Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

An Overview of Quad Band Memory

Posted by chrisd on from the via-and-intel-ain't-pals dept.

tedgyz writes "AnandTech has a short article on a new memory technology from Via, called Quad Band Memory (QBM). Rather than using dual-channel DDR to increase bandwidth, they use phase-shifting inside the memory modules to accomplish the same goal. The end result is simpler (and presumably cheaper) motherboard designs that are backwards compatible with current DDR modules. The downside? It is currently only going to available in a P4 chipset that Intel has not authorized."

7 of 125 comments (clear)

  1. Uhhh... by GreyWolf3000 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The downside? It is currently only going to available in a P4 chipset that Intel has not authorized."

    Keyword: currently. I'm sure the technology will be available soon for plenty of other motherboards. I don't consider this much of a downside (feel free to set me straight if I'm wrong).

    --
    Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
  2. Not Tom's by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful
    This is NOT Tom's hardware guide.

    Please keep all this pseudo hardware news bullshit off the site and leave it to people who KNOW WHAT THE (*&^#%#@$ THEY ARE TALKING ABOUT.

  3. Re:I dunno, these are gonna cost more. by jfdawes · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Just wondering if anyone can talk about this sort of technology in relation to the way modem technology progressed. People tinkered with phase shifting and spliting and amplitude shifting etc and we went from 75 baud (whatever) to 115,000 odd. Is the same sort of thing likely/possible with memory? Physically, these are analog devices - they are just interpreted digitally - so wouldn't it be possible to use some of the same lessons learn in modem technology here?

  4. But memory isn't the bottleneck anymore, is it? by rlangis · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Nowadays, you see all of these benchmarks on chips/chipsets/memory, and unless you're talking inSANE resolutions and color depths, AMD/Intel vs nVidia/ATI really doesn't matter much. It's just personal preference.

    Memory as well - how many of you TRULY saw a difference between PC100 and PC133 DRAM? Yeah, the benchmark numbers don't lie - but again, those are JUST benchmarks. Regardless, I don't think the system is being held back by memory.

    It was my understanding that the major bottleneck of any system is the DISK. So no matter how fast your ram is, if you still have to swap to the slow-ass disk, your system will be slow.

    However, I only have a 1Gig Duron w/512M PC133, so I don't exactly follow the bleeding edge. Your mileage, of course, may vary. :)

    --
    GIR: I'm going to sing the Doom song now. Doom doom doom doom doom doom de-doom doom doom doom doom doom doom...
    1. Re:But memory isn't the bottleneck anymore, is it? by be-fan · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Um, disk isn't a bottleneck on my system. I do lots of C++ programming, and everything gets cached in RAM after the first build. Thus, my bottleneck becomes gcc ...err... CPU and memory bandwidth :) Same thing when I'm doing 3D rendering (which had better fit in RAM or else) or playing 3D games and whatnot. I thought moving to a 4200 RPM laptop hard drive was going to be bad, after my nice 7200 RPM IDE RAID. In truth, thanks to the Linux VM, I don't notice the difference after the first half hour of using the system. However, I did notice the big boost that came with moving from a PC100 memory system to a PC266, even just palying around with GUI wigets (resizing and whatnot).

      --
      A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
  5. Re:What do you want to bet... by Cloud+9 · · Score: 2, Insightful
    What do you want to bet that you'll be able to find more than your fair share "QBM compliant" montherboards that do NOT play happily with a large chunk of the available "QBM" memory and visa versa?

    The same held true for DDR boards last year, where you were pretty much only guaranteed to get registered, buffered memory modules to work. Now, pretty much any recent motherboard will accept pretty much any DDR module.

    Compatibility and compliance always suffer at the beginning of a new product release. That's why technology and product reviews are so helpful.

    --
    Karma: Dyn-o-mite!(mostly affected by Jimmy Walker reading your comments)
  6. Re:I always love... by be-fan · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I always love morons who criticize things when they aren't part of their intended audience. Unless you're a gamer, you have no reason to be at those sites. If you are, those sites are invaluable. Quick, what's faster, the Radeon 8500 or the GeForce4 MX? I don't really care, my gaming is limited to some RPGs and the occasional CounterStrike match. However when I wanted to buy my brother a new graphics card, you bet he was happy that I did my research at those sites first. I used to frequent those sites a lot, back when I did a lot of 3D programming and gaming. I honestly needed the performance, and those sights provided a lot of good guidence, as well as useful ways to get cheap hardware to do cool things (overclocking Celeron 300A's and running them in SMP for example, or joining the bridges on Athlon XPs to get them running in SMP). As for the bit about advertisers, that's bull. The internet keeps these sites honest. A GeForce 4 TI 4600 really is a lot faster than a Radeon 8500. If a site says otherwise because of advertising, a second opinion (or third or fourth) is just a click away. In the future, it would be wise to provide specific proof before criticizing people of lacking journalistic integrity.

    --
    A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...