AMD G3MX Socket G3 MEMORY Extender

AMD announced plans for a new storage technology, which doubles the RAM capacities of servers practically. The “Socket G3 MEMORY Extender” (G3MX) technology permits coming Opteron to processors to address per core instead of 8 up to 16 memory modules. G3MX supports DDR3 SDRAM and is in the year 2009 to the market to be introduced.

G3MX-basierte servers aim at particularly RAM-hungry applications like large Virtualisierungssysteme and data bases. A server with two Quad core Opteron and G3MX technology could be equipped with up to 128 memory modules and be accessed with it 256 or even 512 GByte RAM.
In conventional computers the memory is tied up directly over the MEMORY CONTROLLER to the processor, whereby the CONTROLLER is integrated either in the Main board chip set (with Intel) or into the CCU (with Athlon 64 and Opteron). In systems with extremely much RAM one needs a buffer between memory module and – CONTROLLERs, in order to lose no achievement. So far for memory-intensive systems “Fully Buffered DIMM” (FB-DIMM) is therefore used, an internal buffer is had. The problem: In addition FB-DIMMs are expensive and currenthungry and apply due to high latencies as relatively slow. AMDs G3MX wants to now solve this problem, as the buffers on the memory modules are replaced by buffers on the Main board. These can in each case address up to four modules. The result is according to AMD a higher performance and the doubling of the possible capacity already mentioned. In addition money saved through the use of conventional memory modules instead of the expensive FB-DIMMs.
As well the “Socket G3 MEMORY Extender” technology actually works, must be waited for. Also AMD might not be the only manufacturer with this idea. According to rumors Intel works on a similar technology for its platforms.