IBM Announces You Can Turn On Another Shader On Doom3
IBM plans to place DRAM (dynamic random access memory) circuits right in their microprocessors starting next year. It's not a breakthrough, just a tweak. Soon you'll be able to eDRAM those Cacodemons and spreadsheets.
Until now, IBM, Intel (NasdaqGS:INTC - News) and nearly all chipmakers used synchronous RAM, another type of memory. SRAM is faster that DRAM, but it has some limitations. As chips get smaller, chipmakers need something to replace SRAMs as on-chip memory.
The solution, says IBM, is eDRAM. It is one-third the size of SRAM and uses one-fifth the power in standby mode of regular SRAM.
