Hello folks, I hope everyone is okay and not as fed up as I am with everything going on in the world at present!
Today I was thinking about something that I use every day - switchable graphics. See in my MacBook Pro I have an Nvidia 750GT - a decent dedicated graphics card that can run some games well but has never been used for gaming. In fact, my dedicated card only gets used for graphic and video editing on my MacBook and therefore remains cool and quiet using the Intel Iris Pro graphics. The fact that my computer automatically switches without me even noticing (other than the notification I have setup) is quite truly amazing.
So, what about switchable memory? Have a low power implementation such as LPDDR3 and then high-performance DDR4 as the fast memory. It wouldn't be a particularly good idea in smaller laptops but in a laptop such as 15" machine such as my MacBook Pro it might be an excellent idea. Something like this could help a device such as the Nintendo Switch, a lower power RAM for on the move then a powerful implementation that would be activated when it is docked.
Of course, there are issues with this concept of switchable memory. The main one that comes to mind is how do you keep them in sync? If one memory is to be turned off, you need a fast bus or lane to transfer the data from one memory module or type to the other. This could also end up using a lot of power.
This is a just a thought...
