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As LRDIMM Adoption Gains Momentum

By Sameer Kuppahalli on 07-24-2011 at 8:03 AM

As LRDIMM adoption gains momentum, I want to highlight the major market segments and how this technology will bring about the benefits. To start, I would first like to point out that the LRDIMM value proposition can be summed up as capacity/performance, performance/watt and capacity/$. At the core of the LRDIMM technology is not just the load reduction aspect, but also that it offers higher capacity using the mainstream DRAM technology.

One of the major segments that LRDIMM will benefit is the data center segment. As LRDIMM’s allow the enterprise dual and quad CPU servers to exploit their maximum capacity potential, that are the workhorses of the data center server and storage appliances, it ultimately helps lower the total cost of ownership (TCO) of the data centers. Adding more memory capacity, in general, allow the data centers to optimize their existing IT infrastructure investment by increasing the utilization of their compute resources. For example, with the current memory technology, a virtualization targeted server will reach a memory resource limitation much sooner when increasing the number of virtual machines. This requires adding a new server that will consume more power and real estate. In comparison, LRDIMM will alleviate the memory resource limitation by exploiting the full potential of server memory capacity and hence delay the requirement for an additional server. This has implications to the TCO of the data center.

The next segment that will benefit from LRDIMM is High-Performance Computing (HPC). HPC systems, by definition, are compute intensive and access memory more frequently for information. This makes it particularly sensitive to memory subsystem bandwidth and performance. A key benefit of LRDIMM is increase in raw speed, up to 1600 in certain configurations, adds significant value to the HPC end user applications.

LRDIMM also brings significant benefits to the cost sensitive channel and SMB market segment. As LRDIMM allows more ranks of memory to be populated on a memory module, it can provide high-capacity DIMM by using the mainstream DRAM technology. For example, a certain configuration of LRDIMM allows using the 2Gb DRAM density to build 32GB LRDIMM, as opposed to using the more expensive 4Gb DRAM density. Additionally, certain LRDIMM configuration also allows the use of consumer grade, known as x8, DRAM components which are more cost optimized. Overall, LRDIMM helps populate a high capacity server using cheaper components, thereby lowering the BOM cost.

So to sum it all up, LRDIMM benefits a broad segment of the capacity enterprise server and workstation market in terms of higher capacity with performance and/or cost optimization.

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