Follow the DRAM at Robert Pogson

Those who claim old-fashioned PC dominate and continue to dominate IT missed something. I missed it too. For the first time in recent memory the consumption of DRAM, the fast memory used in PCs, is less than 50% in old-fashioned PCs. Tablets and smart phones are taking a huge chunk of IT by any measure.

I would bet some people keep a warm hand on their smart phone more than their keyboard or mouse. DRAM holds software and data currently active in a computer. That DRAM usage is a leading indicator of how people are doing their IT. We have known for a couple of years that numbers of small cheap computers were increasing dramatically but I did not think to tally up how much software and data they actually use. It’s a lot. The old-fashioned PC took a few decades to reach its current level of consumption. Small cheap computers did it in just a few years. This is a game-changer. This is not a blip/fad/temporary phenomenon. Wintel is crumbling.

Oh, one more thing. iSuppli says there will be 519 million new smart phones this year and Android/Linux will reach 1000 million cumulative smart phones by next year. That’s a lot of RAM. Manufacturers of RAM and everything else in IT are noticing they don’t have to supply Wintel to make money.

“In a significant changing of the guard that also reflects the growing dominion of media tablets like the iPad from Apple Inc., PCs during the second quarter accounted for less than half of the market for dynamic random access memory (DRAM)—the first time that share by traditionally the strongest consumer of the memory type fell below 50 percent, according to an IHS iSuppli DRAM Dynamics brief from information and analytics provider IHS.”

via PC Share of DRAM Market Dips Below 50 Percent for First Time – The IHS iSuppli®.

My Mission

My observations and opinions about IT are based on 40 years of use in science and technology and lately, in education. I like IT that is fast, cost-effective and reliable. I do not care whether my solution is the same as yours. I like to think for myself.

My first use of GNU/Linux in 2001 was so remarkably better than what I had been using, I feel it is important work to share GNU/Linux with the world. I have been blessed by working in schools where students and school systems have benefited by good, modular software easily installed in most systems.

I have shown GNU/Linux to thousands of students and hundreds of teachers over the years and will continue in some way doing that until I die in spite of the opposition.