egorfine · 1 hours ago

> suddenly single channel is 'ok'

Single channel RAM surely beats any disk-based swap.

tonyedgecombe · 35 minutes ago

Necessity is the mother of invention.

dofm · 28 minutes ago

Necessity is the mother of invention, after all. One of the oldest concepts in intellectual thought.

There is a tight resource starvation/motivation loop — the demand put on RAM and SSD and GPUs by the largest frontier models is a direct motivation to make smaller LLMs. Like an evolutionary pressure making animals smaller and more food-efficient.

These smaller models, once successful, are still likely to consume more RAM and SSD and GPUs than any other application short of high quality video processing itself (the smaller LLMs and higher end video processing seem to have about the same needs). But the resources would distribute through the market more traditionally, leading to less insane cycles.

So it seems to me that the way out of the RAM/SSD price cycle crisis that manufacturers are in — where the price fluctuates between high and low due to supply constraints and then oversupply from new production capacity - is for them to fund research into smaller LLMs. They'll still sell essentially the same amount of product. Maybe more.

HumblyTossed · 21 minutes ago

I would love it if we started designing software with hardware constraints in mind again.

embedding-shape · 1 hours ago

> Why not go directly to the source article

Which seems to be the sister site of Register; https://www.blocksandfiles.com/architecture/2026/06/26/panmn...

pjc50 · 1 hours ago

Source paper linked is https://aisystemcodesign.github.io/papers/isca26/vistara_cam...

From a quick skim, you could think of this as roughly equivalent to shoving a large amount of DDR4 on a PCIe card and using it as a swap space. It's more sophisticated (see CXL protocol), but that gives you an idea of the tradeoffs. It seems there is some OS-level support for moving hot/cold pages between the main fast DRAM and the expansion higher latency DRAM.

It's a very valid point that DRAM has a fairly long lifetime and contains significant embedded carbon emissions, as well as the current availability crisis of new DRAM.

keanebean86 · 18 minutes ago

Gigabyte had a ram disk addin card years ago. Not exactly the same but since it's presented as a storage device you could use it as OS swap space.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-RAM

Lomlioto · 1 hours ago

A GPU Transistor is a lot more complicated than a RAM transistor and the size of these are quite different too. Bleeding edge vs. a known process with know machines and written off machines.

Also you calculate in the machine cost and R&D.

RAM hiked because the demand spiked and these companies are now in power. Before apple and other companies told them the prices and had hardly any money for investment.

mschuster91 · 1 hours ago

> So while RAM is a commodity product, this insane price difference didn't make any sense.

Supply and demand coupled with the fact that a RAM fab can't (trivially) output compute chips, and vice versa, a compute fab can't output RAM. It's two completely different supply chains.

rmu09 · 58 minutes ago

The thing that defines performance of DRAM is AFAIK the capacitor of the bit cells and not the transistor driving it. And also AFAIK the process to create those capacitors is quite unique to DRAM, so you can't just go and use a "logic" process unchanged and produce DRAMs.

adastra22 · 57 minutes ago

Why would you expect smaller transistors to be cheaper?

ismaVQ · 56 minutes ago

newer process node are smaller but very expensive compared to mature ones, each wafer from TSMC latest process is costly and with lower yield due to GPU large die size (+700mm2 compared to around 60mm2 per DRAM die)

rcxdude · 53 minutes ago

Chip fabrication processes are not fungible: GPUs and CPUs might be made on roughly the same process, but DRAM is not (flash is a different process again, as is power electronics, analog electronics, MEMS, etc. And even within those broader categories there are different variations). While there are some overlaps in machines and techniques, a fab set up for one cannot generally switch to the other, and the economics of each process can also be drastically different.

gloryjulio · 36 minutes ago

RAM is a commodity. It has much less moat to prevent competitions. When the rams flood the market that's when the bubble ends, until the next cycle arrives. Processors are much harder to design and commoditize.

WmWsjA6B29B4nfk · 19 minutes ago

On top of everything said, 5090 die size is 10x than typical DDR5 die size. One RAM module is 8-16 dies, so you do get more silicon in the end, but larger dies are extremely expensive to produce due to sharply decreasing yields.