Almost quietly...the 6th paradigm of computer processing is here: http://www.micron.com/products/hybrid-memory-cube Of course this is the tip of the iceberg, other promising processing technologies are still developing. Just goes to show you how even "experts' can be wrong(ie:Paul Allen). RAMA
It's "almost quietly" because it will still be a while before they are available for commercial applications, and it will likely be about 5-6 years before a product cheap enough to find its way into your home is available. If this was available in the next gen Intel processors six months from now it would be bigger news. This technology also hasn't been standardized yet, and there are other consortia developing similar technologies to compete with it. Very cool though, yes. The processor applications interest me more than the straight up memory applications.
Nope a commercial version is due next year...by guess who...Intel. http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2384897,00.asp RAMA
As exciting as this news is, I can remember articles in Byte magazine discussing breakthroughs in page-oriented holographic memory promising terabytes of data on a microscope-slide-sized storage medium. Then there were the SED display technologies which promised superior image quality to LCDs with far lower power requirements than plasma. There are a lot of barriers, apparently, between the initial proof-of-concept and a successfully-marketed product.
The barrier to SED was primarily lawsuit after lawsuit after lawsuit. By that my the time SED was ready for prime-time, LCD televisions were selling of for chump change compared to what they'd have to launch them at. Combine that with a shitty economy in 08-09 and a nervous Canon and SED for the home was doomed. They're still developing it for commercial and professional use, however, the display technology really is superior. But yes, a barrier is a barrier. Just because a technology looks promising now, doesn't mean something unexpected won't happen to dash the best laid plans.
I'll believe it when I can buy it from Newegg! But I will be very glad to see more breakthroughs in computer memory. We've been using more or less the same DRAM technology for, what, 30 years now?
The memory cube will exponentially increase computer performance...not just by double but much more than that. RAMA
But does that speed increase include the bus, or just the memory's internal speed? Bus speeds have always been the bottleneck between CPU and RAM.
If this tech could be applied to GPUs, then internal memory speed would be more important. GPUs can easily bottleneck on memory speed. Of course, bus speed is an important fact there as well, but not the only one.
I hadn't thought of the implications for video memory, but you're right, this would be a huge deal there, even if the system bus isn't any faster. Given the exponential increase in texture sizes over the past several years, being able to do fast operations on in-memory textures will only become more important in the future. Making the memory faster should also free up GPU time for other tasks.
Plenty of advances have been made by Intel and AMD passing the front side bus right by: Wiki This is always how things advance. typically one portion of computer system will advance forward causing other portions to bottle neck until they too advance. They drive each other forward.