Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD)

[chipguy]

chipguy - Do you agree with the general consensus that ZRAM is likely to be used in L3, and if so, how long do you think, realistically, it would be before it's put into a design for production?

I just can't see how ZRAM would have the latency needed for
L2 applications. It is most likely to be used within a high end
server device with a very big L3, AMD's big cache answer to
Xeon MP and IPF. IMO the most likely candidate to be pushing
for that would be Sun. Given how long Sun seems to take to
deploy new machines using regular Opterons I wouldn't even
try to guess when it could be in a position to deploy a high
end Opteron device.

Would we be right in assuming that a good bit of work has been done checking it out and getting the ball rolling if they already have the agreement?

Hard to say. It would take a lot of embedded DRAM know-how
to be able to architect a ZRAM based L3 with suitable SRAM
like characteristics. In addition AMD would need to do a lot
of due diligence on the technology with a fleet of special test
chips. DRAM hates electrical noise and high temperatures,
something prevalent on performance MPUs. You really don't
want to ship a high end server MPU that you weren't entirely
convinced was utterly bullet proof to OEMs.