AMD Radeon RAMDisk Pitched as Trial

[btarunr]

AMD's Radeon RAMDisk software, launched along with its desktop A-Series "Trinity" APUs, is being pitched to consumers as a trial software. A combination of A-Series "Trinity" APUs and AMD-certified memory lets you use the software to create a RAMDisk which works in conjuction with the primary HDD/SSD much in the same way as Intel Smart Response tech or NVELO Dataplex, it's just that the cache SSD is replaced by the system memory, an infinitely faster and more durable caching medium. The software juggles data from the primary drive to the RAMDisk based on its heat (frequency of access). Used with DDR3-1600 MHz memory, users could see data access speeds of up to 25.6 GB/s (gigabytes per second), a 1,700-times speedup over conventional HDD. When off the trial, a license to use the software can be bought for $19.



Source: Tom's Hardware

[jmcslob]

makes me want an FM2 setup...just to play

[Ghost]

It works on Intel systems with non-Radeon memory too. Difference is that using Radeon memory allows to allocate 6 GB RAM for caching, while others are limited to 4 GB.

This is actually Dataram RAMDisk, BTW.

[largon]

Originally Posted by AMD

[...] users could see data access speeds of up to 25.6 GB/s [...]

Yeah, right.
But only when using an Intel CPU. AMD's memory controllers are so slow you'd only get 40% of that. Not even taking account software RAMD inefficiency - users will end up with 2-4GB/s.

[W1zzard]

windows has its own disk cache which works great and has dynamic size. i fail to see the point of allocating a ramdisk that preloads data from disk, so it goes to disk cache first, then into the ram disk, then is stored in both ram disk and disk cache.

essentially you are wasting some main memory, but given current ram pricing, users have done worse things with their money

[Dj-ElectriC]

Hey look, AMD just invented the wheel...
I actually have 1GB dedicated to RAMdisk for browser cache. Not becuase it will be somewhat faster than my SSD by it is a kind of memory that gets used very often and i don't wat my SSD to load it each time

[v12dock]

Ramdisk is needed when network throughput exceeds disk I/O performance. Time for a 10Gbit connection

Btw: http://www.radeonramdisk.com/

[mediasorcerer]

Originally Posted by jmcslob

makes me want an FM2 setup...just to play

That is exactly the thought i had after perusing the article.!!!

[NC37]

Ummm yeah...Asrock has software like this for free too. So AMD, your point is?

[W1zzard]

Originally Posted by NC37

So AMD, your point is?

Give money to Dataram http://memory.dataram.com/products-a...ftware/ramdisk

[nt300]

Originally Posted by jmcslob

makes me want an FM2 setup...just to play

Count me in too.

[3870x2]

Originally Posted by W1zzard

windows has its own disk cache which works great and has dynamic size. i fail to see the point of allocating a ramdisk that preloads data from disk, so it goes to disk cache first, then into the ram disk, then is stored in both ram disk and disk cache.

essentially you are wasting some main memory, but given current ram pricing, users have done worse things with their money

When I read this, I was assuming that we could allocate certain files or folders, IE if you played a certain game and wanted it to load quickly.

It looks like it will work similar to disk cache, but on a much larger scale.

It would be great on our ESX servers that have 64GB of memory each, but it seems it is a bit too early in terms of ram for something like this.

I predict in the future we will use SSDs for only large file (media) storage, and our entire memory space will be what we currently call a RAMdisk, turned non-volatile. Even then SSDs wont come with the computer, it will be an optional thing you buy on the side, like external hard drives today. On another note, threading on multiple cores will be possible using a single thread (programs will no longer have to be programmed for multi-threading, this is done at the hardware level). Core clocks will be standardized, probably somewhere between 2 and 3 GHZ across the board, and when we look at processors in the future, we will be deciding between shared cache, and wether we want the 600-core enthusiast or the high-end 560-core intel CPU.

[W1zzard]

Originally Posted by 3870x2

on our ESX servers

yeah great idea. system crash/power outage -> ramdisk data gone -> file changes lost and/or corrupted -> company bankrupt

[3870x2]

Originally Posted by W1zzard

yeah great idea. system crash/power outage -> ramdisk data gone -> file changes lost and/or corrupted -> company bankrupt

This was hypothetical. I was making this comparison to say that RAM is limited, and not everyone has enough ram to use for RAMdisk.

We are mirrored locally and off-site, with 2 generators locally, 1 generator off-site, and an UPS array on both sites.

To take us down, both our on-site and the off-site 10 miles away would have to blow up simultaneously.

We aren't a large company, we have less than 300 employees, and ~250 of them are truckers, probably less than 50 physical workstations. We do have some very large and very important databases though.

I am sure you take similar steps for TPU also.

[eidairaman1]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAM_drive

[Octavean]

Sounds interesting,…..

Not sure I would pay for this though. As stated before ASRock has some software that can do this and its free. On Apple computers running OS X you can setup a RAM disc for free without the addition of software (just use a terminal command). And finally there are free versions of simple software that can do this for Windows and OS X as well.

IMO AMD should be thanking their customers with some nice little freebees but if they insist on selling it I expect it will be cheap.

I’ve got a Core i7 3930K with 32GB of DDR3 1600 RAM and I have been meaning to setup something like this.

[eidairaman1]

do a lil research with the link below, Ramdisk was used by setup for FDISK and Windows 98 setup via floppy (before discovering the CD was able to do all the work lol)

[dir_d]

Originally Posted by 3870x2

This was hypothetical. I was making this comparison to say that RAM is limited, and not everyone has enough ram to use for RAMdisk.

We are mirrored locally and off-site, with 2 generators locally, 1 generator off-site, and an UPS array on both sites.

To take us down, both our on-site and the off-site 10 miles away would have to blow up simultaneously.

We aren't a large company, we have less than 300 employees, and ~250 of them are truckers, probably less than 50 physical workstations. We do have some very large and very important databases though.

I am sure you take similar steps for TPU also.

Easier to buy a cheap SAN, its the norm to have battery backup cache in them now.

[3870x2]

Originally Posted by dir_d

Easier to buy a cheap SAN, its the norm to have battery backup cache in them now.

we have 2, named bigdaddy and littlemomma respectively. I didn't name them.

[tacosRcool]

interesting but is it really worth it or does it make that much of a difference in real tests?

[AlB80]

RAM disk + conjunction with HDD/SDD = RAM disk cache. Wow!!!
It will replace smartdrive.exe for MS-DOS

[3870x2]

Originally Posted by tacosRcool

interesting but is it really worth it or does it make that much of a difference in real tests?

I think that it would, but if w1zzard is right, the software would just be bloated redundancy.

[Boneface]

Ok so i am trying this and set it to 2gig and not sure what or if im supposed to anything else, im showing a new local disk (I) it has file in it called Temp, it empty so im not sure if im supposed to put anything or set it up so something goes in there lol


Boneface

[hippie]

What would be a huge step forward is if I could use my VRAM as main system memory when not gaming. Still unsure why this can't be addressed somehow. Think of all that super fast GDDR5 just sitting there idle.

Would be great if they could adapt this tool for something like that.

[Deadlyraver]

Now I can't get the thought of an FM2 powered desktop out of head. DAMN YOU BUYING IMPULSES!