4 ms·
This was an expected step of the evolution of the Memory Hierarchy. RAM is just bigger-but-slower CPU cache. Swapfile is just bigger-but-slower RAM. There's alw
by voxgen 6y ago
This was an expected step of the evolution of the Memory Hierarchy. RAM is just bigger-but-slower CPU cache. Swapfile is just bigger-but-slower RAM. There's always a trade-off between size and speed.
Incorporating RAM into the CPU package gives a big performance boost at the expense of maximum capacity. To compensate for the reduced performance in tasks that require more memory, you can either add another layer into the Memory Hierarchy (i.e. CPU Cache -> Fast RAM -> Slow RAM -> Swapfile), or you can improve Swapfile speed. It appears Apple have done the latter - they claim their SSD is up to 2x faster.
Video game consoles have done something similar with the latest generation. Only a 2x increase in RAM from the last generation (compared to an 8x/16x increase from the generation before), but a focus on storage performance.
- BatteryMountain 6y agoJisss to be honest the new PlayStation and Xbox hardware is amazing, specificially how the memory/cpu/mobo and streaming system will work. Wish we had something like that in PC land. Then again, their workflow is basically streaming data from disk, thus this round they optimized that hell out of that chunk of the pipeline. Hopefully AMD learn lessons from that sphere and can bring some of that to our sphere.
- augusto-moura 6y agoThe problem I see with the PlayStation 5 at least is repairs, if the solded SSD kick the bucket you will probably need to: buy a new chip from Sony and resolder the fault one (or even worse, resolder the entire SSD chips because you can't rely in which cell is physically the data and swapping the cell will probably corrupt the entire disk), or buy a new PS5/Motherboard You can't just swap the hard disk like before, I'm sure this you be a major headache with repairs