Can you imagine a 1 TB DIMM? It's coming

[Borg 386]

In-memory computing is all the rage. But there are problems with large memory servers: DIMMs use a lot of power and board space; and, DIMMs are expensive.

But when it comes to low latency and high-bandwidth the memory bus is hard to beat. But a terabyte? Diablo Technologies has announced one.

The secret is using flash instead of DRAM. Flash is much denser, lower-cost and uses much less power. And cheaper too.

As a result you can put terabyte of flash on a standard size DIMM. This moves in memory computing from expensive technology for critical apps to a much more affordable technology for many applications.

Can you imagine a 1 TB DIMM? It's coming | ZDNet

 

[sygnus21]

Interesting read. Thanks for sharing.

 

[Dwarf]

I wouldn't like to try running Memtest86+ (or other memory testing programs) on it. It would just take far too long!

That said, it sure is a nice amount to be able to brag about.

 

[lehnerus2000]

Flash?

The secret is using flash instead of DRAM. Flash is much denser, lower-cost and uses much less power. And cheaper too.

As a result you can put terabyte of flash on a standard size DIMM. This moves in memory computing from expensive technology for critical apps to a much more affordable technology for many applications.
...

• Endurance. The product is designed to handle 10 full capacity writes - 10TB for a 1TB DIMM - every day for five years.

Flash?

Given how often I see people complaining about their SSDs failing, I'll take this "with a grain of salt".

It might be alright for disposable items like phones and tablets.

 

[bobafetthotmail]

I'm wondering how this thing is going to convince the RAM memory controller that it is in fact a SSD on DDR slots/bandwith.
I really hope it is a drop-in replacement as claimed in the actual press release. They call it MCS, Memory Channel Storage and other than storage can serve as some kind of SSD-based cache, ala Android.

It's not RAM. Flash is still pretty slow compared to DRAM. Running your system on these things only is either impossible (no boot) or not practical (dozens of seconds to move the pointer by a few centimeters).

Running on DDR means its controllers are in the CPU and thus bypasses chipset and is also located very close to CPU anyway. That's why it cuts latency.

That said, it's a cool gimmick. I like these clever things.
Now we have 3 main contenders as SSD connections: SATA-express, PCI-express, and now even DDR.

Given how often I see people complaining about their SSDs failing

That's consumer-grade SSDs. They cut corners. A lot.
Server-grade SSDs are much more reliable. But cost something like 3-4 times as much per GB if not more. I mean who would pay 4000$ for the Intel SSD 910? It has 800 GB of capacity and is a PCI-e card, but... 4000$? I could build two high-end rigs with that.

This gimmick seems to be targeted at servers mainly, where such SSD cache would do a big difference by just sacrificing a few GB of RAM, at least for now. (also in the blade or 1U servers, where it would be a pain to fit a PCI-e SSD) So I assume it will use server-grade flash chips.

Still, like the idea. Clever.

 

[Wrend]

1TB flash for SSD or jump drive sounds fine. I've actually been holding out for a reasonably priced 1TB SSD, but it isn't a priority for me since I wouldn't see much benefit from using a SSD over a HDD on my system, and would likely actually see a significant performance drop in some ways without hacking how Windows works so I could continue using features such as SuperFetch.

Either way, I have 64GB of real RAM (37.6GB/s). Works great.

 

[lehnerus2000]

Ay, Carumba!

Either way, I have 64GB of real RAM (37.6GB/s). Works great.

It makes my RAM look pretty sad (~13.5 GB/s).

 

[jimbo45]

Hi there
But a 1TB DIMM on your tiny 8 inch tablet just to order a delivery from some revolting fast food outlet !!! seems overkill (in more ways than one) !!.

I could buy a passable used BMW for that amount where I am. !!! (Too many Stinkingly Rich Russian visitors currently who can't be bothered to export them back to Russia after they've bust the suspension on our "Magnificent" Roads -- but they can be repaired quite cheaply actually !!!! we've YEARS of experience of that type of engineering).

Cheers
jimbo

 

[Wrend]

Either way, I have 64GB of real RAM (37.6GB/s). Works great.

It makes my RAM look pretty sad (~13.5 GB/s).

Well, quad channel (vs. dual channel) helps it out a bit, too. I only have it running at the stock XMP of 1600MHz; not much more than your 1333MHz.

While faster is generally always better, as long as your RAM is fast enough for your needs, you're not going to see much of any significant performance improvement with faster RAM anyway. So, no worries.

 

[JerometheGiraff]

Diablo Technologies has announced one.
No thanks.

 

[lehnerus2000]

Software

Either way, I have 64GB of real RAM (37.6GB/s). Works great.

It makes my RAM look pretty sad (~13.5 GB/s).

Well, quad channel (vs. dual channel) helps it out a bit, too. I only have it running at the stock XMP of 1600MHz; not much more than your 1333MHz.

While faster is generally always better, as long as your RAM is fast enough for your needs, you're not going to see much of any significant performance improvement with faster RAM anyway. So, no worries.

Indeed.
I don't think my RAM is causing a bottleneck in my system.

The "hold ups" in my system are related to software not utilising the available CPU cores/cycles.
Only one or two features, in one or two programs, actually "max" my system out (e.g. re-encoding video and de-noising pictures).

 

[jimbo45]

Hi there
in Real world computing (not commercial servers etc but home users and small work places) lack of RAM (assuming you have more than the bare minimum installed) is very rarely a problem - the main exception is if you run a load of Virtual Machines concurrently.

Of course if you need to run 97 CPU bound applications concurrently then that's another issue - but most typical stuff a user executes on a computer is HUGELY I/O bound. The processor spends most of its time just waiting for user input.

The BIGGEST bottleneck in home computers is POOR DISKS -- a home computer fitted with 1TB RAM and only HDD's wouldn't run significantly better - if at all to an 8GB machine fitted with an SSD.

Once you've got sufficient RAM concentrate on improving the DISK I/O -- and until you have OS'es that rarely - if ever need external I/O that's the way it will stay. The current OS'es used in home / PC type machines still require DISKS whatever size of RAM is in them. (Mainframes are another matter but that's for another Forum).

Windows 237 or whatever it's called by then might make use of "Diskless OS" but even here most people want to save their data to EXTERNAL devices and you still need to obtain initial data FROM external sources -- even if it's banal things like streaming a movie from the Internet - the OS will not be any more efficient in buffering this stream to the internal 1TB DIMM rather than current 8GB DIMM'S -- The limiting speed is the data transfer from the net.

I LIKE technology - but it needs to be used in sensible situations -- not for example like tiny mobile phone cameras with midget sized noisy sensors and consumer grade lenses having 24 MP for example. !!

Cheers
jimbo.

 

[Wrend]

...

While I don't disagree with you in regards to how PCs are typically used these day, having 1TB+ of RAM could be very useful, and it could pretty easily be made into a virtual disk drive, where the HDD, SSD, or similar is just the "hard" copy, or backup that's loaded from a cold boot, and periodically written to during low computer use, or when being shut down.

The main problem with using RAM in this way is that it's volatile memory, and the data on it is lost during a power failure. Even so, because of it's extremely fast speed compared to other storage devices, it can very much be worth it. That aside, were 1TB+ of real RAM to quickly become readily available, I think it might change how computers are used, and we might not use traditional disk drives anymore, other than as backups, or the like. We would likely need a different power management system in place, and possibly battery power backup for suspended data storage on the RAM, similar to how BIOS batteries are used now.

Personally, I just leave my computer on nearly all the time and do periodic backups of my RAM drive. But I also use it as a Minecraft server, a mainframe of sorts for my Nexus 7 tablet, and crunch for BOINC on it.

Also, features such as SuperFetch make use of "excessive" RAM, working as a smart HDD cache to speed up the computer, in some cases, very significantly, like whole computer virus scans that only take a couple minutes to run that would otherwise maybe take an hour or so.

As far as I know, Windows turns off SuperFetch when using an SSD, unfortunately, as RAM is still many times faster, and if you've got enough available RAM, you might as well use it.

 

[lehnerus2000]

RAM Discs

The BIGGEST bottleneck in home computers is POOR DISKS -- a home computer fitted with 1TB RAM and only HDD's wouldn't run significantly better - if at all to an 8GB machine fitted with an SSD.

Whilst I see your point, I think you are forgetting that you can use "excess" RAM in RAM discs.
With 1 TB of RAM, most people could run everything from RAM instead of their relying on their HDDs.

Even my cheap RAM is ~26x faster (if not more) than a lot of SSDs.

While I don't disagree with you in regards to how PCs are typically used these day, having 1TB+ of RAM could be very useful, and it could pretty easily be made into a virtual disk drive, where the HDD, SSD, or similar is just the "hard" copy, or backup that's loaded from a cold boot, and periodically written to during low computer use, or when being shut down.

The main problem with using RAM in this way is that it's volatile memory, and the data on it is lost during a power failure. Even so, because of it's extremely fast speed compared to other storage devices, it can very much be worth it. That aside, were 1TB+ of real RAM to quickly become readily available, I think it might change how computers are used, and we might not use traditional disk drives anymore, other than as backups, or the like. We would likely need a different power management system in place, and possibly battery power backup for suspended data storage on the RAM.

Personally, I just leave my computer on nearly all the time and do periodic backups of my RAM drive. But I also use it as a Minecraft server, a mainframe of sorts for my Nexus 7 tablet, and crunch for BOINC on it.

Also, features such as SuperFetch make use of "excessive" RAM, working as a smart HDD cache to speed up the computer, in some cases, very significantly, like whole computer virus scans that only take a couple minutes to run that would otherwise maybe take an hour or so.

All PCs could come with a UPS.
It would only need to be able to run the RAM and HDDs for a few minutes.

 

[jimbo45]

The BIGGEST bottleneck in home computers is POOR DISKS -- a home computer fitted with 1TB RAM and only HDD's wouldn't run significantly better - if at all to an 8GB machine fitted with an SSD.

Whilst I see your point, I think you are forgetting that you can use "excess" RAM in RAM discs.
With 1 TB of RAM, most people could run everything from RAM instead of their relying on their HDDs.

Even my cheap RAM is ~26x faster (if not more) than a lot of SSDs.

While I don't disagree with you in regards to how PCs are typically used these day, having 1TB+ of RAM could be very useful, and it could pretty easily be made into a virtual disk drive, where the HDD, SSD, or similar is just the "hard" copy, or backup that's loaded from a cold boot, and periodically written to during low computer use, or when being shut down.

The main problem with using RAM in this way is that it's volatile memory, and the data on it is lost during a power failure. Even so, because of it's extremely fast speed compared to other storage devices, it can very much be worth it. That aside, were 1TB+ of real RAM to quickly become readily available, I think it might change how computers are used, and we might not use traditional disk drives anymore, other than as backups, or the like. We would likely need a different power management system in place, and possibly battery power backup for suspended data storage on the RAM.

Personally, I just leave my computer on nearly all the time and do periodic backups of my RAM drive. But I also use it as a Minecraft server, a mainframe of sorts for my Nexus 7 tablet, and crunch for BOINC on it.

Also, features such as SuperFetch make use of "excessive" RAM, working as a smart HDD cache to speed up the computer, in some cases, very significantly, like whole computer virus scans that only take a couple minutes to run that would otherwise maybe take an hour or so.

All PCs could come with a UPS.
It would only need to be able to run the RAM and HDDs for a few minutes.

Hi there
if we are going into UPS territory -- Solar Power is probably better -- devices are getting more efficient and don't need so much physical SUNSHINE - but just enough LIGHT.

BTW slightly OT but SPINACH has a great potential to be used as a BIOLOGICAL electricity generator -- shows POPEYE and Olive Oyl were right all those years ago.

Green, leafy spinach may soon power more than Popeye's biceps - MIT News Office

Here's some cartoons with POPEYE and Spinach

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MoiljvWNC3g
Cheers
jimbo

 

[Wrend]

In regards to solar power (which I myself am pretty keen on in general, mostly in a mad scientist/hermit with a cabin in the woods kind of way) you still need the availability of power when the sun isn't shining, so even then batteries are more or less a requirement. Now of course, you can still offset or even replaces the other power sources with solar power.

I think we could get away with a relatively low capacity, as lehnerus2000 alluded to, because we would only need enough power to backup the RAM, or keep it suspended, so we could probably use highly efficient batteries such as Li-ion type ones.

Not too sure about spinach, but I'll take your word on it.

 

[bobafetthotmail]

Guys? These things are flash-based SSDs using the DDR interface. It's NOT ram.

Diablo technologies stated this pretty clearly in their press release (and I summed it up in post 5), to the contrary of that sensationalism-seeking zdnet writer.

 

[Wrend]

Yeah, sorry about that. We just went off on a bit of a tangent about what-ifs.

I'm not seeing much of a benifit of using a DIMM/DDR interface over SATA III, PCIe 3.0 16x, or similar. Unless maybe flash memory is capable of much higher speeds than I'm aware of? (The GDDR5 throughput on my SLIed PCIe 3.0 16x graphics cards is roughly 143GB/s) And then you still have the limited read/write cycles compared to RAM. Seems like more of a niche solution that most won't get much benefit from.

 

[MouseGolf]

In the commercial field, fine. But we home computer users have no need for more than 16GB of Memory and no need for anything higher than 6 core CPU chips.

In fact, IMVHO we all have way more than we need for anything on the market in terms of GPU and CPU demands.

Most of us have 64 bit systems yet we have yet to see any major 64 bit software released in the form of HD games.

Yep. Nice for some super-computers using complex algorithms.

 

[Wrend]

Speak for yourself.

I make good use of my 64GB of RAM (and so does Windows 7 Pro 64bit, with features such as SuperFetch) and 12 CPU threads on my home PC.

But yeah, for what most people use their computers for these days, I'd have to agree. (And actually, even 8GB is probably the "sweet spot" for most higher-end users.) That being said, large amounts of RAM for RAM drives could potentially be very useful (as mentioned earlier).

Having flash DIMMs, on the other hand, doesn't make too much sense to me for general use (if at all). Maybe I'm missing something?