From a quick skim, you could think of this as roughly equivalent to shoving a large amount of DDR4 on a PCIe card and using it as a swap space. It's more sophisticated (see CXL protocol), but that gives you an idea of the tradeoffs. It seems there is some OS-level support for moving hot/cold pages between the main fast DRAM and the expansion higher latency DRAM.
It's a very valid point that DRAM has a fairly long lifetime and contains significant embedded carbon emissions, as well as the current availability crisis of new DRAM.
With regards to RAM price I never understood the following: A 16GB RAM stick has 16*8=128 billion bits, with 1 transistor per bit, thats still 128B, yet its supposed to cost like $60 before the price hikes? In contrast, a 5090 GPU was $2000 (true it has RAM, but you're paying for the GPU ASIC really, I guess the rest of the GPU was less than $500), it had 93B transistors.
GPU transistors are smaller due to the more advanced process node (cost per transistor metrics aren't really clear, if they improve on advanced node or not, but I'd say they get cheaper as they get smaller, as technology costs are amortized).
I'm sure both RAM and logic use a process that is quite similar in both inputs and manufacturing steps. So while RAM is a commodity product, this insane price difference didn't make any sense.
So I guess when those fundamental inputs become a constraint, it would make sense for $/transistor move closer for both, which is a massive hike for RAM.
Chip fabrication processes are not fungible: GPUs and CPUs might be made on roughly the same process, but DRAM is not (flash is a different process again, as is power electronics, analog electronics, MEMS, etc. And even within those broader categories there are different variations). While there are some overlaps in machines and techniques, a fab set up for one cannot generally switch to the other, and the economics of each process can also be drastically different.
The thing that defines performance of DRAM is AFAIK the capacitor of the bit cells and not the transistor driving it. And also AFAIK the process to create those capacitors is quite unique to DRAM, so you can't just go and use a "logic" process unchanged and produce DRAMs.
RAM is a commodity. It has much less moat to prevent competitions. When the rams flood the market that's when the bubble ends, until the next cycle arrives. Processors are much harder to design and commoditize.
A GPU Transistor is a lot more complicated than a RAM transistor and the size of these are quite different too. Bleeding edge vs. a known process with know machines and written off machines.
Also you calculate in the machine cost and R&D.
RAM hiked because the demand spiked and these companies are now in power. Before apple and other companies told them the prices and had hardly any money for investment.
newer process node are smaller but very expensive compared to mature ones, each wafer from TSMC latest process is costly and with lower yield due to GPU large die size (+700mm2 compared to around 60mm2 per DRAM die)
> So while RAM is a commodity product, this insane price difference didn't make any sense.
Supply and demand coupled with the fact that a RAM fab can't (trivially) output compute chips, and vice versa, a compute fab can't output RAM. It's two completely different supply chains.
https://www.theregister.com/systems/2026/06/29/zuck-saves-me...
From a quick skim, you could think of this as roughly equivalent to shoving a large amount of DDR4 on a PCIe card and using it as a swap space. It's more sophisticated (see CXL protocol), but that gives you an idea of the tradeoffs. It seems there is some OS-level support for moving hot/cold pages between the main fast DRAM and the expansion higher latency DRAM.
It's a very valid point that DRAM has a fairly long lifetime and contains significant embedded carbon emissions, as well as the current availability crisis of new DRAM.
Hi - thanks for the insightful comment - could you please expand on the above?
Genuinely curious :)
Which seems to be the sister site of Register; https://www.blocksandfiles.com/architecture/2026/06/26/panmn...
GPU transistors are smaller due to the more advanced process node (cost per transistor metrics aren't really clear, if they improve on advanced node or not, but I'd say they get cheaper as they get smaller, as technology costs are amortized).
I'm sure both RAM and logic use a process that is quite similar in both inputs and manufacturing steps. So while RAM is a commodity product, this insane price difference didn't make any sense.
So I guess when those fundamental inputs become a constraint, it would make sense for $/transistor move closer for both, which is a massive hike for RAM.
Also you calculate in the machine cost and R&D.
RAM hiked because the demand spiked and these companies are now in power. Before apple and other companies told them the prices and had hardly any money for investment.
Supply and demand coupled with the fact that a RAM fab can't (trivially) output compute chips, and vice versa, a compute fab can't output RAM. It's two completely different supply chains.
https://www.marvell.com/products/cxl.html
This yields for exciting ideas or workarounds that might result a post-crisis memory boom (hopefully) also for local machines.
1. Lowest, Apple is evaluating new Chinese manufacturer which means change of supply demand if indeed it has reasonable QA. (https://www.ft.com/content/f4ac5c92-03be-4499-b16a-017a7e9ee...)
2. Companies tries to workaround performance - suddenly single channel is 'ok' ? :) (https://www.gigabyte.com/press/news/2403)
Single channel RAM surely beats any disk-based swap.
TIL there are 2x 2.5GbE PCI-E HAT adapters for Pi 5.
How to attach RAM to the new NVLink/UALink fiber buses?