Thread

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
    Rohansi · 1789931691 · focus · HN ↗
    Yup, the only reason Macs have higher memory bandwidth is because they use more memory channels, which gives them a wider bus. Both Intel and AMD only allow more than dual channel memory on server class processors these days.
    kstrauser · 1789932140 · focus · HN ↗
    The “Apple only does X better because they do Y” thing has been a meme for ages. I remember dismissals like “PowerPC is only faster at math because it has more integer units” or something along those lines, and thinking, uh, isn’t that a good thing?
    pdpi · 1789937135 · focus · HN ↗
    There's a qualitative difference between "they're doing a different thing" and "they're doing the same thing, tuned differently". GP is saying that this is a case of "they just tuned it differently".
    This distinction doesn't change what the performance numbers look like today, but it does inform what changes would be necessary for those numbers to look different tomorrow. E.g. Apple Silicon isn't fundamentally orders of magnitude more efficient than x86, they just used smaller features. Newer Intel and AMD chips made on equivalent processes _also_ get similar efficiency gains.
    sroussey · 1789944313 · focus · HN ↗
    There are AMD and Intel devices on similar process (not talking about A20Pro or M6 which are set to ship later this week), and they do not get the same gains.
    And honestly, they have historically had different markets.
    When the design is for only one customer, you don't need to generalize things, and those things you generalize to give different customers different options has costs.
    AMD will soon be a larger customer for TSMC than Apple (NVIDIA is already there) so Apple's pre-booking new processes is likely to be gone in the near future.

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