Computer RAM gets biggest upgrade in 25 years but it may be too little, too late — LPCAMM2 won't stop Apple, Intel and AMD from integrating memory directly on the CPU ( www.techradar.com )

Computer RAM gets biggest upgrade in 25 years but it may be too little, too late — LPCAMM2 won't stop Apple, Intel and AMD from integrating memory directly on the CPU::LPCAMM2 is a revolution in RAM, but it faces an uphill struggle

WaterWaiver ,

We already have memory wafers glued to our CPU wafers in the form of L3 cache. It's lower latency, higher throughput, up to a few hundred MiB in bigger models and can potentially be used without external RAM sticks (but I've not heard of using that feature outside of BIOS firmware early boot -- that's probably the only change we'll see). Sometimes it's DRAM, sometimes it's SRAM, its size varies quite a bit.

Mango ,

Wouldn't RAM on die mean lower wafer yield?

Zanz ,

This is about RAM on the package not RAM on the die. It honestly makes no sense why we don't have CPUs and RAM soldered to the motherboard right next to the CPU package. I love being able to change the stuff myself, but any reasonable repair shop could be doing that for you and we can have much higher performance than we currently have. It's not like there's really many viable options anyways. AMD has what four good CPUs intel has like two, and there's two good ram ICS.

michaelrose ,

Why would you think soldering would increase performance vs socketed at all much less provide "much higher performance"

If soldered was the only option ans 6 skud was enough for everyone everyone would have to buy very expensive hardware to increase one spec instead of smart people getting to mix match and upgrade.

Zanz ,

The socket has big reductions in ram and pcie signal integrity. If you don't plan to change the CPU and motherboard separately soldering it would save money and the store could do it for you when you order both together.

Blackmist ,

Can it not just be socketed next to the CPU?

We seem to socket CPUs just fine.

captain_aggravated ,
@captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works avatar

Question: modern systems can mount hundreds of GB or even terabytes of RAM, right? At this point, why not mount non-volatile storage as RAM? Performance should increase since data wouldn't have to be loaded.

Mortoc ,

What you’re describing is the holy grail of computer memory technology. If we had nonvolatile memory as fast as RAM, we would absolutely be using it instead. Unfortunately even the fastest SSD today would be a significant drop in speed from modern RAM.

captain_aggravated ,
@captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works avatar

Would it be faster than loading gigabytes of data from an SSD over NVMe into RAM?

defame ,

If you're only loading data to access it once, then yes, but it almost never is the case - some specific programs might do it, but OS definitely caches pretty much everything it can in RAM for subsequent access - Linux, for example, fills unused RAM with cache

BorgDrone ,

RAM is basically the scratch space for the CPU. It doesn’t just contain data loaded from the SSD, it contains the running state of the OS and all applications and is constantly being read from and written to by the CPU. As it is, RAM is already a lot slower than the CPU. Replacing RAM with a standard NVMe SSD would slow a PC down to an unusable crawl.

captain_aggravated ,
@captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works avatar

I'm familiar with what RAM is for.

The idea I'm getting at is, back in the day computer software especially video games came on ROM cartridges, which were little more than a plastic shell around a small circuit board that had a ROM chip or two, maybe a battery backed RAM chip to save game progress if you're Nintendo. This ROM was attached to the same data bus on the CPU as the system's built-in RAM, which meant the CPU could read from it just like RAM. This meant that cartridge-based systems didn't need as much total RAM, because instructions, graphics, audio etc. were read directly from ROM, and it didn't have to load instructions or graphics into memory before executing/displaying them. So no loading screens.

Modern computer SSDs are attached via SATA or at best the PCIe bus, and the CPU has to interact with a controller on the device to get data loaded into memory before it can be executed. Could you attach some non-volatile storage on the same bus with the RAM. Like, the average ATX motherboard has 4 RAM slots, right? Could you mount two sticks of RAM and two sticks of non-volatile storage that exists in the memory address space?

carpelbridgesyndrome ,

From the perspective of a computer engineer SSDs are painfully slow. Waiting for data on disk is slow enough that it is typically done by asking the OS for the data and having the OS schedule another process onto the CPU while it waits. RAM is also slow although not nearly as slow. Ideally you want your data in the L1 cache which is fast enough to minimally stall the CPU. The L2 and L3 caches are slower but larger and more likely to have the data you want. If the caches are empty and you have to read RAM your CPU will either do a lot of speculative execution or more likely stall.

Speculative execution on CPUs is a desperate attempt to deal with the fact that all memory access is slow by just continuing through the code as if you know what is in memory. If the speculative execution is wrong a lot of work gets thrown out (hopefully nothing unsound happens) and the delay is more noticable.

Bluntly an SSD only system would probably be an order of magnitude slower. I'm also not sure switching to a new process (or even thread) to load from SSD would be viable without RAM as it would likely invalidate a lot of cache triggering more loads.

___ ,

Essentially we do. If you run out of RAM, you get pages from disk. You would know this if you ever used Windows ME.

SanndyTheManndy ,

I already use a processor with integrated graphics

lolcatnip ,

I know it's standard for graphics to be integrated into a motherboard. Is that what you're referring to? Because I've never heard of on-CPU graphics.

Telodzrum ,

What?

Earthwormjim91 ,

And has been doing it for years with the Ryzen G series chips. They have built in Radeon graphics chips. Not as powerful as a discrete GPU, but enough for a lot of people.

Euphoma ,

Cpus have had integrated graphics for years... My 11 year old cpu has awful graphics that I try to turn off usually.

Cupcake1972 ,

what sort of a rock did you crawl out of /s

highenergyphysics ,

Kiryu after getting out of prison mf up there💀

dukatos ,

This is the future of PC, but with soldered RAM: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slot_1

SnotFlickerman ,
@SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

On CPU is definitely superior for performance, and what I'm not seeing people consider here is a future where you have On-CPU-RAM and On-Motherboard-RAM. CPU RAM for intense CPU functions, and traditionally seated RAM to be more like a modern "swap" I suppose, but instead of using the slower disks for swap, you're just using slower RAM.

I could especially see this in Enterprise level hardware. I'm just saying, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Por Que No Los Dos?

I know, I know, you can't expect corporations to do squat to benefit the consumer, but one can hope.

4am ,

Yeah, there is no way they’re gonna put 1TB of RAM on a CPU die anytime soon.

Does that mean that consumer hardware will include expandable RAM though? I feel like for the average person, that option still has a very high chance of disappearing on a lot of machines.

SnotFlickerman ,
@SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Oh yeah, a very high chance of disappearing. The unfortunate reality is probably 80% of people never upgrade their laptops or desktops. Building and maintaining your own PC has become more en vogue in recent years, but the vast majority of average consumers just don't take part in the practice. Thus, it will not be prioritized by the industry. Why spend money on making your machines upgrade-able if the majority of users don't ever take advantage of the feature?

I don't like why it will happen, but I understand the economics of it.

Telodzrum ,

Bro, it’s way higher than 80%.

monkeyman512 ,

I think most people don't know the difference between "on-die" and "on-package". This may be what they mean: https://beebom.com/intel-meteor-lake-cpu-on-chip-ram/

Brokkr ,

I get that this was primarily created to benefit laptops, but would it provide any advantage for desktops?

Telodzrum ,

Yes, the laws of physics require that on-die RAM is markedly faster.

Brokkr ,

I get that, but is this on-die? It says that it is modular, so I interpreted that to mean that it was not on-die.

7heo , (edited )

Also, lots of users aren't gonna want the main system memory on the CPU die. Aside from the fact that it creates a clear path for vendors to artificially inflate prices through pretended scarcity via product segmentation and bundles, it also prevents the end users from upgrading the machines.

I'm pretty sure this even goes against the stated goals of the EU in terms of reduction of e-waste.

I have no doubt that a handful of vendors cooperating could restrict their offer and force the hand of end users, but I don't think this would be here to stay. Unless it provides such a drastic performance boost (like 2x or more) that it could be enough of an incentive to convince the masses.

QuarterSwede ,
@QuarterSwede@lemmy.world avatar

On CPU RAM does provide much faster performance. That’s the reason they are going that route.

SnotFlickerman ,
@SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

It's part of the reason why RAM was always placed close to the CPU on the motherboard anyway. The farther they are apart, the more time and energy is used to transfer data and instructions between them.

QuarterSwede ,
@QuarterSwede@lemmy.world avatar

Right, it s a physics issue, not greed. I mean, they’re going to make a margin off of it for sure but that’s not the sole reason to do this.

SnotFlickerman , (edited )
@SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

I'm imagining a world with desktops and laptops that have On-CPU-RAM and On-Motherboard-RAM with the traditionally slotted RAM acting as a swap for the On-CPU-RAM.

I mean, isn't that in principle how old swaps traditionally work? They take up some space on your slower disk drive to "swap" data from RAM onto when out of RAM. On-Motherboard-RAM, since it's slower than On-CPU-RAM, could achieve the same purpose, meaning limited On-CPU-RAM wouldn't be as impactful.

Plopp ,

Greed might not be the main driving force, but it's absolutely there too. I predict on-cpu ram costing more than it should in the future due to lack of competition. (yes I know there aren't that many manufacturers of the actual chips even today when the consumers can choose from many brands of ram sticks)

Treczoks ,

Which makes a lot of sense as RAM speed is the one big bottleneck.

lolcatnip ,

People who really care about computers buy handmade artisanal transistors.

7heo ,

I know you're kidding, but: http://www.homebrewcpu.com/

originalucifer ,
@originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com avatar

both techniques will obviously need to coexist for some time. they dont have logistics on large memory near the processor,. quite yet, so there is still a place for ram.

You999 ,

I'd argue that they do have the logistics down pretty well at this point as HBM3E can squeeze 144Gb onto a package.

AbidanYre ,

That makes it sound like they'll probably use software locks on one die to restrict RAM.

Downloadmoreram.com could become a reality!

You999 ,

Almost a zero percent chance that will happen as HBM is a stack of DRAM dies, capacity can be reduced by omitting additional dies. If the DRAM were directly integrated into the CPU's die then maybe we could see software locks however historically that would be accomplished by physically laser cutting the traces (unless you are AMD and forget to with the K10.5)

Badeendje ,
@Badeendje@lemmy.world avatar

Yes, and are they able to fit 16gig on there or 64.. as 16 seems to be the minimum for a proper system nowadays. 8 is only fine if you use it for some browsing and video.

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