Hardware The Secrets of PC Memory: Part 1

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2007/11/15/the_secrets_of_pc_memory_part_1/1

Ryan Leng and bit-tech investigate memory technology to give you a detailed, but easy to digest read, into one of the most fundamental parts of a PC.

 

Ryan you should be very proud of what you have written thus far. As all the making s of a great set of articles on computer memory. I Eagerly await your next installment

 

Wow...really interesting. Gonna read it when i get back home. Dont think they like it if i gonna read it at school

 

Why, cos you might actually learn something?

 

It was a lot of work deconstructing and simplifying engineering concepts to casual read.

More interesting stuff are coming.

 

Just nitpicking, but the definitions of Mega, Giga etc are incorrect.

The english definition of a Gigabit, is one thousand million and a terabit is one billion i.e. a million million. I take it that the author uses US English rather than British English...

Andy

/nitpicking

Good article though.

 

Another Great article. Very informational.
Keep them coming!

 

You're correct in your definition but isn't that exactly what the green table on Page 1 shows anyway? I'm confused

 

Good article. Although on page 5, all of the diagrams say "MEMROY CONTROLLER"

The US definition of a billion (10⁹) is the SI standard for tera-. Does anyone actually use the British definition any more?

 

Well, I've read all of this.....And, I like it.....You got a good way to explaining thing.....Your analogy to things is also make it really easy to understand.

I am @ a Information System course now, but I really love to learn about the Computer Organizing things.....

This most recently update I believe, bring me more into this, rather than learning bout the x86, some motorola legacy procs.., and a out-dated memory hierarchy (SSD wasn't listed^^). And even a DDR is just a scratch.....

Now I understand more about dual channel, quad, what's called miss-cached, and etc...

Thx Ryan^^.

 

Tera uses the short scale and always has. Anyone still using long scale notation is an old decrepit man.
Plus, you have the oddity of flash and ddr memory systems using 2¹⁰ binary system (kibibyte) and other media like CDs and harddrives using the 10³ decimal system (kilobyte).
Interesting stuff, but I'd hope most of the OCers here know this already.

 

Awesome! Thanks for this. I love high-fiber reading materials !

 

Im sorry, what!?!?

Most of that is lost due to the definition of a byte on a HDD vs the operating system
The percentage that is lost to the system level information is a much much much smaller percentage (that percentage varies alot depending what settings you format with though, and what filesystem you use) - also, that is mainly the partition table as the MBR is 512kb ....

 

Yes. you are very sharp on that and right about the HDD part.

The original paper was over 250 pages with huge amount of engineering details. We spent months de-constructing and simplifying ideas down for casual readers. I avoided the 1024 vs 1000 argument and explanation.

The above HDD statement was more of an analogy focused on the myth that full MHz was solely used to carry application data. Hence, the word "It is a bit like..."

The objective was to capture a more identifiable situation from perspective of non-initiated computer users, to help explain how all the memory subsystem works.

It always comes down to who do we write for - the engineering community or non-initiated readers. It is a hard balance to find.

We appreciate your thoughts and sharpness on picking that up.

Salute to the geeks!

 

I understand the confusion.... blame it on the long and short scaling....

A decision was made to use what general consumers understood, which is in terms of $$$. We didn't want to dive into it as it is purely academic.

more info here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SI_prefix
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales

 

Since nit-picking is so fun, I'll throw my hat into the ring

Kilo, 10^3, 1000, etc is 'k' not 'K'.


Also with that analogy to cars and roads at the bottom of page 1 you're dangerously close to a "series of tubes" comment.

 

Awesome article Ryan. Waiting for part 2

 

I wouldn't have thought 33 was decrepit!

Having reread the article, I found it really interesting. I'm being lazy, but is the full article anywhere to be found (for free)?

 

He's not finished writing it yet

 

Can you perhaps send da full article 2 my e-mail? Pure for education purpose^^. But I suppose I'll keep in touch 1st^^.