Re: [linux-audio-dev] Performance and Elegance? (Was: High Cost of

[Joe Pfeiffer]

   I wanted to point out something I discovered on Sun systems pertaining
   to memory.  At the company I work for we bought 5 new Ultra 80s, which
   I thought were pretty good not counting the new blade systems.  We
   also maxed out the memory.  I was looking at the memory and discovered
   it was 50ns!!  I thought this cannot be!  Then I discovered that
   instead of using faster RAM, the memory bus is 520 bytes wide ( which
   includes some parity ).   Now I have done no research on the PC
   architecture, anyone have comments on this?

The PC industry is using a misleading spec for memory -- the actual
access time is something on the order of 50ns (I'm sure somebody can
correct me), but there is an on-chip buffer.  Memory accesses from the
buffer are at the speeds the manufacturers like to quote.

I'm under the impression that DRAM (including SDROM ) is indeed
inherently slower than CPU speeds, due to the need to charge or
discharge the capacitors used for the actual storage.
-- 
Joseph J. Pfeiffer, Jr., Ph.D.       Phone -- (505) 646-1605
Department of Computer Science       FAX   -- (505) 646-1002
New Mexico State University          http://www.cs.nmsu.edu/~pfeiffer
SWNMRSEF:  http://www.nmsu.edu/~scifair