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It’d be nice if there were a consumer version of this. I have plenty of old RAM.

by jzb 3mo ago

keanebean86 3mo ago
Gigabyte had a ram disk addin card years ago. Not exactly the same but since it's presented as a storage device you could use it as OS swap space. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-RAM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-RAM
- edb_123 3mo ago
  CXL Vistara reminds me a bit of the AST Rampage 286 memory expansion ISA card I had in my 286 back in the day, as a kid. Things go in circles, I guess.
- darksim905 3mo ago
  observation that I've noticed recently: what's with wikipedia downsizing the hell out of images site wide? Every image I look at is garbage and I have to dig through multiple links to find the original.
  - 3form 3mo ago
    I saw this with screenshots already for like 10-15 years now? It's some overly conservative policy to comply with fair use. I recall a page outlining that you should basically pick the minimum possible resolution that still allows you to distinguish the features of interest. I get why they do this, but it's really horrible from archiving and accessibility perspectives... And I would like to treat Wikipedia as one of the main archives of the world's collective knowledge. All this goes to my "world has gone insane over IP law" bucket. Similar to people disallowing their games being streamed or even shared in screenshots.
    - qlte 3mo ago
      I don’t think that’s applicable here? It says the source photo was uploaded as original content by a user in 2011 as a 400x300 JPEG created on an iPhone 3GS per EXIF data, with copyright released as public domain. There’s nothing to suggest it was downscaled in the log or copyright encumbered, it just looks like it’s old/small. I often click into Wikipedia/Wikimedia Commons images where the original is available as a super high resolution option in addition to various smaller thumbnails. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:IRAM13a.JPG https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:IRAM13a.JPG
Aurornis 3mo ago
Adding the RAM to the system this way isn’t exactly like expanding the main system RAM. The RAM is connected over a PCIe type link so it doesn’t behave like the primary RAM. It’s better for server farms where engineers can customize and tune for an architecture like this. There have been some cards that use RAM as a storage device. They were never popular because having to set it up as a disk had very limited use cases.
- rpcope1 3mo ago
  To someone not familiar with CXL that still gives the wrong impression. As far as I have seen, CXL is supposed to be cache coherent, and should require less invasive rework (if any at all) of applications to take advantage of it; that's part of the enablement of memory disaggregation that CXL is pushing towards (similar to the storage disaggregation push a decade or so ago).
  - Aurornis 3mo ago
    True, but it’s still another level of NUMA with lower throughput and higher latency. In consumer boards with limited extra high speed lanes it could be a lot slower than main DDR5 RAM. Wouldn’t be fun to have your game or app run a lot slower if it happened to be loaded into the wrong part of memory.
zamadatix 3mo ago
The sensibility is a bit different since consumer systems don't really have much bandwidth back to the CPU. Given the current resale prices of DDR4, might as well just sell it and get some NVMe drives.

It’d be nice if there were a consumer version of this. I have plenty of old RAM.

by jzb 3mo ago

It’d be nice if there were a consumer version of this. I have plenty of old RAM.

Gigabyte had a ram disk addin card years ago. Not exactly the same but since it's presented as a storage device you could use it as OS swap space. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-RAM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-RAM

edb_123 3mo ago
CXL Vistara reminds me a bit of the AST Rampage 286 memory expansion ISA card I had in my 286 back in the day, as a kid. Things go in circles, I guess.
darksim905 3mo ago
observation that I've noticed recently: what's with wikipedia downsizing the hell out of images site wide? Every image I look at is garbage and I have to dig through multiple links to find the original.
- 3form 3mo ago
  I saw this with screenshots already for like 10-15 years now? It's some overly conservative policy to comply with fair use. I recall a page outlining that you should basically pick the minimum possible resolution that still allows you to distinguish the features of interest. I get why they do this, but it's really horrible from archiving and accessibility perspectives... And I would like to treat Wikipedia as one of the main archives of the world's collective knowledge. All this goes to my "world has gone insane over IP law" bucket. Similar to people disallowing their games being streamed or even shared in screenshots.
  - qlte 3mo ago
    I don’t think that’s applicable here? It says the source photo was uploaded as original content by a user in 2011 as a 400x300 JPEG created on an iPhone 3GS per EXIF data, with copyright released as public domain. There’s nothing to suggest it was downscaled in the log or copyright encumbered, it just looks like it’s old/small. I often click into Wikipedia/Wikimedia Commons images where the original is available as a super high resolution option in addition to various smaller thumbnails. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:IRAM13a.JPG https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:IRAM13a.JPG

Aurornis 3mo ago

Adding the RAM to the system this way isn’t exactly like expanding the main system RAM. The RAM is connected over a PCIe type link so it doesn’t behave like the primary RAM. It’s better for server farms where engineers can customize and tune for an architecture like this. There have been some cards that use RAM as a storage device. They were never popular because having to set it up as a disk had very limited use cases.

rpcope1 3mo ago
To someone not familiar with CXL that still gives the wrong impression. As far as I have seen, CXL is supposed to be cache coherent, and should require less invasive rework (if any at all) of applications to take advantage of it; that's part of the enablement of memory disaggregation that CXL is pushing towards (similar to the storage disaggregation push a decade or so ago).
- Aurornis 3mo ago
  True, but it’s still another level of NUMA with lower throughput and higher latency. In consumer boards with limited extra high speed lanes it could be a lot slower than main DDR5 RAM. Wouldn’t be fun to have your game or app run a lot slower if it happened to be loaded into the wrong part of memory.

zamadatix 3mo ago

The sensibility is a bit different since consumer systems don't really have much bandwidth back to the CPU. Given the current resale prices of DDR4, might as well just sell it and get some NVMe drives.