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Non-binary DDR5 memory could be a game-changer for businesses everywhere
- _-----_ 4y ago[flagged]
- hulitu 4y ago[flagged]
- timerol 4y agoThis is a short article about allowing RAM sizes that aren't powers of 2, like 24 GB or 48 GB instead of just the steps 8 GB, 16 GB, 32 GB. I initially thought this was going to be about using multiple states on the data pins to encode more bits per clock.
- formerly_proven 4y agoGDDR6X uses PAM-4 - I think it's the first memory technology to do so.
- MuffinFlavored 4y ago> PAM-4 > Pulse Amplitude Modulation 4-level (PAM4) is a multilevel signal modulation format used to transmit signal. Each signal level can represent 2 bits of logic information. > NRZ > Non-Return-to-Zero (NRZ), also called Pulse Amplitude Modulation 2-level, is a binary code using low and high signal levels to represent the 1/0 information of a digital logic signal. NRZ can only transmit 1 bit, i.e. a 0 or 1, of information per signal symbol period. How is PAM4 not just 2 "NRZ"?
- Dylan16807 4y ago> How is PAM4 not just 2 "NRZ"? Because it's on one wire. (Or one wire pair for differential systems.)
- pclmulqdq 4y agoThere is some talk of PAM-3 or PAM-4 for DDR6, too, but it has nothing to do with array size or how data is stored - it's just the transfer format.
- TheDudeMan 4y agoI thought it was going to be about non-binary RAM: RAM cells that store information in one of 3+ states.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- hinkley 4y agoWhile it's possible to implement either of these, it made more sense to me that it would be both.
- xnx 4y ago3 days ago, 26 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34221726 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34221726
- moloch-hai 4y agoHere I was, hoping for ternary RAM: 1/0/-1. Didn't Burroughs field a ternary machine, once?
- shrubble 4y agoThere was a Soviet computer called Setun (Сетунь) which used ternary logic, though I can't find much in English about it (and my Russian is very poor).
- moloch-hai 4y agoThank you, that is probably what I too-vaguely recalled. Burroughs is usually the go-to, in the West, for wacky architecture. If B. could have made a reliable card reader, they might have survived longer.
- thanatos519 4y agoI thought I was going to have to keep track of each stick's chosen personal pronoun.
- nine_k 4y agoTernary is fun but hard to integrate with existing systems. The headline made me think about storing two bits per cell, like MLC flash does, with 4 levels of charge instead if 2.
- cm2187 4y agoCan’t you use ternary internally but exposed binary to the system?
- kmeisthax 4y agoThat's what PAM-4 signaling does. Quaternary signals can be easily broken up to binary ones on the other end because the bits divide cleanly. For the same reason why hexadecimal encodes binary very well. Signalling systems that don't divide cleanly into a number of bits are more complicated to work with; you need to group bits together into another group of terts[0] and assign states to each. It's less like "picking the bits between the bits out" and more like MFM/GCR encoding for magnetic media. [0] Ternary digits. No clue what the official name is for these but I am not going to go with the obvious choice.
- malfist 4y agoCan't wait to get my 1TB RAM that's actually only 931GB
- TheFlyingFish 4y agoAh yes, the "advertiser's gigabyte". Sort of like a "baker's dozen" but in reverse.
- Night_Thastus 4y agoThey are honest in how many terabytes/gigabytes. But the computer doesn't report gigabytes (GB). It reports Gibibytes, GiB. Different units. Not saying it's not a dumb situation, just why it's happening.
- Dylan16807 4y ago"ibi" is a retcon. It's not why.
- Night_Thastus 4y agoThe phrase is newer, sure, but what was measured hasn't changed. Computers always measured their memory base-2, manufacturers always labeled using base-10.* If software developers were: 1. Measuring using base-2 (what we would now call Kibi, Mebi, Gibi) 2. Reporting memory using base-10 prefixes (kilo, mega, giga) Then its those software developers, not advertisements/sales that were the problem. Those prefixes mean a very specific thing accross all fields. Using kilo to mean 1024 instead of 1000 is objectively wrong. No other field does that.
- Dylan16807 4y agoSome manufacturers used base 10. Others didn't. > objectively wrong So is assuming a "byte" has 8 bits. But outside of prescriptivist pedantry, gigabyte has long been used for mostly base two.
- lifeinthevoid 4y agoA game-changer is something else imo.
- jutworks 4y ago[flagged]
- someweirdperson 4y ago[flagged]
- Animats 4y agoECC RAM should cost 1/8 more than non-ECC, not 2x. But no, it's "enterprise".
- Dylan16807 4y agoActually ECC costs 1/4 more to make now because of the split channeling on DDR5.
- firmnoodle 4y ago[flagged]
- fnordpiglet 4y agoThis is the least exciting news I’ve read in my life.
- Animats 4y agoRight. Just what we needed, more product differentiation in RAM. Like Intel's 22 versions of the same basic CPU. 10% faster! 2x cache! ...
- mlyle 4y ago24GB and 48GB DIMMs are useful, and that's what this is about-- allowing non-power-of-2 sizes (in this case, 3x a power-of-2 is now allowed). This has the potential to noticeably reduce costs in many cases.
- javajosh 4y agoWell yeah but it's not interesting. It's like saying there's a whole new kind of tire - that is 13.5" wide unlike the 13" tires we're used to. Useful? Yes. interesting? No.
- mlyle 4y agoWhat's interesting is subjective. It was never worth it to go to the halfway points before. Slower progress in RAM (and a higher proportion of large system cost being RAM) makes it more worthwhile to fine tune this. I think it's interesting because it's yet another symptom that we're just not getting more density of memories-- now it's justified for memory controllers to be slightly fancier to deal with this. I wish I could have more readily built a 96GB system instead of the 128GB one that I just did. I wanted overkill (more than 64GB), but I didn't need 2x overkill.
- Dylan16807 4y agoIt was never worth it, but "worth it" is a pretty slim difference here. And we had triple channel memory before, which eats of most of the novelty. > I wish I could have more readily built a 96GB system instead of the 128GB one that I just did. Couldn't you have put one 32GB and one 16GB module in each channel?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- datastack 4y agoThis reads like an AI generated nonsense article.
- JackC 4y agoNo kidding, the last paragraph in particular sounds written by GPT: > Overall, the release of the non-binary DDR5 RAM is a major milestone in the tech industry and is expected to have a significant impact on the way that devices are designed and used. It is likely that we will see a wide range of devices adopting the new memory technology in the coming years, as businesses look to take advantage of its many benefits. https://openai-openai-detector.hf.space/ https://openai-openai-detector.hf.space/ rates the article as 99.98% fake; I wonder if it is in fact an AI-generated summary of the Register article it links to. (Edit to add: the same tool rates the source Register article as 99.98% real.)
- kstrauser 4y agoI was imagining something like super fast analog not-quite-precise storage for things that don't need a huge number of IEEE-754 bits, like maybe graphics cards. I bet there are lots of applications for fast FPUs that don't care about a few LSBs.
- karmasimida 4y agoSo who is making it and where is it shown? This isn't news IMO, it is an advertisement to sell something that is non-existent
- 6d6b73 4y agoNon-binary? Enough with this LGBTQRSTUV propaganda! :) Downvoting avalanche in 3...2..
- pnemonic 4y agoI thought your joke was funny...
- virtualritz 4y agoFinally. Gender pronouns for computer memory.