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To: John Walliker who wrote (29551)	9/15/1999 10:03:00 AM
From: grok	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 93625

RE: <KZNerd, However, microprocessor performance has increased by a factor of 1000 during these 30 years and drams have always kept pace. This is not true - I can remember when zero wait-state memory was available for PCs (probably the 286). Now every processor uses several levels of cache because even the fastest DRAM can't keep up. John> Of course! 30 years ago clock frequencies were < 1 MHz. But during all this time the dram has stayed off the critical path. Of course caches have been added! And much additional innovation deployed. But during these 30 years the correct design has always been to get the cheapest dram and solve performance issues by some other approach. Hey, I remember during the 70s a major computer manufacture decided that all main memory in the future would be sram. Boy that was a mistake! CPU designers are always complaining about memory and wishing that it were faster. I know because I am one. But in the past the best overall system solution has always been to use the cheapest memory and get all the memory performance that you can get for free. It's worked for 30 years!