Intel planning to get rid of DRAM on PCs (semiaccurate.com)

Initially I didn't like the idea. But thinking it better it might be actually good. The big PC bottleneck nowadays is DRAM. A big on-die/stacked memory at many times faster bandwidth and lower latency could be a game changer.

And anyway, nowadays the usual advice to clients is to max out the RAM on purchase since it's a mess to replace (be it a non-technical user or a datacenter cluster with critical uptime) and the specific configuration of RAM will become pricer per GB in the mid term (because the market moves constantly forward to different versions).

And also note one of the main reasons some algorithms run faster on GPUs is the memory bandwidth bottleneck. If Intel gets rid of the BW problem it's a level game againsta Nvidia.

This move would allow Intel to have some custom performance tricks. For example, memset multiple GB in a fraction of the time.

So what are they replacing it with?!

EDIT: from the comments I get the impression that they want to move the memory closer to the CPU.

Any comments on why alecco's (seemingly informative) comment is dead? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4496441

That article has no technical information at all, it seems to be pure click-bait.

Does anyone know more? Are they moving the RAM or replacing with some flash derivative? Something else?

I assume they mean memory will be integrated into the CPU package itself? If that provides for faster RAM, smaller computers, and greater power efficiency I would find it to be an acceptable trade-off. I've found over the years my RAM needs are tied pretty closely to my CPU needs. Today I can get by fine with 8GB but by the time I need 16 or 32GB I will probably want a newer CPU as well. So doing this all in one package wouldn't bother me. I'm guessing on desktops/servers there would be some ability to add slower modular RAM to compliment the faster RAM integrated into the CPU?

I think they may be referring to non volatile (phase change) memory.

More details in this LWN article:

http://lwn.net/Articles/498283/ and here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase-change_memory

Very relevant demo of Intel-Micron a year ago of a Hybrid Memory cube with stacked DRAM:

http://blogs.intel.com/research/2011/09/15/hmc/

(argh)

1 point by alecco 2 hours ago | link | parent [dead]

Initially I didn't like the idea. But thinking it better it might be actually good. The big PC bottleneck nowadays is DRAM. A big on-die/stacked memory at many times faster bandwidth and lower latency could be a game changer. And anyway, nowadays the usual advice to clients is to max out the RAM on purchase since it's a mess to replace (be it a non-technical user or a datacenter cluster with critical uptime) and the specific configuration of RAM will become pricer per GB in the mid term (because the market moves constantly forward to different versions).

And also note one of the main reasons some algorithms run faster on GPUs is the memory bandwidth bottleneck. If Intel gets rid of the BW problem it's a level game againsta Nvidia.

This move would allow Intel to have some custom performance tricks. For example, memset multiple GB in a fraction of the time.

How much of the memory latency is in the connection between the CPU and the RAM, and how much is inside the RAM itself?

Even with intensive app usage (whole office/adobe suite), 4 web browsers with 2-5 dozen tabs in each, two dozen utilities, maybe SC2 or GW2 running, no reboot in months, I can maybe fill up half my 16GB. I see people really only needing 8GB unless you are doing VM.

Is not that DRAM is dead, it is simply Intel will be putting Memory Cube, or Stacked DRAM or TSV Memory what ever you wanted to call it in the CPU die itself. Stacked DRAM provides up to 1Tbit/s of bandwidth. More then the current Graphics Card has.

As SSD gets faster every year, we need less memory to cache off the content where we used to need for performance reason from a HDD. With Windows 8 i have been using less then 4GB of Ram including standby, with Virtual Memory turned off. ( I have 16GB of Memory ). The future CPU die could easily stack 4 1Gbit DRAM with 8 layers of up to 4GB of Memory. Coupled with a SSD that goes up to 2GB/s transfer.