How long before home computers have 1 TB of RAM?

[JTsyo]

How much memory does a 64bit OS support? 32 bit was limited to about 4GB.

 

[lxskllr]

How much memory does a 64bit OS support? 32 bit was limited to about 4GB.

16 exabytes according to Wikipedia

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

Some of you people have problems with reading comprehension. Did you read where in the OP it says home computers, meaning average Joe/mom and pop?

4GB of RAM has been mainstream on home computers for around three years, and Operating System requirements haven't gone up since Windows Vista, which was launched in 2006. God-awful Windows 8 won't have higher memory requirements than Vista, either. 8GB of RAM will probably be mainstream by the next year, so it would have taken four years to get 4GB out of the mainstream. To me this means RAM requirements have mostly stayed the same, and we won't have anywhere near as big increases as we had in the '90s and 2000-2005.

1TB on home computers? Give it 20 years, if not more.

 

[Chaotic42]

I know it's a server motherboard, but this can have 768GB: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813151265

I don't know how long it will be though. It seems like things are slowing down in the power-desktop arena. I blame mobile devices. If I could go back in time and prevent John J Cell from inventing the cell phone, I would. :ninja:

Edit: Oh, and about this time in 1995, I bought a Packard Bell with 8MB of ram. That's 17 years for a roughly 500-fold increase, assuming most systems ship with 4GB today. My new Ivy Bridge will have 32GB.

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

16 exabytes according to Wikipedia

Yeah, but Windows is the only OS that matters for home computers (and to a much smaller extent, Mac OS X).64-bit Win 7 Home Premium has a limit of 16GB of RAM while 64-bit Pro/Ultimate have a limit of 192GB. I don't know if Win 8 will raise these restrictions.

 

[Merad]

I think it'll probably be longer than 20 years. The only programs for average home use that are likely to significantly go up in memory requirements are probably games. But even there, I'll bet that it's a few more years until PC games start requiring the use of 64 bit exes.

 

[irishScott]

That's where I really see a lot of long term development going. Home users will eventually have a very basic embedded OS with limited hardware. Everything else is going to be hosted and crunched by a datacenter and fed to you. It'll be sold to people as convenient, reliable, and portable. But it's really about content management and control. Dumb terminals 3.0

And here I thought the old terminal-mainframe concept die in the 80s.

Don't get me wrong I can see a terminal model becoming the standard, but there will always be a significant market for PCs/workstations IMO.

 

[FelixDeCat]

Yeah, but Windows is the only OS that matters for home computers (and to a much smaller extent, Mac OS X).64-bit Win 7 Home Premium has a limit of 16GB of RAM while 64-bit Pro/Ultimate have a limit of 192GB. I don't know if Win 8 will raise these restrictions.

 

[FelixDeCat]

I know it's a server motherboard, but this can have 768GB: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813151265

I don't know how long it will be though. It seems like things are slowing down in the power-desktop arena. I blame mobile devices. If I could go back in time and prevent John J Cell from inventing the cell phone, I would. :ninja:

Edit: Oh, and about this time in 1995, I bought a Packard Bell with 8MB of ram. That's 17 years for a roughly 500-fold increase, assuming most systems ship with 4GB today. My new Ivy Bridge will have 32GB.

Dual socket 2011s, Win7 ultimate, 128GB of ram on the TYAN?

Dual SB e5-2600s in action:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/xeon-e5-2687w-benchmark-review,3149.html

 

[vi edit]

And here I thought the old terminal-mainframe concept die in the 80s.

Don't get me wrong I can see a terminal model becoming the standard, but there will always be a significant market for PCs/workstations IMO.

Citrix and terminal services are alive and well in the enterprise environment. Virtual servers are a rapidly exploding technology. Going to hosted models is the forward trend and removing expensive parts, licensing, and maintenance on individual boxes. Thats where the home space will eventually migrate to as well. You'll have a very small device that will connect and push a desktop & apps to you. It'll be available on any device in your home and any place you go. You'll almost never have to worry about a hard drive failing, doing OS updates, upgrading hardware or staying up to date on antivirus. It'll be taken care of for you.

 

[FelixDeCat]

Oh and as far as mobile is concerned, a laptop is all I need. A gimped tablet with a button OS is not in my future any time soon.

 

[sandorski]

Only when the Cherry 2000 becomes available.

 

[Chaotic42]

Dual socket 2011s, Win7 ultimate, 128GB of ram on the TYAN?

Dual SB e5-2600s in action:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/xeon-e5-2687w-benchmark-review,3149.html

Heh, I know. I used to read the 2cpu forums all of the time. I had dual Celerons, dual Athlon MPs, it was a good time. I'm trying to cut back, but it's tempting.

My university needs a server for the math department with "a lot of memory". I'm giving them my i7 920, and I realized I haven't looked at high-end hardware in a while. That 768GB limit blew my mind. I'll bet you could crank out some POV-Ray scenes on that bad boy.

 

[OutHouse]

One can easily get a home PC up to 32GB of RAM today so if you figure the maximum amount of RAM doubles only every 2 years, we'll be at 1TB in 10 years.

for home users? i dont think that is true.

corporate yes i can agree with you, i just upgraded my VMware servers to 128gb of ram.

 

[OutHouse]

Some of you people have problems with reading comprehension. Did you read where in the OP it says home computers, meaning average Joe/mom and pop?

4GB of RAM has been mainstream on home computers for around three years, and Operating System requirements haven't gone up since Windows Vista, which was launched in 2006. God-awful Windows 8 won't have higher memory requirements than Vista, either. 8GB of RAM will probably be mainstream by the next year, so it would have taken four years to get 4GB out of the mainstream. To me this means RAM requirements have mostly stayed the same, and we won't have anywhere near as big increases as we had in the '90s and 2000-2005.

1TB on home computers? Give it 20 years, if not more.

+1

 

[Jaepheth]

I don't think current architecture will survive to see 1TB RAM in home computers.

I believe that a non-volatile solid state memory will emerge to replace both the RAM and the HDD and the two won't be separate anymore. I'd say that right now the memristor based memory in development at HP is the most likely candidate.

 

[SaDiZTiKStyLeZ]

The OS has to support it first.
Seems like biggest thing holding back larger RAM amounts during XP days was the max it was created to run on. That XP 4GB boundary was taking a beating long before Vista/7 became more widespread.

And Mac OS had a significantly higher max amount many years before.

 

[irishScott]

Citrix and terminal services are alive and well in the enterprise environment. Virtual servers are a rapidly exploding technology. Going to hosted models is the forward trend and removing expensive parts, licensing, and maintenance on individual boxes. Thats where the home space will eventually migrate to as well. You'll have a very small device that will connect and push a desktop & apps to you. It'll be available on any device in your home and any place you go. You'll almost never have to worry about a hard drive failing, doing OS updates, upgrading hardware or staying up to date on antivirus. It'll be taken care of for you.

No, you'll just need massive, constant bandwidth reliable enough for critical applications. Here at UD the internet goes down once every few weeks, often for hours on end. It's massive enough to run a variety of large applications, but if students/faculty were depending on it for things like MS Word all work would periodically grind to a very abrupt halt, big research as well as school assignments.

I can guarantee a hard drive, and for that matter the SSDs slowly replacing them, will be much more reliable than any internet connection for some time to come. We'll definitely see terminal-ification, but it will largely be an extension of what we're already seeing (ultrabooks, tablets and whatnot). Even with a concerted effort, it would take decades for the massive bandwidth required for universal terminalism to be available nation-wide, and that's assuming the economy doesn't go to complete shit in the meantime.

 

[Krazy4Real]

I predict it will be about 10 years. Probably a little longer though.

 

[mmntech]

That's where I really see a lot of long term development going. Home users will eventually have a very basic embedded OS with limited hardware. Everything else is going to be hosted and crunched by a datacenter and fed to you. It'll be sold to people as convenient, reliable, and portable. But it's really about content management and control. Dumb terminals 3.0

We already have that in the form of Chrome OS. Apple and Microsoft haven't moved to web based apps yet though it's coming. The Mac App Store was the watershed moment and both Lion and Mountain Lion bare a strong resemblance to iOS. I can see Apple moving to a walled garden OS for its desktop and laptop products, if not just porting iOS directly. Same goes for Windows and certain Linux distros such as Ubuntu and gOS.

Cloud computing is possible today. The technology and software exists. The biggest thing holding it back is online infrastructure. Broadband still doesn't have the capacity or low cost of making it worth while. But imagine if someone like Apple decides they want to spend their crap ton of money buying AT&T. They now control the hardware, content, and distribution. Mind blowing. I'm not convinced this is a good thing but it will certainly revolutionize computing, for better or worse.

 

[Saint Nick]

Where we're going, we don't need roads...err, RAM.

 

[God Mode]

When software development becomes so commoditized and cheap that we don't cater to the majority masses with ancient pc/hardware anymore.

 

[Atomic Playboy]

Making predictions about the future is always a sticky wicket. I remember building computers in the late 90s and 256 GB RAM cost $200; I just bought 16 GB DDR3 for less than $100. If you had told me 15 years ago that RAM would run several times faster but manage to cost 128 times less per MB in my lifetime, I would have assumed you were insane. Given the advances in traditional RAM as well as flash memory and SSDs, I have to believe that computers will hit 1 TB of memory at some point in our lifetime. But it won't be anytime soon.

 

[sandorski]

Making predictions about the future is always a sticky wicket. I remember building computers in the late 90s and 256 GB RAM cost $200; I just bought 16 GB DDR3 for less than $100. If you had told me 15 years ago that RAM would run several times faster but manage to cost 128 times less per MB in my lifetime, I would have assumed you were insane. Given the advances in traditional RAM as well as flash memory and SSDs, I have to believe that computers will hit 1 TB of memory at some point in our lifetime. But it won't be anytime soon.

2 years ago when I built my current system I paid $115 for 4gb(lowest price at the time). I'm tempted to plonk down $50 for 8gb.

 

[mb]

I can see it now.. people will still bitch about firefox using 400MB of RAM even when their system has 1TB.