Does it count as optimization? For supported hardware, it’s certainly cool. But it’s not making inefficient software better, it’s making better use of the hardware.
So using the back of a knife to cut something is not more efficient than using the sharp side? I would say making better use of hardware is also an efficiency gain. You use the same hardware to do more, while not driving up cost significantly. That is efficiency in my book.
It’s not using the same hardware, this seems to use a special compression chip.
To me this feels more like the benefits of a CPU or GPU upgrade. Things run faster, but not due to software improvements. When people talk about things getting optimized due to the high RAM prices, I think most people are referring to software improvements.
In another comment, I posted a link to the CRAM presentation that mentioned a chip.
This article also mentions some hardware:
Because CRAM is stored in RAM and treated as RAM, with full cacheline/byte access, it can be accessed in a read-only fashion with little delay; just the cost of hardware-offloaded compression.
I don’t think it would say that if they meant the CPU was doing the compression.
Does it count as optimization? For supported hardware, it’s certainly cool. But it’s not making inefficient software better, it’s making better use of the hardware.
So using the back of a knife to cut something is not more efficient than using the sharp side? I would say making better use of hardware is also an efficiency gain. You use the same hardware to do more, while not driving up cost significantly. That is efficiency in my book.
It’s not using the same hardware, this seems to use a special compression chip.
To me this feels more like the benefits of a CPU or GPU upgrade. Things run faster, but not due to software improvements. When people talk about things getting optimized due to the high RAM prices, I think most people are referring to software improvements.
There is no mention of any extra hardware here though. The article even suggests this to benefit existing hardware like the steam deck.
In another comment, I posted a link to the CRAM presentation that mentioned a chip.
This article also mentions some hardware:
I don’t think it would say that if they meant the CPU was doing the compression.
Sounds like optimisation.