AMD licenced 2nd generation Z-RAM!

[Lightman]

Better, faster, more efficient, prepared for 45nm and less...

http://www.eetimes.com/news/semi/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=196601127

:toast:

[[XC] Teroedni]

Yeah i just read it on http://techreport.com/onearticle.x/11371 Impressive


According to EE Times, second-gen Z-RAM is expected to allow chips to store 5Mb (625KB) of data per square millimeter on a 65nm process. Using this technology, a 65nm processor could theoretically pack 10MB of cache in an area of just 16mm². For reference, 65nm Intel Core 2 Duo chips have a die area of 143mm², and going by Intel's die shots, around a third of that area is required to store 4MB of cache. Z-RAM's speed and power consumption are quite enticing, too.

But this made me doubt a little
The second-gen tech clocks up to 400MHz and can draw as little as 10μW (0.00001W) per MHz.

Only 400mhz?

[nn_step]

yep improvements in latency and data integrity. lots of good stuff

[Nedjo]

Imagine FUSION with 16MB of this memory!! Killer graphics!

[K404]

Cant come soon enough!

[EnJoY]

Imagine FUSION with 16MB of this memory!! Killer graphics!

Imagine that girl in nn_step's avatar with 16MB of z-ram? IMAGINE!!! :slobber:

[[cTx]Philosophy]

Sounds interesting, but alot of stuff there I have no clue about, so Ill just say good luck to AMD :P

[w0mbat]

Wohwowowa! Imagine a K9 or what ever with 50MB L2-Cache ;)

[awdrifter]

But would 50mb L2 cache really help that much? Wouldn't that generate a lot of heat and won't you hit the point of diminishing return very soon with cache? I see this as more of a cost reduction measure for AMD, cuz they can fit more CPU on the same wafer now right?

[w0mbat]

Imagine runnig Crysis in ur Cache :D

[Lightman]

Yeah i just read it on http://techreport.com/onearticle.x/11371 Impressive
...
But this made me doubt a little
...
Only 400mhz?


It seems to by a typo! more like 4000MHz I suppose. Basically Z-RAM is replacement technology for SRAM cells, so it's designed to be CPU cache. For this reason alone 400MHz is out of question. ;)

[madcho]

That's not as fast as SRAM cache but the integrated side could realy improve the latency.

The 4MB of the conroe would be a old story :banana:

[madcho]

It seems to by a typo! more like 4000MHz I suppose. Basically Z-RAM is replacement technology for SRAM cells, so it's designed to be CPU cache. For this reason alone 400MHz is out of question. ;)

Don't think that's 4ghz.

Zram is a sort of DRAM. The DDR400 clock of the bank is 200. The DDR2.800 clock of the bank is 200.

This one is 400. Two time more fast. This Dram is on die => low latency => Pipeline of the athlon more full => more performance / clock. :woot:

AMD could release a good chip of fusion with Zram. That could be impressive.

Fusion is for end 2008 begin 2009, i heard, AMD will use 45nm process. AMD could integrate 128MB of Zram :slobber: shared between cores and graphic chips.:eek:

[cky2k6]

the zram will probably be an enormous chunk of l3, and the chips will still have 1mb of l2 per core most likely.

[gOJDO]

ZRAM is very different from SRAM & DRAM.
DRAM has a capacitor and transistor.
SRAM has 4 to 6 transistors.
ZRAM has 2 transistors.
ZRAM will be good for fast RAM memory.
For example DDR-400 and DDR2-800 have DRAM cells operating at 200MHz. If used ZRAM instead of DRAM, the freqfency of the memory modules will be doubled(yes, ZRAM is clocked 400MHz). For example DDR ZRAM-800, DDR2 ZRAM-1600.
I wonder what kinds of latencies ZRAM have and how many operations per second it is able to do.

[dinos22]

why don't they make RAM for desktops out of ZRAM.....is it expensive or impractical

[gOJDO]

1. It needs SOI
2. DRAM technology is allready developed and being improved
3. factories have bought a lot of expencive equipment for making DRAM

[Revv23]

maybe we will actaully see this version used for something lol.

[LOE]

400Mhz aint that bad at all
you can put four banks of it and have perfromance equal to 1.6Ghz
in multichannel config

I don't think having 36Mb of L3 cache will hurt AMD, even if it is just a little faster than system ram. It's latency will probably be 3 times better...

[zakelwe]

Is the first generation going to be used or has it been superceded by this 2nd generation ? If first generation is going to be used then what is the time frame for it ?

Regards

Andy

[cky2k6]

1st gen is probably k8l, and second gen is cerebus (fusion)

[turtle]

I agree first generation is prolly K8L.

I think second generation could be used as early as Cadiz (H208)first 45nm chips, Opteron 1xxx), as that is the first chip to have a pumped up level of L3 past the initial 2mb of K8L.

That's just a guess on my part, but would jive with estimated timeframe.

The ideas of using it for Cerberus (FUSION) is also really exciting.

Doing some math, on 90nm AM2, L2 takes takes up approx 47mm/MB. Obviously Z-ram won't replace L2, but we only see 512k L2 parts in the future instead of full 1MB/core parts...What if Z-ram replaced that other space? 10-20MB+ of Z-ram seems like a definite possibility at 65nm while still keeping the core approx the same size as previous generation chips on 90nm.

Sweet.

[Shadowmage]

400mhz can be rediculously fast, depending on the latency.

For example, if it's single cycle latency, then if the processor is running at 3GHz, then the Z-RAM would have a total latency of 7.5 cycles (3000/400). Compare this to Core 2 Duo's 14 cycle L2 latency.

[gOJDO]

@shadowmage
"if it's single cycle latency"
That is impossible, it needs a logic to operate with it and there is where latency comes from. SRAM is much more faster than ZRAM & DRAM and it has less realtime latency compared than both.

[largon]

Imagine FUSION with 16MB of this memory!! Killer graphics!I fathom lots of people will be bitterly dissapointed once Fusion comes at last and the integrated graphics' performance is equal to the low end add-on VGAs.

CPGPUs will never be good for mainstream gaming let alone high performance.

[cky2k6]

whoever thought that to begin with is a fool. fusion is going to be much better than conventional igp, but at no point did amd indicate that it was a competitor to high end vgas. if anything, it could double as a decent physics accelerator.