Tablets be DRAMmed – 9 times as much
How big will tablets grow?
Research house IHS iSuppli says tablet computers will need nine times more DRAM this year than last.
Tablet computers are forecast to need 353.3 million gigabits of DRAM this year, on the back of 57.6 million tablets shipped. This DRAM demand is 834.7 per cent more than the 37.8 million gigabits 17.1 million tablets needed in 2010. The rise will continue, with 1 billion gigabits needed in 2012, 2.2 billion in 2013, and 3.5 billion in 2014; the predicted demand curve is accelerating.
IHS iSuppli tablet DRAM demand prediction
IHS analyst Mike Howard thinks this year's CES in Las Vegas was a turning point, with vendors such as Motorola, RIM, Samsung, and Dell piling into the market opened up by Apple's iPad.
Boosted DRAM demand could be fabulous news for DRAM fab operators, who have endured declining DRAM prices recently, unless tablet makers choose cheaper commodity DRAM. A second worry is that tablet sales could cannibalise netback and notebook/desktop PC sales so much that overall DRAM demand would fall. DRAM fab operators' glasses are always half empty. ®
COMMENTS
Beginning of the end
As a aging IT engineer I got myself a HTC desire HD Android phone.
It sums up for me what is so appealing about Tablets.
It is so damn easy to use, very low-level tech awareness needed to use them and they're fun!
I've had a great time customising it and searching for new apps.
My domestic customers are flocking to them as word gets around to the fact they are easier to use than a PC.
The only fly in the ointment is the seriously crap ones that are on sale. These may blunt the edge on this new market before the better ones go on sale.
I've not touched my net book in over 2 months now and when HTC brings out their 10" tablet, I'll be there!
@magnetik
From your tone I take it you own a fleet of Ferarris and bought tablets as christmas presents for all your friends and family, only to find out they had already bought their own?
I predicted less than monumental sales rather than "nobody" buying any in the next year. I offered an anecdote of first hand experience, not "evidence". I did, however, see two Acer boxes carried out in the same time.
Not a lot
"Tablet computers are forecast to need 353.3 million gigabits of DRAM this year, on the back of 57.6 million tablets shipped"
That doesn't sound a lot - it's 6.13 gigabits per tablet, or 0.766 gigabytes, the nearest commonly used amount of memory would be 768Mb.
It is apparently "834.7% more than in 2010". That would make the requirement 92Mb in 2010.
Yet my (2010) iPad already has 512mb of DRAM and 64Gb of flash memory.
We need more ram everywhere, not just tablets.
Having just taken my third acer 18.4 inch machine in a row (with no faults except the ubiquitous windows seven irq problem causing high cpu from an invisible process,) this one is a monster. Twin 640GB drives, and at 16GB ram, windows 7 just loads all the files you ever need. It's a Core i7, quad core, and is effectively a server.
As a result, after you've opened everything once, it's just all in ram. It opens all of, Photoshop, SQL management studio, VS2010, excel, word, outlook, notepad, ie8, all at once, in under a second.
I don't deny the first time you start it up it takes a minute to get them all open, but I never start it up any more, I just sleep it.
There are only two things I could improve it on.
Firstly, more ram, enough to cache c:\windows, c:\programfiles, c:\users and whole of the current disc in the blu ray player (which it would read and cache on insertion.) I know i7 only goes to 24GByte, but I'd pay for 64 if it could.
Secondly I'd only consider going desktop again, if someone like highpoint, made a similar card to their brand new hybrid card thingy, whereby you could use ram (up to say half a terabyte,) as a buffer instead of the ssd and it auto cached, and loaded at startup, through a custom disk file allowing custom flushed or cached writes, and you could put the page file on it.
Good use of large amounts of ram solves everything as far as I can see.
RE: And yet ...
Nobody? Perhaps nobody showed you?
If there was no use for them, people wouldn't buy them. I wouldn't think the "general public" would buy products that they don't have a use for, at a high price, especially in the current economic climate.
Personally I would use the ipad as a convenient way to browse websites without having the pc / laptop turned on or around in the house. It takes up little space and has a big enough screen to view stuff without too much zooming around.
Also for this purpose, not having a keyboard / lid (like a laptop) makes its easier to hold in various positions. The only put off for me is the current model is a little too heavy. If the ipad 2 is light enough, I will get one.
No uses? I have a few.
