The RAM article

[eden]

Bum_JCRules must be drooling now!

So what did you guys think of it?
While I knew a lot of base info on the CAS and RAS and such, a lot of the electrical explanations left me "wazaa?" while reading this complex text. Problem is, Bruce does not write like Ars Technica, with images and concrete examples (comparisons maybe). However it certainly is a breath of fresh air to THG, as it's the first complex article I've seen since a long time, and it matches Ars Technica levels. Definitely a nice addition and shows a lot of interesting things.

One thing I did not like was how he refered to DDR as DDRAM and SDR as SDRAM. It was mixed up a lot and he also used the marketting clock rates instead of the true clocks, which is a bit unprofessional.


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This post is brought to you by Eden, on a Via Eden, in the garden of Eden.

 

[Burnss]

Why did he say "During the coming weeks, Intel will launch its Springdale chipset with DDR400, which will represent the first commercially available dual channel memory application"? This is not true, actually in a previous article from July 16, 2002 “Full Power: NVIDIA Attacks With nForce2” we saw, "Up till now, dual-channel DDR mode has only been used by the nForce and Intel's E7500 chipset. The nForce2 is the third member of this group, and, through further optimizing as well as increasing the the clock speed up to 200 MHz (DDR400), the system performance should increase accordingly". Maybe I have misunderstood, but dual channel DDR has been available for some time now.

Burnser

 

[LumberJack]

Nice article... but it's pretty standard info you can pull out of any digital ciruits textbook...



To err is human... to really screw things up you need a computer!

 

[bum_jcrules]

Sorry, no drool. I read the article. At first there were some signs of the Pavlov's dog experiment but after reading it there wasn't any drool.

He brings up a lot of good things to help people become more aquainted with the DRAM structures but still leaves a lot out in my opinion. I like the fact that he brought up CDRAM and ESDRAM. They are both great technologies that were also proposed to be introduced into DDR which went by the name of EDDR and even was holding the name of DDRII until the latest JEDEC standard was put into stone. <A HREF="http://www.lostcircuits.com/memory/eddr/" target="_new">Lost Circuits did a good article a while back on it.</A> Sometimes I just wish that Tom and Omid would hire MS who writes for Lost Circuits. He has great articles on memory. I mean he works for Mushkin, what more can I say?

I agree with your comments about using DDRAM as an acronym for DDRSDRAM. SDRAM is SDRAM reguardless if it runs with one bit per cycle, two, or four as with QDRSDRAM.

I am wondering if this is the first attempt to get back to the technology side of thigs that THG has been known for. For most of us here this article was not up to par for us, but it probably will help a lot of newer readers get a handle on memory technologies. In exxence, when THG wants to take it to the next level they can refer back to this article to help those newer readers understand more. This is all speculation but it would be a good idea reguardless. It has been a loooooooooooooonnnnnnng time since THG did an article on the memory itself and as an attachment to a chipset article.

All in all it was a fairly good article. As for myself, I did not walk away satified because I had not learned something new.

Let's hope that the future articles will be more interesting.




<A HREF="http://www.millionmanlan.com/MMLDefault.asp" target="_new">Million Man LAN 2 is June 25-29, 2003 in Louisville Kentucky... Be there!</A>