (usually <=$5 shipped), and new battery ($15-30 3rd-party).