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by littledanehren 5308 days ago
Can we really credit this entirely to the increased efficiency of iPads? There are lots of usages of RAM--now people carry around cell phones with more RAM than before. And data centers can make use of tons of RAM--the main constraint is its price.

Maybe this is actually a result of bad general macroeconomic conditions. Nobody wants to spend too much money, whether it's consumers or people setting up data centers. That's always been the case, but we're poorer than before now, and RAM is one of those things that you can cut down on, or stop increasing as quickly on.

This news is unfortunate.

1 comments

>And data centers can make use of tons of RAM--the main constraint is its price.

price through several aspects. Among the main constraints is the number of memory slots (as we have mainly 4Gb and 8Gb RAM modules to work with). And 8Gb ECC (ECC/registered memory is the only way to utilize more than 4 slots per CPU) is only recently became reasonably priced (ie. close to 2x4GB). Once the slots are filled with 4GB modules - throw and replace with 8GB. Painful. Once filled with 8Gb modules - replace the motherboard+CPUs. With what? There is of course monsters around - http://www.provantage.com/supermicro-mbd-x8qb6-f~ASUPM3AU.ht... which require monster priced CPUs :)

So, thanks to manufacturers for the cheap 4Gb and 8Gb, yet if they built the large overcapacities for these modules instead of gearing up to 16Gb - that would explain their financial problems.