51–60 of 240 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Chip fabrication processes are not fungible: GPUs and CPUs might be made on roughly the same process, but DRAM is not (flash is a different process again, as is power electronics, analog electronics, MEMS, etc. And even within those broader categories there are different variations). While there are some overlaps in machines and techniques, a fab set up for one cannot generally switch to the other, and the economics…
You're not the first person to say so (and I don't mean to dispute it), but I have never been able to find a clear answer for /why/ those processes are incompatible. Is it built in different silicon, is it physical steps that's incompatible (ie its actually incompatible), is it different physical preparations that needs to be made (making it economically infeasible to combine) I cannot help but wonder, even if the an…
Logic processes (CPUs/GPUs), on the other hand, are optimized for raw switching speed. They use thin gate oxides and low threshold voltages, which leak like a sieve. This is fine for a fast processor, but it would wipe out a DRAM cell's charge almost instantly.
I have always wondered why there was never a big market[1] for "cheap PCI/PCI-X/PCI-e card you can stick a boatload of your old/surplus/n-generation old simms/dimms on and use as swap/slow memory/ram disk/etc". It's rare you can populate a motherboard with a full address space full of 'new' memory, and you can teach kernels to prefer some memory to others because of speed[2], so it seems like a no-brainer. I seem to…
I have always wondered why there was never a big market[1] for "cheap PCI/PCI-X/PCI-e card you can stick a boatload of your old/surplus/n-generation old simms/dimms on and use as swap/slow memory/ram disk/etc". It's rare you can populate a motherboard with a full address space full of 'new' memory, and you can teach kernels to prefer some memory to others because of speed[2], so it seems like a no-brainer. I seem to…
They used to exist
If they grow desperate I have GBs of DDR2 AND DDR3 in a drawer.
I have always wondered why there was never a big market[1] for "cheap PCI/PCI-X/PCI-e card you can stick a boatload of your old/surplus/n-generation old simms/dimms on and use as swap/slow memory/ram disk/etc". It's rare you can populate a motherboard with a full address space full of 'new' memory, and you can teach kernels to prefer some memory to others because of speed[2], so it seems like a no-brainer. I seem to…
There was never a big market for it because new memory was not prohibitively expensive in comparison to the cost, risk, and limitations of using old memory in a new server. That is not the case now, so people are looking at the idea again.
I would counter tho that 1) this isn't the first time there's been a memory price/supply crunch, and "I've got a drawer full of last gen memory I can't use" is kinduva IT cliche, and 2) 'more memory' has always been a pain point, especially with industry practices like chipsets only supporting relatively small physical memory relative to address space (e.g. all those Intel LGA775 chipsets that capped at 4 or 8GB). Oh, and 2a) 'faster disk' has always been a pain point...
But, yeah...obviously my impression of things doesn't match market reality.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not really a law though.
Nobody voted for it, that's true. But since reality held closely to it for decades right up to the present, it's reasonable to believe that transistors get smaller and cheaper as time passes.
In the future, hardware is only for big companies to own. At least it seems we're heading that way.
China is desperate to sell anything to... everyone. If there's a market, they'll eventually be there to fill it.
It took them decades for cars, but now they did it.
For RAM, CXMT went from 20 000 wafers per month to... 240 000 wafers per month in something like two years. And they're extending capacity massively now. It's a company only 10 years old.
The market is there and China shall flood it: that's how they operate with everything.
At some point they'll probably even come with GPUs that shall do 80% of the job for 20% of the price.
Just like you can buy chinese server motherboards at 1/5th the price of a SuperMicro one today.
So I'm not sure hardware is going to be only for big companies: China is going to put pressure on the OpenAI and Anthropic of this world locking all the RAM / SSDs / chips of this world.