Replies to post #71893 on Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD)

[j3pflynn]

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? 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?

[Tenchu]

Chipguy, sounds like ZRAM might be a great technology for system-on-a-chip designs. Or maybe AMD has the bright idea of sticking 12 megs of L2 cache on their next-generation K8 chips?

By the way, how the heck does ZRAM keep its cells refreshed if their capacitances are smaller than that of the equivalent DRAM cells? I mean, there's a reason why processor caches are SRAM instead of DRAM, right? Why go to ZRAM?

Tenchu