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Meta reuses old RAM in new servers with custom bridge chip

theregister.com

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

#191

Post by walrus01 »

moomoo11 wrote: post #135
mNovak wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I recall correctly, Gibson had never even used a computer at the time of writing Neuromancer, so that's perhaps not shocking.

this is my issue with cyberpunk “literature” it’s a genre written by people who barely understand technology and consumed by even more luddite types. it’s all uninformed fear mongering

This is about as logically consistent as complaining that the two authors who are James SA Corey didn't write an authentic science fiction book series in "The Expanse" because they're not in possession of an Epstein drive.

The early 1980s cyberpunk genre is a speculative fiction that blends scifi and dystopia/extrapolation of current cultural phenomena to some point in the future, don't twist yourself up too much about it.

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

#192

Post by marcosdumay »

teddyh wrote: post #184
snowwrestler wrote: post #55

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.

In early computing history, the unit of memory was not established yet, and different hardware architectures had different word sizes , not even necessarily evently divisible by 8. And the memory sizes of these machines used to be expressed using the naitive word size. Like “this machine has 8 kilowords of core”. Therefore, when I encounter an anachronistic memory size in old fiction, I just assume that I just don’t…

The ALU of a computer with a megabit word must be a beast to awe upon!

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

#193

Post by ColdStream »

martinald wrote: post #157
pedrocr wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The computer I'm writing this on has 64 GB of RAM, 1024 times as much. By comparison I have a 20-core Intel CPU with up-to 3GHz speed or somewhere around there, even pretending each core could run at that max speed simultaneously (which they can't), that's only 133-times as much CPU power. Over that time CPUs have also increased their instructions per clock by 3 to 4 times, so the comparison is a bit closer than th…

GPUs are even more extreme. A 5060 is something like 15,000x faster than a 3dfx Voodoo card from ~2000 by my limited research.

It is a funny thing, while yes the task of 'put pixel on screen' is the same. They are so wildly different in how they function, I don't know how to even quantify it. 15,000x may be an understatement.

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

#194

Post by astrange »

aaroninsf wrote: post #176
snowwrestler wrote: post #55

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.

I've always wanted to set up automation that updates the text for the book every so often to preserve original intent, by changing the language around quantities to Replace "megabyte" with "exabyte" or whatever. As an aside, there's a great essay I think in Metamagical Themas about the fuzzy task of translating literary works, which takes up the question of whether it would be valid and how to translate say Dickens i…

You'd be stuck on how to update "the color of a TV tuned to a dead channel". Was never sure if that meant a starry sky or a bright blue one.

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

#195

Post by ColdStream »

eightysixfour wrote: post #133
jonathanlydall wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Memory in particular is something that I've reflected on more than once as having the most impressive gains in computing since I started paying attention to it (networking/USB too, but that doesn't make your computer "faster" in the same way). I remember being able to borrow a computer from somewhere when Diablo II had just come out in 2000 which had a 450Mhz Pentium III and 64 MB of RAM. 64MB of RAM was probably mid…

> The computer I'm writing this on has 64 GB of RAM, 1024 times as much. By comparison I have a 20-core Intel CPU with up-to 3GHz speed or somewhere around there, even pretending each core could run at that max speed simultaneously (which they can't), that's only 133-times as much CPU power. This nerd sniped me a bit. Your calculation on the amount of CPU power is too low, because of the change in IPC, but for the th…

Yesterday I had to setup a rig for a massive down load that was larger than any spare SSD I had laying around, so I got a 2TB HDD out of an old PVR and turned it into the main drive for an old Optiplex I have.

I had forgotten just how slow spinning disks are. The delay on everything is significant. Even just opening the file manager has a few second delay, Firefox took something like 15+ seconds to load in once it loads all its dependencies, something I haven't had in over a decade now.

You start to wonder if it is loading, you just have to watch the HDD light or listen to the hardware to confirm.

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

#196

Post by ColdStream »

thewebguyd wrote: post #125
jonathanlydall wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Memory in particular is something that I've reflected on more than once as having the most impressive gains in computing since I started paying attention to it (networking/USB too, but that doesn't make your computer "faster" in the same way). I remember being able to borrow a computer from somewhere when Diablo II had just come out in 2000 which had a 450Mhz Pentium III and 64 MB of RAM. 64MB of RAM was probably mid…

> Maybe the NVMe read times are as/more significant than memory size increase This was the most impactful upgrade/breakthrough for me. The first time I put even a SATA SSD in my PC at home I was completely blown away. It still blows my mind somewhat the amount of compute I have sitting on my desk though, both in terms of memory and CPU/GPU power, but that move from spinning rust to solid state was huge. Then Apple di…

In a way I already knew it to be the case, I always built machines with an excess of RAM since hitting a memory limit and falling back to HDD would crush all performance. But once I got on SSD, it was the big game changer.

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

#197

Post by ColdStream »

snowwrestler wrote: post #55

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.

Side note. It is sort of the unwritten rule in TV and Film. Don't highlight technology unless absolutely necessary. it can age it considerably.

A few weeks back I had '30 Rock' on, it was funny seeing everyone with flip phones, it wasn't highlighted but it just makes you realise the age of it all.

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

#198

Post by ColdStream »

kjs3 wrote: post #44

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…

You could give it a similar structure to CPU cache or a giant swap file. Have a giant blob of memory on the PCI RAM, that feeds the on board smaller motherboard RAM as needed. It might just work.

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

#199

Post by ColdStream »

CTDOCodebases wrote: post #98
HumblyTossed wrote: post #63

It will be interesting to see what happens to the consumer electronics market the next few years. Companies are right now gambling that consumers will pay extra because of RAM shortages. I suspect with the cost of everything else rising as well, a large portion of consumers (remember, HN, not everyone makes tech money) will just not be buying new devices for a bit.

I think I'm in this boat. I'm just choosing to interact with technology less. Everything has just gotten more hostile that it has reached a tipping point.

I just upgraded from a Lenovo T400 to a Carbon X1 4th gen for $100. I can ride out this storm longer than the storm can continue.

My needs are much lower than what the market demands.

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

#200

Post by ryanmcbride »

ColdStream wrote: post #197
snowwrestler wrote: post #55

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.

Side note. It is sort of the unwritten rule in TV and Film. Don't highlight technology unless absolutely necessary. it can age it considerably. A few weeks back I had '30 Rock' on, it was funny seeing everyone with flip phones, it wasn't highlighted but it just makes you realise the age of it all.

I always just find stuff like that charming. I love seeing relics of the time in which something was made. I love seeing dated pop culture references, it's one of my favorite things about engaging with old media.
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