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DDR4 May Replace Mobile Memory For Less
Lucas123 writes "The upcoming shift from Double Data Rate 3 (DDR3) RAM to its successor, DDR4, will herald a significant boost in both memory performance and capacity for data center hardware and consumer products alike. Because of the greater density, 2X performance and lower cost, the upcoming specification and products will for the first time mean DDR may be used in mobile devices instead of LPDDR. Today, mobile devices use low-power DDR (LPDDR) memory, the current iteration of which uses 1.2v of power. While the next generation of mobile memory, LPDDR3, will further reduce that power consumption (probably by 35% to 40%), it will also likely cost 40% more than DDR4 memory."
With RAM that fast and cheap, 640kB ought to be enough for anyone!
Whoops, I mean 6.40 x 10^7 kB. THAT ought to do it.
There's a spot in User Info for World of Warcraft account names? Really?
Now we just have to wait for Intel to give a goddamn about it. Quick, somebody tell AMD to be competitive again for a few months.
I gave up talking about "need" when it comes to mobile phones long ago. It is really about "want" (for all but a very few folks who have a real need for work - most who think they "need" it for work, don't). It took me awhile to move from an old dumb phone to a smart phone. But I was finally honest with myself - and damn it I wanted one. I got one and was thrilled with all the things I can do with it. I still wholeheartedly consider smart phones a luxury - but I am glad I can afford one and finally talked myself into parting with the money and monthly payment for a data plan (I'm sort of a cheapskate). The whole family of four has them now, three of us on our second generation of them.
Go ahead and laugh. Your phone does more than I need too. But it doesn't do more than what I want.
And people with "normal" phones will continue to laugh at you because they spend $50 on a phone that does more than /they/ need...
People have different needs.
1.2V of power??!! This is supposed to be news for nerds. Nerds should know the difference between voltage and power.
Volts are not a measure of power. Watts are.
More importantly, energy to accomplish a particular task is what really matters. Though usually, we're just given average or typical power numbers. But your mobile device's battery stores energy, not power or potential.
At least the voltage is proportional to power and energy...
This may be the most confusing article summary I've ever read. I read it 5 times before I gave up trying to understand it.
Headline: DDR4 May Replace Mobile Memory For Less
Summary: LPDDR3, will further reduce that power consumption (probably by 35% to 40%), it will also likely cost 40% more than DDR4 memory."
...a significant boost in software bloat to nullify all that great hardware progress. I'm still stunned as to why anything takes perceptible time on a modern computer. Things should just pop and wink into existence at the merest click.
Yep, it makes you wonder why we bothered with old technology at all. Why didn't we start using today's computers fifty years ago? Think of all the time and effort it would have saved!
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
In order for a spec to be useful, you need to be able to actually build the specified system. The reason they don't encompass things that they can't currently build in the specs is that they want the specs to be useful.
p.s that was both pedantic and shallow....and also a smidge of sarcasm
I'm glad they keep it reasonably simple with DDR(1), 2, 3, and now 4. I dread the arrival of RAM2015 or somesuch nonsense one day.
With Micron purchasing Elpida, Micron gonna get to make DDR4 DRAM with cell area of 4F2.
On the other hand, Samsung's DRAM is still occupying cell area of 6F2.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
I don't care if it costs less. What are they selling it for?
After DDR5, there'll probably be DDRMAX, DDRMAX2, and DDR Extreme, if history is any indication.
I imagine someone could synthesize some sort of gel which would transport oxygen and 'breath' that instead of air. But that's just getting pedantic.
This is not the funny you're looking for.
I'm waiting for DDR MAX 2 and DDR Extreme. The difficulty level in the early ones is just- ... Ohhh we're talking about memory here. Carry on, folks. Ignore me.
"Our country is not nearly so overrun with the bigoted as it is overrun with the broadminded." -Archbishop Fulton Sheen
Technology to make it work at X speed and Y voltage didn't exist at the time, and for something like a memory module you don't design it to take a range of voltages or speeds.
My Android phone was $70. It does all the things. I pay $17/m for unlimited call and text and maybe other things, I don't know. I barely use the call and text, anyway.
Below please find a table listing DDR / DDR2 / DDR3
http://chipdesignmag.com/images/idesign/misc/defazio_table1.gif
Does anyone have the numbers for DDR4 ?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
" Experiments have been conducted on lab animals to determine animal survivability when submerged in highly oxygenated Fluorinert. Lab rats have survived for extended periods in such an environment, but invariably died due to lung trauma after removal. [...] [in the film The Abyss] several rats were shown actually breathing Fluorinert."
You aren't too current on the last 20 years of RAM prices, are you? LPDDR costs a lot of money compared to DDR.
You might want to read http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006QMT7FA
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
Some graphics cards have GDDR5 in it, why not use that?
You think all Intel has to do is say "Hey! We'd like to support DDR4," and it just happens?
Not so much, actually. First off it has to actually, you know, be a real specification. The spec isn't final and released yet. They can't really start to use something that isn't final and subject to change.
Once it is actually out comes the harder part. They have to redesign the memory controller, which is on the chip now, to accommodate it. DDR4 isn't "DDR3 but faster," it is a different spec that works differently. Big different is no more RAM channels with multi-sticks. It is a point-to-point memory interface. So that is going to require a different setup, particularly to support large numbers of memory sticks. Also along with that the motherboards will have to be redesigned to accommodate the new RAM. Again given the point-to-point nature, the wiring would be different even if all the connectors were the same (which they aren't).
Then of course those new chips have to be fabbed, tested and made ready for sale, and those boards have to be rolled out. After all that, they still need memory. The memory manufacturers will have to retool their lines and get DDR4 chips and sticks produced in quantity to be sold.
When all that is done, then DDR4 can hit the market and go in your computer (if you purchase a new board, and processor).
So, maybe give it 6-12 months, rather than just bitching at Intel for not "giving a damn"? Just because you don't understand how something works, doesn't mean it is easy to do. Implementing a new RAM spec isn't something you just snap your fingers on, it isn't a tiny patch for software. It is a pretty major thing.
You'll probably see it in systems next year. Intel's roadmap says it will be coming to Haswell-EX server chips first, I haven't seen what AMD's plans are.
Again because as the grand parent said, the equation is one of capacitance, frequency, and voltage. So when you produce something of equal frequency, with lower voltage, it'll use lower power. Watts isn't normally specified because that depends on the specific frequency you are using, how many chips, etc. As a designer you can compare the voltage differences to tell you what kind of power savings you can expect. The specifics of that translated to watts is based on your design.
It may not be technically correct, but it is the terminology used and the people who it is relevant to understand it. Also if you think on it a little, it'll make sense.
Also there's the fact that the people who post things like that are the whiny ones who had problems. I've never posted my SSD experiences before, because I'm happy, but here they are:
I have 3 256GB SSDs, one in my laptop, two in my desktop. All have worked without flaw since their purchase 11 months ago. Thus I never felt the need to go whine online about them. I've suffered no failures, no data loss. They just work.
Now, do SSDs die? Sure. So do HDDs. In terms of personal HDDs I've had about 5 fail on me over the course of my 20ish years using computers. At work, I've seen hundreds fail. Some are dead on arrival, some fail within hours of install, some fail after months or a year, some are still going strong 10+ years later.
SSDs are fine. You need to back up your data, but then that is true of anything. If you don't back up your data and have never lost anything to HDD failure that is luck, not because HDDs don't fail.
If you want an SSD the only issue should be cost. They are expensive, about $1/GB at best and as much as $3/GB for some of the really high performance/lots of write cycles stuff. HDDs are more like $0.08/GB. However if the price is acceptable, then get one. Back up the data on it to a HDD (since HDDs are cheaper, and a different technology) and you are fine. Could it die? Sure, if it does, RMA it, get a new one, and go back to what you were doing.
As others have noted, the tech wasn't there.
However, in the more abstract sense, you can only extrapolate models so far beyond the furthest point for which you have data before the models break down. But you don't know when that will happen, it depends on how good the model is and you can't know that in advance.
Specs are therefore reasonably conservative. They'll go a little bit beyond what's feasible right now, but only a little. Just enough to give wiggle-room and space for progress, but not to the point where there's a serious risk of problems developing.
Examples of reasons why they need to be careful: both electron tunneling and thermal noise will generating errors, yields at lower scales aren't always predictable, alternative techniques for performing the same function at the higher speed can be incompatible with accelerating the original technique, etc.
A spec is supposed to work for anything it is a spec for - manufacturers do revise/debug specs but they vastly prefer to release upgraded versions as compatibility issues and implementation details can all be carefully documented and properly presented.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
At least this got modded down, but it's threads like this where you discover how many ignorant 'nerds' there are on /.
Ohm's law does not only describe resistors. While the schoolboy formulation V=IR (also, admittedly, the law Ohm actually published) describes the instantaneous relationship of voltage and current through a resistor, in modern engineering and physics it is generalised in various ways. For circuit analysis, it becomes V=IZ, where Z is the complex impedance, and describes the time-varying relationship of voltage and current in resistors, capacitors, inductors and pretty much anything else you will find in a circuit. For things other than circuits, the generalisation J=E\sigma describes the relationship between electric field intensity, current density and conductivity.
While certain materials are described as 'non-Ohmic', what this really means is that \sigma is not a constant for those materials and depends on something else, usually the value of E.
Slashdot - News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters, in ISO-8859-1 Has just realised that beta makes this signature redundant
You forgot the most important part of that quote: citation needed.
Will DDR4 have the same slot pinout, or a different one from DDR3? If I have a PC w/ DDR3, can a DDR4 substitute it, or are we looking @ a change in a whole lot of things, from chipsets to the RAM itself?
Encrypt your disks, and that won't be a problem.
Reliability is the reason I havent gone SSD yet.
My experience is that SSD's fail more often than hard drives, more catastrophically, and without warning, especially on the low end.
But I still use them because they're super fast. Put them in a mirror. Use SLC where it's really important to not have a mirror half fail.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Here's the problem: You are mad about the selection bias of my story, but ok with the selection bias of some dude whining on Newegg? I've never seen a test showing SSDs are more reliable or unreliable, and I suspect neither have you (since I suspect none have been done).
Given the lack of such evidence, you simply have to go on other things you use normally to buy components like brand reliability and warranty. Well, in the warranty department, SSDs are fine, 3 years is the norm, 5 years is available from some manufacturers. That's fairly similar to HDDs. Also, good chance they figure most SSDs will live at least 3 years if they warranty them for that long, as they don't want to be paying for replacements.
I just don't get where the mistrust for SSDs comes from. Near as I can tell, it is just from whiny people. Some dude gets an SSD, it fails, he gets crybaby and posts bad reviews on Newegg, Amazon, his blog, and so on. This happens a few times and it is "common knowledge" that SSDs are unreliable despite no actual evidence of that.
I'm just pointing out that those of us that are happy don't normally feel the need to post about it.