Neuromancer, a 1984 cyberpunk novel by William Gibson, was the first winner of the science fiction triple crown: the Nebula Award, the Philip K. Dick Award and the Hugo Award. Marking the beginning of the Sprawl trilogy, the book tells the story of Case, a washed-up computer hacker hired by an enigmatic employer.
Memory + Interfaces
Moore’s Law: From 16 kB to 16GB
James Sanders of TechRepublic has confirmed that 16 GB SO-DIMM modules are now starting to become generally available from multiple vendors. “[This] eases RAM constraints in devices that have a limited number of slots for RAM modules,” he explained.
Minding the memory gap
Mark LaPedus of Semiconductor Engineering recently reported that memory chips and storage devices are struggling to keep pace with the growing demands of data processing. “To solve the problem, chipmakers have been working on several next-generation memory types. [However], most technologies have been delayed or fallen short of their promises,” he explained.
The importance of understanding bandwidth
Did you know that the terms “latency” and “bandwidth” are frequently misused?
According to Loren Shalinsky, a Strategic Development Director at Rambus, latency refers to how long the CPU needs to wait before the first data is available. Meanwhile, bandwidth describes how fast additional data can be “streamed” after the first data point has arrived.
Memory price dip to spur DDR4 adoption
KitGuru’s Anton Shilov reports that DDR4 prices have dropped approximately 25% since late June. “According to DRAMeXchange, the world’s leading computer memory tracker, one 4Gb DDR4 chip rated to run at 2133MHz cost $3.618 on the spot market on the 28th of June 2015,” he explained.
Building bridges with DRAM vendors
Analysts at IHS Electronics say Rambus’ change in strategy from intellectual property (IP) licensing house to chipmaker has been “well received” by its customers. “Rambus has announced recently that it would begin developing server memory chipsets for the enterprise and data center server markets in a planned series of devices that are DDR4 JEDEC-compliant,” IHS Electronics stated in a recent Electronics360 news release. “These chipsets will serve to accelerate data-intensive applications such as real-time analytics, virtualization and in-memory computing.”
