The best RAM for PCs, but you can’t buy it

The best RAM memory is not the one with the highest storage capacity, nor is it the fastest, nor the one with the least latency or the most memory channels. Since the one that is good in one section, is not in the others. However, there is a RAM memory that meets all these requirements. The problem? You can’t buy it in any store, well, actually no one can. We are talking about HBM memory .

One of the problems with the PC is that it is a non-unified architecture in terms of memory, which means that you have to waste time copying information from the main RAM to the local ones, such as the video one. The ideal would be for everything to be under the same type of memory. Which exists, but unfortunately you can’t buy it, at least separately.

The best RAM for PCs, but you can't buy it

What is the best RAM?

In the PC world, HBM memory has always been considered a commercial failure related to certain AMD gaming graphics cards. Some of you will remember the Fury first and the Vega later. However, in the world of what is known as HPC or High Performance Computing, such memory has been used in several generations of NVIDIA architectures. Not to mention that it has become the ideal type of memory for such systems. Not to mention the fact that we will see Intel and AMD server processors that will make use of this type of memory.

But what makes it so special? Its cost is not, it is an expensive memory and that is why other more traditional memories such as DDR and GDDR have won the game. However, it has a number of features that make it the best type of RAM out there today. And it is, therefore, a pity that we do not see it on PC, since it would allow us to have processors like in consoles, but without sacrificing performance to latency as it happens to them. Specifically, its advantages are:

  • Being stacked, memory chips take up less space than conventional memory modules.
  • It has a bandwidth comparable to GDDR6 and with HBM3 it has even surpassed it.
  • Bandwidth power consumption is lower than any other type of memory. Up to half per transmitted bit
  • Its latency is the lowest of all, in some systems it works as a last level cache prior to conventional RAM.

HBM Fiji Memoria GPU

Why can’t we buy HBM memory?

However, despite its advantages, we have not seen it used and its biggest disadvantage is the fact that it is not really an independent product. The reason is that this type of memory does not communicate in the traditional way, where an interface has a sender and a receiver and electrical impulses are sent under established protocols and times.

The trap of HBM memory is that it requires a huge chip that is the base where the processor and memory chips are mounted and that are used for communication. This allows you to have many more pins, which in turn allows you to make transfers at a lower speed each, but that added up equals the amount of data from conventional memories. We have to assume that the chips use data pins that communicate horizontally and the trick here is to do it vertically.

HBM Interposer Render

This way of communicating the processor with its RAM memory requires that everything be built in one piece and it is a slower and more delicate process. If we need a large volume of chips, then HBM memory will not be our friend and we will lose market share. This is what happened to AMD, which to make matters worse had to see in its day how, at the same price, it had a less powerful architecture due to the increase in the cost of this type of memory.

In any case, it would be the ideal RAM for PCs, it would allow for a fully unified memory system, with good bandwidth also for graphics and AI, with adequate latency to get the most out of the CPU. But will we ever see a socket with HBM memory around it to act as system RAM? Who knows.