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Meta reuses old RAM in new servers with custom bridge chip

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Re: Meta reuses old RAM in new servers with custom bridge chip

#111
post #46

In the future, hardware is only for big companies to own. At least it seems we're heading that way.

> 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.…

I think there's a great deal of underestimation of China's manufacturing. Granted, wafers are a totally different thing than any of the other industries they've dominated for cheap, but I certainly wouldn't count them out.

I've recently gotten into fountain pens. Sure, a $7 Jinhao or $15 Hongdian pen isn't going to write quite as nice as a $200+ pen, but they're about 80% of the way there, and you can buy tons of them for the cost of a single more expensive pen. Plus, some models will accept Western nibs just fine which means you're buying a cheap barrel and assembling a much higher quality product for almost pennies on the dollar.

One would do well not to underestimate their ability to fill markets. It may take years, but it will happen.

Re: Meta reuses old RAM in new servers with custom bridge chip

#112

At the beginning of William Gibson’s Neuromancer , the protagonist is trying to sell 3 MB of RAM in underground markets. This is often cited as one of the ways the book has not aged well. But, looking at the direction of the memory market now… maybe we just haven’t gotten there yet.

It's funny... I enjoyed Neuromancer, although I didn't read it until about 15 years ago.

And, yeah, the memory thing hasn't aged well. Thing is, 1984 was a funny time in computing, particularly when you consider the kind of computers normal people had access to.

At that point even things like PCs and the new Mac had 128 or 256K of RAM[0], so I get that 3MB must have seemed like an ocean of memory at the time. And, realistically, more than 1MB of RAM in machines you'd typically see sat at home or on a desktop was uncommon until the beginning of the 1990s.

And, although Moore's law had been around since 1965 it's hard to know how aware people outside of specialist circles would have been of it in 1984.

I suppose Gibson must have done some pretty in depth research for Neuromancer, right? But the memory thing is sort of ancillary to the story, so how much would he really have focussed on that? Probably not much.

And then do you really want to harshly judge the book on that one slightly laughable thing, in other ways, it was incredibly forward looking and almost prophetic? Doesn't seem right.

I think the sensible position is you have to let it slide and see it as a possible alternative future that never quite came to pass in that way but that which we can see strong echoes and foreshadowings of even still.

[0] In 1984 microcomputers, as opposed to, cough, "serious" computers like the PC and Mac, with 128K of RAM were still very new, with 32 - 64K being the entry level, and if you had one with 128K you were king of the hill. 128K in 1984 seemed like a ton of memory to most of us, but it's worth bearing in mind that only a handful of years before computers like the ZX81, which had only 1K of RAM, were the common entry level, so the progression was already clear if you looked at the situation in the right way, but you had to have been paying attention for a while to have noticed. I remember the first time I used a machine with 4MB of RAM in, maybe, 1990 - an Archimedes at school - and feeling like it was just this absolutely inexhaustible ocean of memory. In 1984 3MB would have felt almost inconceivably huge unless you were in the high performance computing, or maybe the mainframe, worlds.

Re: Meta reuses old RAM in new servers with custom bridge chip

#113

At the beginning of William Gibson’s Neuromancer , the protagonist is trying to sell 3 MB of RAM in underground markets. This is often cited as one of the ways the book has not aged well. But, looking at the direction of the memory market now… maybe we just haven’t gotten there yet.

It's funny... I enjoyed Neuromancer, although I didn't read it until about 15 years ago. And, yeah, the memory thing hasn't aged well. Thing is, 1984 was a funny time in computing, particularly when you consider the kind of computers normal people had access to. At that point even things like PCs and the new Mac had 128 or 256K of RAM[0], so I get that 3MB must have seemed like an ocean of memory at the time. And, re…

> But then Gibson must have done some pretty in depth research for Neuromancer, right?

Isn't he on record that his documentation was listening to techies talking shop in bars?

> And then do you really want to harshly judge the book on that one slightly laughable thing about memory when, in other ways, it was incredibly forward looking and almost prophetic.

He seems to understand humans. Gibson's world and Brunner's Stand on Zanzibar are imo the most "prophetic" sf books written so far.

Re: Meta reuses old RAM in new servers with custom bridge chip

#115

At the beginning of William Gibson’s Neuromancer , the protagonist is trying to sell 3 MB of RAM in underground markets. This is often cited as one of the ways the book has not aged well. But, looking at the direction of the memory market now… maybe we just haven’t gotten there yet.

That is a pretty nitpicking reason to say it has not aged well. Hamlet doesn’t have cell phones yet I think it’s an excellent play. Even though a quick FaceTime would’ve averted a tragedy.

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Re: Meta reuses old RAM in new servers with custom bridge chip

#116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny... I enjoyed Neuromancer, although I didn't read it until about 15 years ago. And, yeah, the memory thing hasn't aged well. Thing is, 1984 was a funny time in computing, particularly when you consider the kind of computers normal people had access to. At that point even things like PCs and the new Mac had 128 or 256K of RAM[0], so I get that 3MB must have seemed like an ocean of memory at the time. And, re…

> But then Gibson must have done some pretty in depth research for Neuromancer, right? Isn't he on record that his documentation was listening to techies talking shop in bars? > And then do you really want to harshly judge the book on that one slightly laughable thing about memory when, in other ways, it was incredibly forward looking and almost prophetic. He seems to understand humans. Gibson's world and Brunner's S…

> He seems to understand humans.

Yeah, I think this is it. The humans were the point, not the minutiae of the tech.

(Btw, I hadn't noticed you'd responded whilst I was editing my comment to express myself a bit more clearly - I hope anyway - so the quotes don't quite match but I don't think it matters, because the sentiment is hopefully clear enough both ways!)

Re: Meta reuses old RAM in new servers with custom bridge chip

#117

It'd be interested to see how one could leverage all the DDR3 ECC that they may have laying about; maybe an overseas shopping site has these boards available? Would DDR3 be as fast or faster than an SSD?

top of the line SSDs now eclipse DDR3 throughput, but DDR3 should retain a large edge in latency of orders of magnitude

absolutely no idea how useful any of that would be and what kind of latency degradation going through whatever adapter would cause

Re: Meta reuses old RAM in new servers with custom bridge chip

#118

At the beginning of William Gibson’s Neuromancer , the protagonist is trying to sell 3 MB of RAM in underground markets. This is often cited as one of the ways the book has not aged well. But, looking at the direction of the memory market now… maybe we just haven’t gotten there yet.

That is a pretty nitpicking reason to say it has not aged well. Hamlet doesn’t have cell phones yet I think it’s an excellent play. Even though a quick FaceTime would’ve averted a tragedy.

Hamlet is set in (what is currently) the past. It is self consistent. Neuromancer is set partially in the future, and partially what is our past. The inconsistency is what throws people. It can be a good book, but people might still find those elements jarring.

Re: Meta reuses old RAM in new servers with custom bridge chip

#119
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go back and read beyond the first sentence; you'll see I said exactly that.

Kind of. You referenced flash memory. However I owned an ibm ps/2 from the 80s which had an MCA memory card which could accept SIMMs and extend system ram. So maybe the previous poster is being pedantic? No need to downvote them

Yes...I remember the model 80. The cards you're talking about are 1) a design choice IBM made to use MCA as the official way to expand memory in the machine and not something any PCI bus machine I'm aware of followed, and 2) used the same generation memory as the planar memory. I don't think you're talking apples to oranges. YMMV.

I'm not sure where 'pedantic', especially when coupled with 'contributes nothing to the discussion', wasn't worthy of a downvote (which I didn't give), but I'm sure there's a "well, ackshually..." rationale there someplace.

Edit: extra 'not' removed.

Re: Meta reuses old RAM in new servers with custom bridge chip

#120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a pretty nitpicking reason to say it has not aged well. Hamlet doesn’t have cell phones yet I think it’s an excellent play. Even though a quick FaceTime would’ve averted a tragedy.

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