Hacker Remix

How DRAM changed the world

42 points by sandwichsphinx 5 hours ago | 16 comments

seunosewa 1 hour ago

The article doesn't properly explain how DRAM is different from SRAM. DRAM has to constantly refresh itself in order not to 'forget' its contents.

ysofunny 1 hour ago

> "Typically, SRAM is used for the cache and internal registers of a CPU while DRAM is used for a computer's main memory."

-- wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Static_random-access_memory

neom 4 hours ago

I miss RAM. I feel like if you lived through that 90s RAM frenzy, you probably miss RAM too. It was crazy how quickly we move through SDRAM/DDR, prices dropped and you could make real increases in performance year over year for not much money. I'm sure some of it was the software being able to capture the hw improvements, but that certainly was my fav period in tech so far.

gregmac 1 hour ago

I am confused by this comment. You said "RAM" (contrast to "DRAM" in the article title) but I think you are talking about DRAM sticks? But those have not gone away (other than with some laptops where it's soldered on and not upgradable).

Going from 8MB to 32MB in the 90s is still comparable to going from 8GB to 32GB today.

One difference is just that the price isn't dropping at the same rate anymore [1], so it doesn't make as much sense to buy small and re-buy next year when bigger chips are cheaper (they won't be much cheaper).

Another is that DRAM speed is at the top of an S-curve [2], so there's not that same increase in speed year-over-year, though arguably the early 2000's were when speeds most dramatically increased.

[1] https://aiimpacts.org/trends-in-dram-price-per-gigabyte/

[2] http://blog.logicalincrements.com/2016/03/ultimate-guide-com...

thr0w 2 hours ago

Getting a new stick of RAM was so damn exciting in the 90s.

UltraSane 1 hour ago

RAM speeds are still improving pretty fast. I'm running DDR5 6000 and DDR5 8300 is available. GDDR7 uses PAM3 to get 40Gbps

malfist 52 minutes ago

How does that contrast with the increase cas latency in real world terms? (Actually asking, not being combative, I don't know)

vbezhenar 35 minutes ago

Last time I checked, DDR5 and DDR4 latency was basically the same. Very little progress there. May be with integrating DRAM and CPU on the same package, some latency wins will be available just because wires will be shorter, but nothing groundbreaking.

IshKebab 3 hours ago

Nah the biggest jump in performance by far was SSDs. It was a huge step so software had no chance to "catch up" initially.

MichaelZuo 4 hours ago

Dennard scaling for SRAM has certainly halted, as demonstrated by TSMC’s 3nm process vs 5 nm.

What’s the likely ETA for DRAM?

wmf 4 hours ago

Now? Prices have been flat for 15 years and DRAM has been stuck on 10 nm for a while.

philipkglass 3 hours ago

That's overstating the flatness of prices. In 2009, the best price recorded here was 10 dollars per gigabyte:

https://jcmit.net/memoryprice.htm

Recently DDR4 RAM is available at well under $2/GB, some closer to $1/GB.

jychang 1 hour ago

$1/GB? That's around the price SSDs took over from HDDs...

ksec 4 hours ago

Not soon as DRAM is mostly on older node. But overall cost reduction of DRAM is moving very very slowly.

metta2uall 2 hours ago

"8K video recording" - does anyone really need this? Seems like for negligible gain in quality people are pushed to sacrifice their storage & battery, and so upgrade their hardware sooner...

Pet_Ant 21 minutes ago

Well for starters 8k video lets you zoom in and crop and still get 4k in the end.