6 ms·

Is there a reason why are not seeing more use sram (other than cost)?

• jeffbee 1y ago
  Do we need another reason?
• DSMan195276 1y ago
  It costs more because it's less dense than DRAM - the same transistor count that produces 2GB of DRAM can only fit a fraction of that in SRAM because it's 6 transistors per SRAM cell vs. 1 + capacitor for a DRAM cell. Power usage is also generally worse since the SRAM cells use continuous power to hold their state, while DRAM cells only use power during read/write/refresh (relying on the caps to hold their charge for a short time while not actively powered).
• jared_hulbert 1y ago
  We are seeing more SRAM in the form of CPU caches, this is one of the things that is actually scaling still. Are you asking why not use SRAM in something like a DIMM? You could do this. Here's why I wouldn't advocate for this. Assume you had zero latency SRAM in your DIMM. It still takes ~40ns to get out of the processor by the time you go through all the memory controller and phy. So you'd have an incredibly expensive but small DIMM taking up limited pins on the processor package/die. Even then you'd only cut the memory latency in half, and we'd still be stuck at a new lower flatline. Incorporating the SRAM in die is different story, you get to scale the latency and the bandwidth closer to the other capabilities of the cores.