3 ms·

Wish GPUs came with upgradable RAM slots like SODIMMs in laptops

userbinator 6y ago
They used to, some of them in the 90s had expandable VRAM: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f8/DIAMONDSTEALTH3D2000-top.JPG https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f8/DIAMONDS... https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6b/Matrox_Millennium_G200_SGRAM_REV_A_1998.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6b/Matrox_M... http://vgamuseum.info/images/palcal/profi/665_elsa_xl_top_hq.jpg http://vgamuseum.info/images/palcal/profi/665_elsa_xl_top_hq...
dathinab 6y ago
After apple setting a precedence with packaged RAM I fear in the future upgradeable RAM might become rare on everything but high end workstations. I hope this will not happen, but especially certain laptop companies always wanted to have non upgradeable RAM and only stepped back because users where to unhappy about it. But now they will point to Apple and tell you that's necessary for fast low power laptops with long battery live.
- pjmlp 6y ago
  What precedence? Do you think we could extend the memory of most 8 and 16 bit home computers? If we wanted to upgrade our computers, beyond plugging stuff on the external expansion port, we had to buy a new model. The PC was the precedence, and only due to IBM losing control of it. Now with laptops and tablets becoming the standard consumer computers, we are back into the 80-90's computer form models, just instead of plugging them into the TV, the screen comes along for the ride. And actually it was great, because it meant developers had to learn to extract all the juice of the computers people had, instead of expecting us to spend money upgrading.
  - villgax 6y ago
    The screen point is quite valid, a decade of 1080p everywhere just went by on laptops
  - StillBored 6y ago
    Do you think we could extend the memory of most 8 and 16 bit home computers? I'm not sure how your defining "most" home computers, but the c64/128 & apple ][ line were some of the most popular and they definitely had ram upgrades. https://www.c64-wiki.com/wiki/Commodore_REU https://www.c64-wiki.com/wiki/Commodore_REU The soldered laptop ram thing, is fairly recent and by no means universal. I suspect it would be rarer than it is, if retailers put a little note on the machine descriptions "upgradeable RAM/upgradable disk" but they can't even be bothered to put the cpu clock rates (or sometimes even the core count) on the machine descriptions.
    - pjmlp 6y ago
      That is something that gets plugged on the external ports, as I mentioned. Which I do confess never to have seen, as C64 and Apple weren't anywhere to be seen in the Iberian Peninsula.
      - StillBored 6y ago
        Well, ram upgrades on those machines didn't just plug into slots. Various C64 upgrades were replacement RAM chips, or piggy backed on the existing chips. Same for the II line, although frequently there were RAM upgrade slots (like the IIGS for example). But beyond that most of these machines had the ram and slots in the same clock domain (aka a "local bus"). So a plugin card's ram basically ran at the same rate as the onboard ram. Of course there were often banking issues on the 8bit machines, but that happened regardless of where the ram was located as things like the 128k IIC (a machine without slots) were banked from the factory, and various mod level upgrades replaced various chips on the board, until the later revisions when apple provided a sanctions mechanism for upgrading the machine to 1M.
- StillBored 6y ago
  Well given Apple doesn't appear to be gaining a latency advantage from their ram on package the jury seems to still be out on that theory. OTOH, the trend has been to put HBM/edram/etc on package for a while. Various intel/etc products have done that, which provides a fast tier of memory that you put in a local NUMA domain. Then put the actual DRAM in its own domain. The problem so far is that strategy doesn't actually work well for most applications because they aren't sufficiently NUMA aware to take advantage of it. Instead what ends up happening is the "fast" ram ends up being a LLC tier. It all ends up sorta being a physics thing though, it seems as you increase capacity, distance tends to grow as well. Meaning that there will be a limit to how much RAM they can toss on package and still gain a latency advantage over just soldering it to the board.
zeckalpha 6y ago
SoCs are the future, much lower latency. Perhaps the SoC can be upgradable like the Raspberry Pi CM.

They used to, some of them in the 90s had expandable VRAM: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f8/DIAMONDSTEALTH3D2000-top.JPG https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f8/DIAMONDS... https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6b/Matrox_Millennium_G200_SGRAM_REV_A_1998.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6b/Matrox_M... http://vgamuseum.info/images/palcal/profi/665_elsa_xl_top_hq.jpg http://vgamuseum.info/images/palcal/profi/665_elsa_xl_top_hq...

dathinab 6y ago

After apple setting a precedence with packaged RAM I fear in the future upgradeable RAM might become rare on everything but high end workstations. I hope this will not happen, but especially certain laptop companies always wanted to have non upgradeable RAM and only stepped back because users where to unhappy about it. But now they will point to Apple and tell you that's necessary for fast low power laptops with long battery live.

pjmlp 6y ago
What precedence? Do you think we could extend the memory of most 8 and 16 bit home computers? If we wanted to upgrade our computers, beyond plugging stuff on the external expansion port, we had to buy a new model. The PC was the precedence, and only due to IBM losing control of it. Now with laptops and tablets becoming the standard consumer computers, we are back into the 80-90's computer form models, just instead of plugging them into the TV, the screen comes along for the ride. And actually it was great, because it meant developers had to learn to extract all the juice of the computers people had, instead of expecting us to spend money upgrading.
- villgax 6y ago
  The screen point is quite valid, a decade of 1080p everywhere just went by on laptops
- StillBored 6y ago
  Do you think we could extend the memory of most 8 and 16 bit home computers? I'm not sure how your defining "most" home computers, but the c64/128 & apple ][ line were some of the most popular and they definitely had ram upgrades. https://www.c64-wiki.com/wiki/Commodore_REU https://www.c64-wiki.com/wiki/Commodore_REU The soldered laptop ram thing, is fairly recent and by no means universal. I suspect it would be rarer than it is, if retailers put a little note on the machine descriptions "upgradeable RAM/upgradable disk" but they can't even be bothered to put the cpu clock rates (or sometimes even the core count) on the machine descriptions.
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    That is something that gets plugged on the external ports, as I mentioned. Which I do confess never to have seen, as C64 and Apple weren't anywhere to be seen in the Iberian Peninsula.
    - StillBored 6y ago
      Well, ram upgrades on those machines didn't just plug into slots. Various C64 upgrades were replacement RAM chips, or piggy backed on the existing chips. Same for the II line, although frequently there were RAM upgrade slots (like the IIGS for example). But beyond that most of these machines had the ram and slots in the same clock domain (aka a "local bus"). So a plugin card's ram basically ran at the same rate as the onboard ram. Of course there were often banking issues on the 8bit machines, but that happened regardless of where the ram was located as things like the 128k IIC (a machine without slots) were banked from the factory, and various mod level upgrades replaced various chips on the board, until the later revisions when apple provided a sanctions mechanism for upgrading the machine to 1M.
StillBored 6y ago
Well given Apple doesn't appear to be gaining a latency advantage from their ram on package the jury seems to still be out on that theory. OTOH, the trend has been to put HBM/edram/etc on package for a while. Various intel/etc products have done that, which provides a fast tier of memory that you put in a local NUMA domain. Then put the actual DRAM in its own domain. The problem so far is that strategy doesn't actually work well for most applications because they aren't sufficiently NUMA aware to take advantage of it. Instead what ends up happening is the "fast" ram ends up being a LLC tier. It all ends up sorta being a physics thing though, it seems as you increase capacity, distance tends to grow as well. Meaning that there will be a limit to how much RAM they can toss on package and still gain a latency advantage over just soldering it to the board.

zeckalpha 6y ago

SoCs are the future, much lower latency. Perhaps the SoC can be upgradable like the Raspberry Pi CM.