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Equation 3 · From Origins to Frontier: A History of AI Memory Systems and the Bandwidth Wall

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t=20t = 20

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Inputs and operations20
Result or conditiont
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tt

Symbol t

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=

=

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with t measured in years. At t = 20 that factor works out to (3.0/1.6)^{10} ≈\approx 540 : a roughly five-hundredfold widening of the gap in raw compounding terms, and that is before accounting for the interconnect term separately. No single memory technology closes a gap shaped like that on its own. Every technology discussed below narrows it at one particular tier, for one particular class of workload, for a while — which is exactly why the industry kept needing a new one.

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