Seems like we need a USB equivalent standard to RAM sticks. I have lots and lots of old (1-2GB), intercompatible sticks sitting. Sometimes you just need the space and not the speed.
Seems like we need a USB equivalent standard to RAM sticks. I have lots and lots of old (1-2GB), intercompatible sticks sitting. Sometimes you just need the space and not the speed.
> Sometimes you just need the space and not the speed.
Your computer already supports that. It's called "swap".
You don't need swap, you need "apps" that take back the "memory is cheap anyway" crappy culture.
Yeah but DDR3 was faster then and still is now - I can't imagine my M4 Mac having a slightly older version RAM would meaningfully affect me, but another 24GB of it (or whatever I have) would certainly be an improvement.
CPUs have L1, L2, L3+ caches too after all.
It probably would. LPDDR5 memory bandwidth on M-series Macs is several multiples of the memory bandwidth available on DDR3 (depending on the exact chip, Pro, Max, etc... 4x to beyond 10x.) The whole system would be much, much slower.
> Yeah but DDR3 was faster then and still is now
USB would be the limiter for both.
They obviously did not mean not literal USB, just a standardized connector across DRAM versions/speeds.
Yeah, sure but... if it's real fast, lets connect SSDs to it and have real fast swap. Whatever it is will be limited to the bus speed. And that's gonna be silly compared to RAM speed.
A better SSD can get up to a passable GB/s rate, but when you're waiting tens of microseconds instead of tens of nanoseconds you can't use it the same way. And a worse SSD is 10x slower in GB/s too, compared to old super cheap RAM.
Grab the cheapest Intel Optane M10 drive from eBay with a 1x PCI-E adapter from them too. 16GB of Swap for less than $20.
The M10 are over produced and only PCI-E 3.0 2x lane devices but 16GB of DDR5 is going to cost over $200.
You can do the same with USB-C M.2 adapters but the adapters cost more and eww USB for Swap, hope the device never drops.
Hey, I apologize for using you as tech support, but I found tons of those M10 sticks you are talking about, but what should I be looking for in terms of an adapter? All I can find are adapters listed as M.2:
https://www.amazon.com/GLOTRENDS-Adapter-Aluminum-Heatsink-P...
That's a 4 lane adapter, it'll work if you have a 4x, 8x, or 16x PCI-E slot open. This is a 1 lane adapter: https://www.ebay.com/itm/128010189845?var=429206655218
I believe the intention is for you to put it in the M.2
Is that really competitive with just doing a pciexpress card with faster M2 SSD ?
Optane on a cheap adapter is superior in just this Swap application because the 16GB M.2 are very cheap, the 2x lanes aren't under utilizing your 4x motherboard M.2 slot when used with an adapter, and Optane has better write endurance and latency then even the newest flash.
Read more about it. Not sure on endurance but does it really do that well on latency ? Curious if you have any resources. Some boards have a lot of spare m2
https://cdn.multitronic.fi/media/a/3/mmo_41700684_1565162938...
I suggest using an 1x PCI-e adapter because putting a M10 in a M.2 slot is likely going to only have 2 of 4 PCI-e lanes in use. You have to figure out the tradeoff of using a Swap on your, now very expensive as well, Flash storage that may have flashier sequential read and write speeds but doesn't have the ability to sustain random read and write performance which is what a Swap is going to use the most.
There are faster Optane drives that use 4 PCI-e lanes or even PCI-e 4.0, but they get pricey quickly, so you should just buy ram then. The deal is the 16GB Optane on an unused 1x PCI-e slot.
What about using one of those fancier enterprise Optane drives (that are also larger) either as a swap or - dedicated drive for writing or reading huge amounts of small files ? The Intel P5800x is the opposite of cheap but from tests I'm seeing the latency and performance is very impressive for some niche use cases
Such a thing does exist. Look up CXL.
Thats like saying I need a car with hotswappable engines. Sure. But you wouldn't want that car anymore.
RAM over “USB” seems dangerously close to an SSD.
In any case DDR3 isn’t nearly as bad price-wise and would have much better energy efficiency than stacking 1–2 gig sticks.
No, we absolutely do not: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB
For starters, The slowest sticks of DDR(x) are often slower than DDR(x-1). The issue is never capacity, but rather, performance.
The real nonsense? USB? It's a mess. Pick a USB cable and buy it from ANY retailer, let's make it easier, buy a USB-C cable. What is the data rate (depends on cable quality and length), Does it support power delivery? If so, how many watts? (~5W requires a very different cable from ~230W), how do you know from simply looking at the cable? If you buy a cable, how can you tell what it supports by simply looking at the connector? Imagine having a box full of USB-C cables. Could you tell me how fast each of those cables are? (The cables themselves don't! Many don't have any markngs at all, and if they do, the markings could be fraudulent)
RAM does not have that issue. A stick fits or it doesn't. Sure, there are a huge range of speeds, however, that range has a ballpark (JEDEC defines the ballpark, the "cartels" make the memory and push out some faster stuff).
While there are definite exceptions (I was bitten by one recently), you can generally plug in a DDR5 DIMM and expect it to work in the system.
The same cannot be said for USB. Some USB cables ONLY deliver power. Some only work with certain devices. I've USB-C (!!!) cables that only work with the devices they are shipped with, and even more annoyingly, the both may be true! ASUS (!!!) ships MOTHERBOARDS that can only pair with vital hardware via very specific USB-C cables (Strix Hive) and "GLORIOUS" ain't so glorious. Their mouses warn you not to use other USB-C cables, and they are right, depending on the make/model/generation, you can brick your "glorious" peripheral.
No, USB nonsense needs to stay far away from anything else.
Also, the reason this is a huge issue is because the memory makers are cartels. Only a few of them exist, they gang up and bully EVERYONE and nobody has ever invested money to create a competitor due to this, except China, which of course means that the U.S. and portions of the E.U. are insta-banning/trying to insta-ban, even though it is really freaking hard to install spyware on a memory module.
> Pick a USB cable and buy it from ANY retailer, let's make it easier, buy a USB-C cable.
Okay, let's assume it's a USB-C cable and not just something USB-C shaped that pretends to be one.
> Does it support power delivery?
Yes.
> If so, how many watts?
Always at least 60W (3A). Up to 240W if it's e-marked.
> What is the data rate
Depends whether it's a USB 2.0-only cable (480Mbps) or a complete cable (20Gbps). Possibly more in Thunderbolt or USB4 modes - cables that handle those will be marked (both visually and with an e-mark). In any case, pretty easy to check just by plugging things in.
I don't know why you got downvoted so much. There's no such thing as a 5 watt USB cable from a reputable source and people need to stop acting like there is. 60 is a very good baseline. There's no such thing as a power only USB cable either.
If we're counting fake products then we need to count those RGB sticks that have no RAM in them.
You couldn't even make a 5W USB-C cable if you tried. You'd have to make the wires so thin that it would burn at above 1A I guess, and it would have no way to signal the device to limit its power consumption to 1A, so it would just burn once you tried to use it. All you need to handle 60W is to make three electrical connections between the ends, and the cable won't work at all if you miss any.
USBism has a lot of elements similar to the "connect your agent to your data with this 'curl | sh' script and do anything. Maybe some friction and incompatibility is useful in some cases.