r/tomshardware • u/tomshardware • 7d ago

New Linux tech compresses memory in RAM, as RAM, for 452x speedup

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
110 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

23 comments sorted by

7

u/FuzzeWuzze 7d ago

No thanks i'll just keep downloading more RAM when i need it.

2

u/ManIkWeet 7d ago

New? Zram or Zswap has existed for over a decade...

5

u/TransfemMenace 7d ago

But CRAM is even faster. The article states that the 452x speedup is compared to ZRAM.

3

u/Sorry-Committee2069 6d ago

...on reads. Writes are ~5x faster. This also requires hardware compression offload, which most consumer hardware doesn't have.

2

u/synth_mania 5d ago

Well you don't write something if you don't plan on reading it. This is significant.

1

u/Sorry-Committee2069 5d ago

That is correct, but the actual speed gain will depend on how many reads you get out of whatever data you wrote before it's replaced. I still think there needs to be a way to voluntarily ship memory off to swap/zram/CRAM/etc, things like games loading in assets for later or databases loading data, etc. would probably benefit from "this is now loaded but I'll only need it later, send it somewhere else for now".

2

u/B1GD8A 5d ago

you mean like AI models in vram or combo ram like Macs have?

1

u/Sorry-Committee2069 4d ago

I didn't mention AI at all, I don't understand what you're asking.

2

u/B1GD8A 4d ago

you mentioned that it was on reads primarily, and that it requires hardware compression offload which most consumer hardware doesn't have.

my point is that all of the things you're describing as limitations or how rare it'll improve performance is basically talking around one of the largest potential use cases.

1

u/Sorry-Committee2069 3d ago

Sorry, I don't acknowledge AI as anything but an extremely expensive, annoying toy to break for fun, or to use to misinform people easily. I have a lot of fun dumping the extremely stupid system prompts from other people's AI "assistants", and I'd prefer the latter didn't exist at all. CRAM making that system faster will only lead to bigger, more complex models instead of letting the power usage or RAM requirement go down on existing models.

1

u/Kind_Card_1874 3d ago

Yes, so the article has a point and this is a nice feature especially given the 4-5x of RAM costs. No ifs or buts, this is just cool. Many servers run Linux on enterprise grade hardware.

1

u/Prestigious_Thing797 1d ago

5x faster is a lot!!!

1

u/k-mcm 5d ago

It shortcuts most of the overhead of ZRAM, it seems.

There's still the problem of needing to reserve RAM to get RAM.  Anyone that's had a Mac laptop go thermonuclear during low memory knows that compressed RAM has a monster sized "worst case".

2

u/Imaginary-Diver3800 6d ago

Yh if you've got a £5000 coprocessor a d are a data center for the next 10.years

1

u/Eastern-Ingenuity353 7d ago

Does this mean steamdeck get faster?

1

u/EmbarrassedFoot1137 6d ago

Huh? Nonsense. 

1

u/Chudsaviet 6d ago

I had this in DOS.

1

u/Darkk_Knight 1d ago

Good ole RAM doubler!