3D technology aka screw you Moore's Law

faethor

faethor

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http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-12-ibm-micron-hybrid-memory-cube.html

IBM (NYSE: IBM) and Micron Technology, Inc. announced today that Micron will begin production of a new memory device built using the first commercial CMOS manufacturing technology to employ through-silicon vias (TSVs). IBM's advanced TSV chip-making process enables Micron's Hybrid Memory Cube (HMC) to achieve speeds 15 times faster than today's technology
 
Well see if it is a breakthrough or RDRAM all over.
 
I heard the next Amiga will use that. ;)
 
This article seems to talk about DRAM, but Engadget compares it's speed to SATA 3 (128Gb/s bs 6Gb/s). I suppose this technology will translate similarly to NAND memory types, which of course will be nice but we'll need some serious improvements in bus architectures to realize it (damn, and I thought I was pretty cool with by SATA 3 slots).

Also, I thought CPU fabrication was already layered.
 
@Fluffy

If the chips really do 128GB/s vs 12.8GB/s and at a 70% reduction in energy usage part the heat is a reduced, but not eliminated, concern. I can't imagine IBM will forget about removing the heat.

@Glaucus
Strange they compare to SATA III. Shouldn't they compare to DDR2? I'd assume this would more likely take it's place. I'd name the new standard DDR3d. Is your abbreviation correct? Gb is Gigabits. SATA is indeed 6Gigabits per second. The article says 128GigaBytes/s. I'm to lazy to do the math right now but that's roughly 170times faster than SATA not 20, a big difference.
 
@Faethor,

You could be correct about the abbreviation. I was going off the Engadget article I cross referenced for myself. It also talks about Intels Hybrid Memory Cube (HMC) technology, which I assume is for NAND devices. It's transfer rate is apparently 128Gb/s (that's little "b").

Intel unveiled a Hybrid Memory Cube (HMC) at IDF, which promises seven times the energy efficiency of today's DDR3, and now IBM and Micron have shown their hand too. The pair just struck up a partnership to produce cubes using layers of DRAM connected by vertical conduits known as through-silicon vias (TSVs). These pillars allow a 90 percent reduction in a memory chip's physical footprint, a 70 percent cut in its appetite for energy, and -- best of all -- a radical increase in bandwidth: HMC prototypes have already scored 128Gb/s, which makes 6Gb/s SATA III look like a bottleneck.
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I think I got mixed up here. I see now it's clearly talking about HMC performance. Which btw, is pretty darned awesome all on it's own.
 
@Glaucus,

Here's the article. "HMC prototypes, for example, clock in with bandwidth of 128 gigabytes per second (GB/s). By comparison, current state-of-the-art devices deliver 12.8 GB/s."

Seems that Engadget mucked up the capitalization of the abbreviation. Not sure why Engadget notes DDR3 earlier then compares against the much slower SATA III rates?
 
faethor said:
I can't imagine IBM will forget about removing the heat.
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No, I wouldn't think so either :) I was just supposing that, since fabbing vias doesn't seem to be anything but obvious and not really a problem, then perhaps new low power designs have solved the heat problem. OTOH, since it seems like they are talking about memory devices the heat problem is much less since most of the gates will be idle most of the time and even on reads and writes the decode and state machine logic will be getting the work out and you can move all that to a single place which you can bond to a heat sink.
 
Glaucus said:
You could be correct about the abbreviation. I was going off the Engadget article I cross referenced for myself. It also talks about Intels Hybrid Memory Cube (HMC) technology, which I assume is for NAND devices. It's transfer rate is apparently 128Gb/s (that's little "b").
Click to expand...

Not too arsed about speed myself - flash is already fast enough for practical purposes. Stacking layers, though, should do wonders for capacity. Mind you, with Terrabyte SD cards due out any time now, even that seems moot.
 
Mind you, with Terrabyte SD cards due out any time now, even that seems moot.
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I'm all for getting that TB into a postage stamp.
 
faethor said:
I'm all for getting that TB into a postage stamp.
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After a bit of poking around it seems that SD roadmap seems to have stalled out at around 64GB for the full sized SD. Maybe they need stacked silicon to get there.
 
Damn you Engadget for making me look like a fool! :mad:

FluffyMcDeath said:
After a bit of poking around it seems that SD roadmap seems to have stalled out at around 64GB for the full sized SD. Maybe they need stacked silicon to get there.
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Not sure what you mean by that as there are bigger NAND drivers than 64GB. However, I do know that the current Intel chips have a feature (can't remember the name off hand) that use up to 64GB of SSD storage as a massive cache. So basically, you install everything you need on an old school spinning disk of any size, and the Intel architecture will automatically cache the parts you need the most on the SSD for super fast loading. Of course, Seagate has hybrid drives as well, which work similarly. But ya, a full terabyte SSD that can fit in your phone would be sweat.
 
Glaucus said:
Not sure what you mean by that [...]
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That's because we are talking about different things. Wanna build a bigger SSD, shouldn't be much of a problem as the space available is limited by the size of the device you want to put it in. Want to put more chips in a micro SD, things are getting cramped. SDxc stadard was announced back in 2009 with 2TB addressable and they were touting 1TB SD cards for around about now. It seems that they are a bit behind their plans for that.
 
IMO what's most problematic is the stupid Blu-Ray standard. It never should have happened.

If people didn't want digital downloads we should be using HD quality films on MicroSD cards. No spinning, no mechanicals, and easily portable. Plus think of the packaging and shelf space issues.
 
faethor said:
IMO what's most problematic is the stupid Blu-Ray standard. It never should have happened.

If people didn't want digital downloads we should be using HD quality films on MicroSD cards. No spinning, no mechanicals, and easily portable. Plus think of the packaging and shelf space issues.
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That's something I've said before (or words to that effect). If the movie industry really hated downloads then all they have to do is up the amount of data in a movie and deliver it on something hard. Sure, people can still rip it and transcode it but then the downloaders at least get a crappier copy. And, of course, you wouldn't need to flash it - you could use some write once technology (of which I remember reading about some nice ones a few years back) but write-once was going nowhere in a read/write world. Ah well - could have been.
 
Blu-ray has a 50GB capacity. Anyone wanna guess what a 64GB MicroSD card goes for? Anyone ever seen one? The 32GB's start at around CND$50. That's quite a bit for just the medium.

For years before I ever even heard of NAND or SSD or Flash drives I said that the future of storage is solid state media - no moving parts. So ya, that is the way forward and I imagine the PS4 will not have a BD player built in (or it may just be an option for PS3 compatibility). Although to be honest, I expect the future to be digital download only, or even worse - cloud only storage.

Regardless, I don't think Blu-ray is a problem, it's just the last spinning optical format we'll ever see. But it's funny that just as the technology gets perfected, it gets deprecated as well. Just before Blu-ray came out, digital VHS came out, only to die a quick death. Digital VHS would have been super nice a decade earlier. Same for SACD. Imagine if we had that instead of our current crap standard, Red Book CD. But that too is now out the window in favor of mp3. Ironically, that too has seen better alternatives but people keep faithful to the original widely distributed lossy format and THAT will probably be replaced entirely by some really crappy streaming protocol. Technology and progress is funny some times.
 
Glaucus said:
Blu-ray has a 50GB capacity. Anyone wanna guess what a 64GB MicroSD card goes for? Anyone ever seen one? The 32GB's start at around CND$50. That's quite a bit for just the medium.
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Many movies are around 4GB ($7/card) and most aren't over 15GB. I prefer streaming or downloads. Though there are times you want a movie at home and the internet is down and ya need something.

Although to be honest, I expect the future to be digital download only, or even worse - cloud only storage.
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I agree digital download is the right direction. As do most people. DVD+Blu-Ray sales continue to decrease compared to DVD only sales pre-Blu-Ray. Which says to me that this is media's last hurrah and it'll go out with a wimper.

Technology and progress is funny some times.
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MP3 vs SACD or DVD-A is one clear indication. The crappy quality and digital won against the clearly superior quality but locked to physical media. Movies shouldn't have had another format and gone all digital instead. And yes I own a Blu-Ray/HD-DVD drive in my PC and a seperate Blu-Ray Player. Though the later I got free with my TV I have never opened the box. It went immediately to the old hardware closet. I moved the VHS from the closet to the trash. And sometimes wave at my C=>64 and Amiga.
 
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