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DDR4 RAM To Hit Devices Next Year

Posted by timothy on from the wear-your-helmets dept.

angry tapir writes "Micron has said that DDR4 memory — the successor to DDR3 DRAM — will reach computers next year, and that the company has started shipping samples of the upcoming DDR memory type. DDR4 is more power-efficient and faster than DDR3. New forms of DDR memory first make it into servers and desktops, and then into laptops. Micron said it hopes that DDR4 memory will also reach portable devices like tablets, which currently use forms of low-power DDR3 and DDR2 memory."

35 of 233 comments (clear)

  1. Would have gotten a FP except by Barbara,+not+Barbie · · Score: 5, Funny

    ... I'm still stuck on good ole DDR2

    Realistically, while there are benefits for "faster", it's no substitute for reducing inefficient bloatware.

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    1. Re:Would have gotten a FP except by Dorkmaster+Flek · · Score: 5, Interesting

      True, but I'm actually more interested in the supposed power savings. These days, I think reducing power consumption is a higher priority than increasing speed, or at least it should be.

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    2. Re:Would have gotten a FP except by vyhd · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "The most amazing achievement of the computer software industry is its continuing cancellation of the steady and staggering gains made by the computer hardware industry." - Henry Petroski

    3. Re:Would have gotten a FP except by Barbara,+not+Barbie · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Well, one way we can reduce power consumption is to go to operating systems that aren't as bloated. If you've tried the Windows 8 Consumer Preview, you already know that Windows 8 isn't just the worst product Microsoft has ever made - it's also bloatware. Microsoft would be better off making an XP 2014 release and selling it.

      The same with LXDE as opposed to bloatware like KDE.

      Another thing is screen savers - not only not needed, but a total waste of energy. Just have the OS turn the stupid screens off ...

      There's no excuse for today's machines, with cpus that can execute more microcode per clock tick, being capable of executing 1,000 times more instructions per second than the original pc, to be as non-performing as they are.

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    4. Re:Would have gotten a FP except by eviljolly · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Luckily we're getting both. I just purchased a video card that's twice as powerful as my current one, and only uses 2/3 the power. I'm upgrading from a CPU using up to 130W to just 77W, but still gaining 20-25% performance.

      Those are some good jumps in performance, but great leaps in efficiency. Total power consumption is a big factor moving forward in trying to reduce what we need from the grid.

    5. Re:Would have gotten a FP except by cpu6502 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      LXDE == Lubuntu Linux?
      Good release.

      >>>capable of executing 1,000 times more instructions per second than the original pc

      Heh. More than that. The IBM PC was 4 megahertz? And now we have double-clocking where CPUs execute instruction on both rising & falling edges. And dual-core CPUs are now standard, so 3000*2*2/4 == 3000 times faster. And yet as you pointed-out we still have to deal with annoying "wait" states while the PC thinks or redraws a screen. Bloat.

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    6. Re:Would have gotten a FP except by Barbara,+not+Barbie · · Score: 3, Insightful
      I'm currently posting from LXDE+Knoppix (boot off the dvd image, load the actual runtime + persistent data off a hard drive image on /dev/sda1 because linux distros have a nasty habit of breaking stuff on updates). Set up with zero swap, and the only real problem is the memory leaks in Iceweasel, same as in firefox under every other distro.

      Instead of competing on features, why not have a 6-month moratorium where people just fix current bugs? It would make everyone more conscious of bad practices that lead to bugs in the first place, hopefully reducing future breakage (and slow/fugly code to work around buggy cruft).

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    7. Re:Would have gotten a FP except by CajunArson · · Score: 4, Informative

      How does crap like this get modded insightful? Oh wait.. it's because it plays up to the bigoted prejudices that prevail on this site.

      1. I've actually used the Windows 8 preview on a 4 year old PC and it is more responsive than Linux for desktop use. I don't like Metro, but everything under the hood in Windows 8 is in very good shape and some changes to the UI could make it a good successor to Windows 7.
            People on this website who brag about being Linux "experts" because they got Ubuntu to boot one time should know the difference between the UI presentation layer and the underlying OS services. Unfortunately a bunch of self-proclaimed "experts" who troll this site are anything but.

      2. I also use KDE on the desktop and I've used LXDE. Guess what? KDE is faster for my use because of the ability to reconfigure its setup. I don't want or need a taskbar to switch between apps, and because of KDE's flexibility I have a very efficient keyboard shortcut system in place to handle window management. Additinally, yakuake gives KDE a big edge for handling the konsole in a smart way and guake (which cloned yakuake) is still not as good.

          Firefox under KDE starts up in the same amount of time as on LXDE.. and so does every other application I try. Windows don't move faster across the screen on LXDE either and they resize at the same speed on both desktops!

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    8. Re:Would have gotten a FP except by Kongming · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Actually, I am running the Windows 8 Consumer Preview on the same hardware that I was previously running a clean XP installation, and Windows 8 is definitely snappier, plus has better search/launch functionality. I can't say that I am particularly fond of the Metro UI (I mostly use the Explorer-style interface), and I preferred the search UI in Windows 7 to the one in Windows 8. But saying that Windows 8 is a worse OS than such champions as Vista, 98, and ME is quite a stretch.

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    9. Re:Would have gotten a FP except by nyctopterus · · Score: 2

      A fashionable opinion on Slashdot, no doubt, but go back and actually try out an older piece of hardware. I bet it will seem absolutely bog-slow. I remember the days not so long ago when I would shut down everything to fire up a browser (Netscape), and really think hard before opening a new window (no tabs, of course). Now I sit here with two browsers, each with dozens of tabs, mp3s playing in the background, bit-ticket software like Photoshop and Illustrator running, and a disk-scan going, without the slightest hint of a slowdown. Switching between them is mostly instantaneous. My hardware is not new or fancy (2.8Ghz Core 2 Duo, 4gig of RAM), and yet it runs all the latest stuff without a hiccup.

      There have been periods in the past where software required too much of many people's hardware setup (I experienced it with Adobe CS stuff towards the end of the PPC era), but I don't think this is nearly as much of an issue as the Sluddites would have you believe. Software is much more capable now, and we use a lot more of it, much more casually than we used to.

    10. Re:Would have gotten a FP except by alices+ice · · Score: 2

      i used to bitch about windows,and to a lesser extent os x, but my introduction to ssd's caused me a major revaluation as to where the real anchor on my time was

    11. Re:Would have gotten a FP except by Intropy · · Score: 3

      Bloatware: software I dislike and wish to deride but for which I am unwilling or unable to give reasons why.

    12. Re:Would have gotten a FP except by Joce640k · · Score: 2

      Maybe you meant XP?

      Windows 7 isn't brain-dead over swapfiles like XP is. It doesn't swap unless you're really out of RAM (an amazing breakthrough!)

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    13. Re:Would have gotten a FP except by kimvette · · Score: 2

      Unfortunately, in Windows 7 it is possible for the hard drive check to consume over 11 GB(!!!!) of RAM!! Believe it or not that is the ONLY process I have ever had use that much RAM (12GB in my laptop, and I run Photoshop, Gimp, Illustrator, Lightroom, DPP, and embroidery design apps - oh, and virtualbox)

      --
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    14. Re:Would have gotten a FP except by cpu6502 · · Score: 2

      My XP install doesn't run on only half a gigabyte and no swapfile. I've tried it, and it refuses to open any programs (except tiny crap like notepad). Forget trying to browse the web or run Word.

      >>>microware OS9 Level 2

      Heh. Commodore Amiga OS multitasked in just 1/4 meg of RAM.

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      My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
    15. Re:Would have gotten a FP except by pla · · Score: 3, Informative

      That's not what I've heard. I've read that Seven, like Vista, precaches everything into RAM that it believes you will need and makes it full. This of course means if you access something new (or unexpected), it has to first swap out something from RAM to the HDD in order to make room for the new item. Slooooow.

      You say that like a bad thing? Low-end machines today have 8GB. My desktop at work has 32GB. I want Windows to "waste" as much memory in an effort to minimize physical I/O as it possibly can! Needing to go to even the lowest-latency-on-the-market SSDs means potentially "wasting" 250 thousand CPU cycles. An HDD, more like 25 million. And if you actually need to wait for an idle HDD to spin up or a network request... Ouch!

      In any case, keep in mind that flushing the FS cache doesn't mean hitting the pagefile. You may need to actually hit the disk if you then go to access something that got dumped, but you would have needed to anyway if Windows hadn't cached it in the first place.

    16. Re:Would have gotten a FP except by kimvette · · Score: 2

      I believe you fail to understand RAM's purpose: to store data. Your disk check probably did not require 11 GB, but since it was available, it chose to use it to improve its performance.

      I understand the purpose of RAM. However, I also understand that the reason my applications were terminating without warning was that Windows was killing the apps in the foreground to give the background scan more RAM. With 12GB of RAM I've seen little to no need to run a swap file. To complete that scan while getting work done I had to allocate swap so I could run my apps without Windows terminating them with no warning.

      --
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  2. Great by demonbug · · Score: 4, Funny

    I predict a 33% performance increase going from DDR3 to DDR4 based on my own super-secret analysis of the press release.

  3. DrrDrrArr by Artea · · Score: 2

    I'll be impressed when they finally get around to changing DDR to TDR or QDR.

    1. Re:DrrDrrArr by tlhIngan · · Score: 4, Informative

      I'll be impressed when they finally get around to changing DDR to TDR or QDR.

      QDR's already around. In fact, a popular console already uses it. It's still heavily patented though, so it's not very appealing.

      The Playstation 3 has 256MB of XDR-DRAM by RAMBUS (yes, that RAMBUS). It does QDR - two bits on falling edge, two bits on rising edge (using multi-level signalling).

      It's tricky for memory because the bus speed is high, signalling ovltages low, and motherboard traces bad enough that the eye window is very small, so a lot of (patented) tricks are needed to "open up" the eye and recover the bits from it. Impedance mismatches are a killer (and they happen at connectors especially).

    2. Re:DrrDrrArr by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 2

      Do you know if XDR(aside from having...historically unfortunate... friends) is considered theoretically viable for general-purpose use?

      I know that the PS3's RAM is soldered directly onto the mainboard; but that is normal for consoles. Does RAMBUS' secret sauce allow them to handle less controlled environments(in servers, say, if you can't do at least 8 DIMMs per socket you might as well go home) or are there technical reasons, as well as legal togetherness issues, that drove them to pursue specialty embedded applications?

    3. Re:DrrDrrArr by beelsebob · · Score: 4, Informative

      DDR2 effectively *is* QDR –it transfers 4 words per clock cycle... It just doesn't do it in quite the same way that true QDR RAM would. DDR3 effectively is ODR (octa-data-rate) RAM. DDR4 will effectively be HDDR (hexa-deca-data-rate) RAM.

  4. Latency? by ruiner13 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    What is the expected latency of this new RAM? I've noticed that as the RAM technology has progressed, it has favored pure throughput to latency, but this is not always ideal. Is DDR4 going to help with this, or is this yet another advance that comes at the expense of added lag? Just curious on this. I didn't think RAM bandwidth was a problem, but latency could starve these current ultra-fast processors.

    --

    today is spelling optional day.

    1. Re:Latency? by demonbug · · Score: 4, Informative

      13 clock cycles according to the all-knowing Wikipedia, so similar to the latency increas going from DDR2->DDR3; theoretically it will be made up for by increasing clock frequency, I guess, with DDR4 starting at 2133 MT/s (unfortunately I'm not clear on how transfers/s translates to MHz for DDR4 - is it the same two transfers per quad-pumped cycle?).

    2. Re:Latency? by rgbrenner · · Score: 4, Informative

      Latency has significantly decreased, thanks to higher clock frequencies. See the chart on this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAS_latency

      But RAM will always be slower than L1 and L2, simply because of the size of the memory.

    3. Re:Latency? by beelsebob · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Actually, RAM latencies have slightly improved over time, it's just not as fast as transfer rate, so the units (number of missed transfers) make it look like it's getting a lot worse. The main reason that RAM latencies haven't improved much is because they're not that important in the grand scheme of things.

      In reality, it takes around 200 transfers to get from the CPU asking for something to getting it, of that, only about 7-9 are the RAM. An improvement of one transfer, makes that 199 transfers, instead of 200 – yay, we gained 0.5%. Except that in reality, the gain is not 0.5%, because in reality, most of the CPU's requests are in level 1 cache... Make that 0.005%. Except that in reality, the gain is not 0.005%, because in reality, most of the CPU's requests that are not in level 1 cache are in level 2 cache... Make that 0.00005%... You get the idea.

      The real way to sort out the latency issue is via tighter integration of things onto the CPU (hence why we've seen memory controllers move on board, and more levels of faster cache), not in skimming one or two cycles off how quickly the RAM responds.

  5. Tell me again how this improves my life... by gestalt_n_pepper · · Score: 2

    Slightly lower power consumption. Slightly faster memory. Sorry, but it's looking to me like just another way of obsoleting my portable faster, without significant performance improvement.

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    1. Re:Tell me again how this improves my life... by Pi+Is+A+Rational · · Score: 2

      This is exactly how I've felt about computers for the past decade. Unless you play a lot of games or do some heavy editing work to upgrade your Video Card, etc there's no /true/ incentive to upgrade.

    2. Re:Tell me again how this improves my life... by gman003 · · Score: 4, Informative

      The initial DDR4 models will be only marginal increases over DDR3, true. But remember how the original DDR3 models were only marginally better than DDR2, or even how some initial DDR2 modules were *worse* than DDR?

      DDR3 is hitting a wall, where increasing the frequency any further is causing exponentially higher power usage and heat. I can't find any air-cooled DDR3-1866 or DDR3-2133 - every module I can find is water-cooled, because that's the only way to dissipate the heat. DDR4 begins at DDR4-2133, apparently without even needing a heat sink. And it's expected to scale to double those speeds, over time. And *those* you *can* upgrade - if you buy a DDR4-2133 device now, you can upgrade to DDR4-3200 or DDR4-4266 whenever you wish, if your memory controller supports it.

      DDR4 is also making a rather significant shift in architecture, going from a dual/triple/quad-channel-memory paradigm to a point-to-point system. So better scalability with multiple modules.

      Oh, and one quote cited a 40% decrease in power usage compared to an equivalent DDR3 module. That's hardly "slightly" lower.

    3. Re:Tell me again how this improves my life... by nonsensical · · Score: 2

      Almost all processors today barely saturate ddr3-1600, and gain very little from ddr3-1866. (Source: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ivy-bridge-benchmark-core-i7-3770k,3181-10.html)

      Secondly there are no ddr4 devices now, because as the article summary said, ddr4 won't be out till next year. It will be pin incompatible with ddr3 (to protect it from wrong voltages and different signal methods). Also, ddr3-1866 and higher ram is available (I just bought some), they come with air cooled heatsinks, just take a look at any decent computer store.

      Finally a general point, ram already uses very little power compared to other system components. Each stick of ram uses about 1 watt, when compared to the processor which uses like 35 watts in a low end system, to 77 in a high end system (or 130 watts in a previous gen high end system), it's not a critical factor in power savings.

  6. Re:Isn't it time to drop the "D"? by SuricouRaven · · Score: 3, Informative

    Double the memory bus clock frequency. DDR runs two transfers per clock cycle.

  7. You can all thank me for this by eln · · Score: 5, Funny

    I just bought a new computer with DDR3 in it yesterday.

  8. Re:they're all educated stupid! by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 2

    If your CPU hadn't been educated stupid, it would already have the data it needs at any given time, rendering RAM unnecessary...

  9. Which devices? by Ranguvar · · Score: 2

    Intel has already confirmed that the 2013 "tock", Haswell, will still use DDR3.
    Not sure about AMD's position, but this sounds like DDR4 will wait on desktops and laptops for 2014 or 2015.

  10. Re:Sadly, I think you believe it ... by Zero__Kelvin · · Score: 2

    "In any case, a 0.1% increase in bandwidth performance at a cost of 2-4x latency drop in GUI responsiveness is pretty short-sighted in my opinion, no matter which way you look at it, even if he was exaggerating somewhat. Especially if the desktop is a goal for Linux (which it appears to be)."

    There is no problem. Any problem encountered amounts to improperly configured kernels. If I select Voluntary Preemption rather than Preemption, like Ubuntu does, then I too will get a much slower GUI response. Kernel developers don't take these reports seriously anymore than a car manufacturer will take a complaint that their car doesn't handle well in the snow from a person who doesn't have snow tires on their car.

    "Especially if the desktop is a goal for Linux (which it appears to be)."

    It is a goal, as is having it work on more than 25 Architectures and work on smartphones and servers. News Flash: If you don't know what you are doing - and Shilltleworth definitely doesn't - you will have problems. When you blame those problems on the Kernel the developers, they will not take you seriously. When you show up and say Hey ... I'm an anesthesiologist, but in my spare time I do some kernel coding and I think I am smarter than you and know more than Ingo Molnar about realtime, they aren't going to bow down to your delusional superiority. So all you can do is take your Ball and go home, because these boys aren't playing games and they don't have time for immature clueless people throwing hissy fits because they wanted to have some fun and it isn't fun anymore.

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