AMD Publishes RDNA 3.5 ISA Documentation

[lem79]

...

Points taken. Yes you're right, clocks and network speeds have always been powers of 10 (and often are expressed in bits), and the confusion around RAM when referring to individual chip capacity as opposed to a module. So the answer is to do a proper job, either precise, or properly sloppy and use no case at all, e.g. kb

[LtdJorge]

Okay, but the thing is that GPU memory is implemented as DRAM chips soldered onboard. Individual chips are rated in capacity using gigabits (or gibibits; see below). So, it can get a little confusing when someone is sloppy and uses lower-case b, especially when they go to the trouble of pairing it with an upper-case G.


Yeah, that's a whole other thing and not really my main point. It's not just storage devices, BTW. Also, clock speeds and networking speeds use powers of 10.

I think the main reason why RAM kept using binary scales is that DRAM chips kept growing by powers of two. That's probably because once you implemented another address bit, it made sense to fill out that entire range of additional memory cells it could address. It's only a recent development that DRAM chips started growing in 1.5x capacities, probably due to the slowdown in semiconductor density scaling, yet demand for ever larger DRAM capacities remains robust.

Then we have our friend Microsoft using powers of 2 for the calculation and powers of 10 as the unit, and then people see 930GB usable out of a 1TB drive, and start to wonder.