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The largest memory technology breakthrough in memory technology I can imagine would be to the ability to cost effectively combine high density RAM and logic in
by Nokinside 7y ago
The largest memory technology breakthrough in memory technology I can imagine would be to the ability to cost effectively combine high density RAM and logic in the same chip.
Bandwidth intensive operations could happen inside single RAM chip or between two of them. CPU would just send instructions with parameters and no data.
- agumonkey 7y agoi have often thought about that,even limited isa on ram could help imo but people say it won't work. that said a company made some pr not long ago about a smart memory module so who knows. maybe a future of memrocessors arrays waiting
- eloff 7y agoPeople always say it won't work about everything. They're right a lot, and wrong a lot, with not much predictive power. The trick is just keep your own counsel on what could work or not.
- agumonkey 7y agotrue I'm still struggling about the paradox of dreaming of improving a world which can only happen if you ignore the world intuition about your attempt
- eloff 7y agoOne way of looking at innovation is through the lens of the efficient market hypothesis. If the market were 100% efficient there would be no opportunities, every idea that could currently work would already be exploited fully. However, the market makes mistakes. People miss opportunities, discount them, etc. Almost by definition then, innovation requires going against the intuition of the market/crowd. Phrased another way, opportunities only exist where most people think they don't. So to be an innovator, you must be a contrarian about the thing you're innovating. Once you realize that, there is no paradox. It could not be otherwise.
- agumonkey 7y agoI get that, it's just the core human emotions behind it. Fighting against the thing your trying to help feels odd. "why should I care" is something I often think nowadays. And often you end up not caring about improvement but about the pleasure of being the winner for a while and stashing profits.
- eloff 7y agoI think that's fine. There aren't too many places where innovation truly makes the world a better place. I mean negative externalities and other exceptions aside, each innovation must make at least a small improvement to the world, or nobody would pay for it. But SV companies like to claim they're changing the world, when really their app/software is not such a big deal. Salesforce is not saving lives, but maybe it saves people some time and frustration. If you can do Elon Musk style innovation, that's enviable because you could have a really strong intrinsic motivation to do that. Most of us just settle for innovating a new job for ourselves that hopefully pays a bit better and is less hateful. I'd settle for that.
- Cthulhu_ 7y agoI just find it strange that they haven't put CPU and memory on the same die, is there a specific reason for that? I mean over the years more and more components have been integrated into the CPU - north / southbridge (I forgot what those were for), GPUs, etc. Why not RAM? There's L1/2/3 cache on there as well.
- rasz 7y agoDifferent, incompatible Fab processes (diffusion, temperature) are needed for logic and Dram cells (capacitors)
- rasz 7y agoMicron dabbled in this. 2003 project Yukon (shutdown in 2004) and again 10 years later with 2013 “The Automata Processor”. All pretty much scrubbed from their website http://www.micronautomata.com/research http://www.micronautomata.com/research https://www.micron.com/about/innovations/automata-processing https://www.micron.com/about/innovations/automata-processing 404 or permanent maintenance. Tinfoil hat would say NSA contracts slurped all the product.