4 ms·
With 32mb of DRAM on CPU, it's not long before computer manufacturers build the power on self tests to run entirely within L3, making it possible to interact wi
by iigs 17y ago
With 32mb of DRAM on CPU, it's not long before computer manufacturers build the power on self tests to run entirely within L3, making it possible to interact with a machine with no RAM installed.
Or put another way, pretty soon on-chip DRAM will be plentiful enough that external RAM will be optional -- a lot of machines will basically be implemented with microcontroller-like integrated architecture.
- wmf 17y agoI've seen this trick used in BIOSes; using cache as RAM it's possible to do quite a bit before the memory controller has been turned on.
- Andys 17y agoCertainly, most operating systems can run in 32MB. It would be nice even if only so the BIOS can boot up and print to the screen, "Hey, RAM slot #3 isn't plugged in right!" instead of the usual black-screen-and-long-beep