Jason Dunn
02-25-2008, 11:27 PM
<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.engadget.com/2008/02/25/metaram-aims-to-bumps-ram-capacity-by-4x-overnight/' target='_blank'>http://www.engadget.com/2008/02/25/...y-4x-overnight/</a><br /><br /></div><em>"We're not sure what whacky voodoo snakeoil these MetaRAM people are peddling, but the company's got some high profile behind it (like Intel, for one), is being led by former AMD CTO Fred Weber, has appears to have some potentially revolutionary RAM quadrupling technology. Claiming to have leapfrogged current RAM technology by 2-4 years, MetaRAM uses a specialized "MetaSDRAM" chipset that effectively bonds and addresses four cheap 1Gb DRAM chips as one, tricking any machine's memory controller into using it as a 4x capacity DIMM. Since a 1Gb chip is apparently far less expensive than a 2Gb chip, MetaRAM devices can multiply capacity at prices far lower than their competition; the company claims it'll be shipping in machines in the first quarter of this year, and Hynix has already announced their own 2-rank 8GB DDR2 RDIMMs for the second half."<br /></em><img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/500/dht/auto/1203976858.usr1.jpg" alt="" /><br />400% more RAM, easy as pie? Sounds good to me - if Windows Vista could take advantage of it properly. I wonder if something like this would help the push for mainstream support of 64-bit Vista? Because right now, 64-bit Vista is so bleeding edge I won't touch it - I constantly hear people complaining about how they can't use such and such device driver, can't install application "X", etc. In my tests, there's also not much difference in overall Windows Vista performance between 2 GB and 3.5 GB (the most you'd tend to see under 32-bit Vista). So, as nice as 400% more RAM could be, is there enough of an advantage for this technology to take hold? I know the Thoughts Media server wouldn't mind going from 8 GB to 32 GB of RAM. ;-)