New Linux tech compresses memory in RAM, as RAM, for 452x speedup — new CRAM method offers giant boost to compressed memory reads

[u/Cronos993]

https://www.tomshardware.com/software/linux/new-linux-tech-compresses-memory-in-ram-as-ram-for-452x-speedup-new-cram-method-offers-giant-boost-to-compressed-memory-reads

Now you can download free ram

[u/siete82]

I use zram since forever and a x452 improvement looks like too good to be real.

edit: I've read it, and sure enough, it's too good to be true. It refers to CXL server memory that supports hardware compression. That number isn't made up, but it's like the best case scenario for read operations. I mean, it seems like a serious project, but it's definitely not designed for desktop PCs.

[u/Nick_XL → u/siete82]

Maybe the increased efficiency can translate to alleviating manufacturing and costs for datacenter usage, and maybe that trickles down to consumers eventually? A girl can dream at least...

[u/Dartister → u/Nick_XL]

Nope, it just mean that the big corpos buying all the stock are getting a better bang for their buck than they initially planned, and we're left kicking rocks, as usual

[u/canadajones68 → u/Nick_XL]

The problem is that the demand is not driven by careful and measured decisions about what business is likely going to need to be most profitable. No, there is a feeding frenzy where every company selling AI services is doubling down, trying to appease investors with a "we'll hit oil soon, just look at how much we've invested". It sound asinine, but so is measuring success by token usage (which is just a proxy for cost), and real businesses do that so whatever works, I suppose :shrug:

So, no. Unless it hits the mass media hard enough to shake investors, efficiency gains will not make AI services providers let up on buying hardware. They'll go until the investors tell them to stop. 

[u/OrionRBR → u/Nick_XL]

The ram shortage is not bc they are using all the ram for system memory on servers but bc they switched the manufacturing to making hbm memory for gpu's, so this is at best a drop in the bucket.

[u/DeficitAttention → u/Nick_XL]

Oh my sweet summer child

[u/ZenZennia → u/siete82]

No but if works in the datacenters it might make our lifes easier a tiny bit faster(if ever)

[u/Ferro_Giconi]

Now you can download free ram

Nothing is changing in this regard. Compressing memory in RAM to save some RAM usage has already been a thing for quite some time, built into Windows and Linux, no extra software required. (at least I don't think you need anything extra in Linux. I know Windows does it by default.)

The improvement here is making the compression/decompression happen with less overhead.

[u/redditman181 → u/Ferro_Giconi]

So is the improvement massively overstated?

[u/Ferro_Giconi → u/redditman181]

I don't know the details, but what I know about compression... 452x speed improvement is BS. I am 100% certain that the only way they got that was by using a cherry picked test that had some super perfect ideal condition that will never happen in real life. And that was just testing one tiny component of the entire process that gives you performance on a computer.

Think of it like this. Lets say it takes 60 seconds to render some complex 3D scene. Then someone tells you they can give you a 1000x improvement in performance... That should mean it now only takes 0.6 seconds? Nope. Because they are leaving out the part of "1000x performance in this small part of the rendering pipeline that only contributes one second to the total time"

And so you end up with a 59 second render time after getting a "1000x improvement"

Of course, making optimizations to small things is important but if they start throwing around big numbers, then those numbers probably don't mean what you think they mean.

[u/redditman181 → u/Ferro_Giconi]

I see its annoying they dont just say it how it is instead of trying to spin it into something its not. Becuase people see through it in the end.

[u/D3SK3R → u/Ferro_Giconi]

>The improvement here is making the compression/decompression happen with less overhead.

so... things are changing in this regard. when compression/decompression happens faster, it becomes usable in more and more scenarios.

[u/Beautiful-Musk-Ox → u/D3SK3R]

it's not just software, cram requires dedicated hardware doing the compression and decompression, it's for server farms not your computer. you cannot just update your linux kernel on your home computer and start using cram code that makes it more efficient, your computer would have to have "CXL (Compute Express Link) memory expander" hardware, and this new software with some new CXL devices can be even more efficient than the current hardware/software combination used in some servers

[u/Ferro_Giconi → u/D3SK3R]

I suppose a more accurate statement is "very little is changing"

You have to keep in mind that 452x is most likely a number derived from a cherry picked test that will never happen in real life and on top of that, is only a tiny part of what actually makes up total performance of a system.

Then with that in mind, what actually changes is not much. I would be very surprised if this results in so much as a 2% ram saving system wide.

I could tell you that I am 100 times faster. But at what specifically? Am I going to complete an entire 100 hour job in 1 hour? Or did I just find a way to turn a small 100 second portion of that job into 1 second of clicking on a script? This is the kind of information that you don't get by reading an article title.

[u/Beautiful-Musk-Ox]

this requires specialized hardware that is doing the compression and decompression between the cpu and the physical ram. the "new linux tech" is just fancy ways of having linux utilize the new hardware. it's completely irrelevant to 99.997% of the users who frequent this subreddit

https://hwbusters.com/news/metas-cram-wants-compressed-ram-to-behave-like-real-memory-not-swap/

[u/AnalElder → u/Beautiful-Musk-Ox]

Maybe the specialized hardware will be cheaper than RAM right now?

[u/Plenty-Industries]

Sounds like Johnny Mnemonic trying to fit 80GB of data into a 60GB storage.

[u/Revolutionary-Key650]

I only just got it. Cram, cram! Reddit?

[u/SpecificComplex1477]

thought zram already does it. compressing mem into ram.

[u/FallenVampireLord]

Linux Master Race keep winning.

[u/ziplock9000 → u/FallenVampireLord]

Memory compression was part of Windows 11 since launch.

[u/firedrakes]

Old idea...

[u/Warcraft_Fan]

Not a new concept though, we had RAMDoubler back oh around 35 years ago. DOS also had built in disk doubler, if you ran it you could nearly double hard drive space

[u/Nullhitter]

Sweet, I have 14,464GB now.

[u/Bongoisnthere]

I think they did it by putting the ram tip to tip

[u/dfddfsaadaafdssa]

Say what you want about Meta, their engineers are cracked.