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from the remember-when-a-hard-disk-held-20MB? dept.
Samsung Unveils 32 GB DDR4-2666 SO-DIMMs
Samsung on Wednesday introduced its first consumer products based on its 16 Gb DDR4 memory chips demonstrated earlier this year. The new SO-DIMMs are aimed at high-performance notebooks that benefit from both speed and capacity of memory modules.
Samsung's new 32 GB DDR4 SO-DIMMs based on 16 Gb DDR4 memory ICs (integrated circuits) are rated for a 2666 MT/s data transfer rate at 1.2 V. Because the 16 Gb memory chips are made using Samsung's 10 nm-class process technology, the new module is claimed to be 39% more energy efficient than the company's previous-gen 16 GB SO-DIMM based on 20 nm-class ICs. According to Samsung, a laptop equipped with 64 GB of new memory consumes 4.578 W in active mode, whereas a notebook outfitted with 64 GB of previous-gen DDR4 consumes 7.456 W in active mode.
Insert obligatory ECC comment here.
Samsung press release. Also at Tom's Hardware and DigiTimes.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by FatPhil on Monday June 04 2018, @02:26PM (3 children)
The "10nm-class" is being defined as having "twice the density" (thus scaled by area, not linearly) as "20nm-class", which is consistent with the marketting scheme they've had for about a decade now. But the previous chips came out 4 years ago. That's half the rate of density-doubling that has been remarkably consistent until pretty recently, it does provide evidence that we really are beginning to stretch the limits of lithography. And whilst improvements are being promised, we don't know how quickly they'll appear, and even then quite soon the current technology will be hitting blockages put in the way by the laws of physics themselves. And I don't see any viable replacement tech.
Moore's Law's not dead, but it looks like it's on crutches. It's utterly amazing that his observation held so true for so long, to be honest.
I'm not too worried, there's still an enormous amount of waste caused by a dogged attachment to legacy architectures. Radical new processor designs could save the day, or at least slow down the rot for a while. And maybe software bloat will follow a J curve rather than an S curve, and we all strive for "lightweight" again, rather than "feature packed".
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday June 04 2018, @03:37PM (2 children)
High Bandwidth Memory basically proves that it's not too hard to stack memory (unlike CPU cores). So there is a path up. HBM is more expensive, sure, but at least it exists.
https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/234333-hbm-everywhere-samsung-wants-hbm3-low-cost-options-to-blow-the-doors-off-the-memory-market [extremetech.com]
https://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/SamsungHBM3.jpg [extremetech.com]
RAM prices are massively inflated right now. It would be great to get HBM-like specs at those prices.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday June 04 2018, @03:58PM (1 child)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday June 04 2018, @09:08PM
AMD talked up including HBM with its APUs, but it looks like Intel will beat them to that, with AMD's own GPU to boot:
https://www.anandtech.com/show/12003/intel-to-create-new-8th-generation-cpus-with-amd-radeon-graphics-with-hbm2-using-emib [anandtech.com]
I had hoped that even the low-end desktop and mobile APUs would eventually come with say, 4 GB of HBM, but that looks like a distant dream so far.
You can also put stacked memory in a module form factor, but I think it's only been done with server memory:
Samsung Mass Produces 128 GB DDR4 Server Memory [soylentnews.org]
There's also Hybrid Memory Cube, but HBM seems to have completely displaced it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_Memory_Cube [wikipedia.org]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]