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Also in that article: "Still, in the future, they will use memory on modules featuring a Compute Express Link (CXL) specification and connected to host CPUs us
by tenebrisalietum 3y ago
Also in that article:
"Still, in the future, they will use memory on modules featuring a Compute Express Link (CXL) specification and connected to host CPUs using a PCIe interface."
A long time ago you would add RAM to your system by plugging in an ISA card with RAM on it - this is the days before SIPPs, SIMMs, DIMMs, SODIMMs, PCMCIA, PC Card, etc. Funny to see the modern PCIe equivalent.
Could we then connect a big box of RAM to a system via Thunderbolt? SuperReadyBoost? USB4 RAM Box?
- rasz 3y agoIt worked because ISA _was_ the CPU BUS back then. CXL memory can only be treated as paging storage, random access is abysmal.
- MisterTea 3y ago> Thunderbolt? SuperReadyBoost? USB4 RAM Box? If they are memory mapped into the processors address space them yes. Thunderbolt is some sort of hokey multiplexed DP+PCIe thing while USB 4 is more network like and can encapsulate USB3, PCIe, DP and other protocols in USB4 packets. Though honestly I'd rather deprecate USB and move to a more converged memory mapped Ethernet that carries USB3/DP/PCIe/etc packets. PCI is a software configurable bus which lets you programmatically map the card into the machines address space. Historically the BIOS/firmware did the initial PCI mapping to get disk controllers running so you can load boot code, then the OS drivers take over. Before PCI in the PC we had jumpers to select memory adresses, IRQ and DMA lines followed by the less capable and flaky ISA PnP (Plug and Play) standard.