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Samsung is expected to more than double output of its HBM4 and HBM4E DRAM

562 points · 458 comments · giuliomagnifico

fooker · 1789929721 · focus · HN ↗
What's the main blocker (other than the current inflated cost) for using HBM instead of DRAM as the primary memory for consumer electronics?
1. nutjob2 · 1789930193 · focus · HN ↗
  Nothing except CPU manufacturer choices. Mac laptops use it and they're consumer products.
  People will have to get used to buying a fixed amount of RAM with their CPU but thats unlikely to be a problem.
  1. fooker · 1789930550 · focus · HN ↗
    Apple's "unified memory" marketing is so strong that even tech literate people seem to have this misconception!
    They have managed to pull this sort of thing off many many times. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_distortion_field" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_distortion_field
    Kon5ole · 1789932776 · focus · HN ↗
    Having unified memory is a real advantage though, it's not a reality distortion.
    davrosthedalek · 1789933697 · focus · HN ↗
    The price is that you essentially glue CPU and GPU together, which limits total compute, from a size and thermal perspective.
    This is really not a limit because of unified memory -- in principle, PCIe GPUs could read/write main memory without the CPU. But it's a limit for /fast/ unified memory, because fast means close.
    So unified memory is great as long as the integrated GPU is strong enough. Then it has two advantages: a) probably faster transfer CPU<->GPU (but that's an implementation choice for the non-unified case b) If you either need a lot of memory for the CPU or the GPU, but not for both at the same time, you pay for memory only once.

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