What is MT/s ram | How to Calculate MT/sec

Do you want to know what is MT/s ram and what is it for and how to calculate MT/sec? You are on the right spot to know the answer of this question.

There are many terms and units that are involved in computer equipment, from RAM memory to a router, passing for many other devices.

In this tutorial you will learn about that transfer term that you have seen so much in product specifications, how it is calculated, and what it is used for.

See Also: What does RAM Memory do

What is MT/s ram

MT/s stands for Mega Transfers per second. In other words, millions of data transfers per second. In addition, other magnitudes such as T/s, GT/s (Giga), etc can also be seen and units unlike the clock frequency of a bus do refer to effective transfers.

What is it for?

When it comes to the data transfer bus, the unit of Hz can be used in any of its multiples (KHz, MHz, GHz) to measure the speed of said bus.

However, it is a clock frequency that it works at, not a measure of transfer speed. It only refers to the number of cycles per second, but it may be that in each of those cycles it can move several data at the same time.

The SDR-SDRAM of the late 1990s transferred with the rising edge of each clock cycle, so the speed in Hz could be correctly indicated.

See Also: How RAM Memory Works

For example, a memory of 100 MHz could make about 100 million transfers per second.

But this does not work for the new DDRs introduced after 2000. Being a double data rate memory, that is, it doubles the number of transfers per clock cycle, occurring on the rising and falling edge of each cycle.

For this reason, if we indicate that a DDR memory has 3200 MHz, a user will not really be visualizing what the transfer potential of that device is.

So it was decided to use MT/s (Mega-Transfers per second) or GT/s (Giga-Transfers per second).

In this way you can know more exactly the number of transfers that are made. For example, that 3200 MHz DDR memory would have a MT/s of 6400 MT/s.

Other Units

Other units can also be used for transfers of a bus or device. For example, bits per second can also be used for bandwidth, or any multiple thereof. Imagine you have a 64-bit wide bus running at 1000 MHz, transferring 1 bit every clock cycle.

In that case, we would have 64000 b/s or what is the same, 8000 B/s (8 bits = 1 byte), or 8 kB/s. That is, the formula would be:

B/s = number of bits per cycle F bus width

See Also: How to Identify Problems in Ram Memory

On the other hand, there is also the baud as a unit of transmission. It is popular on some serial transfer buses, among others.

But be careful, as baud is used as a synonym for bits per second and they are not the same thing. To calculate the baud rate in a system the formula can be used:

Baud = Bit rate / No. of bits per basic communication unit

The bit rate being the number of bits that are transferred per unit of time, and the number of bits per basic unit of communication, the length with which data is represented in a system.

For example, if we have a device transferring 50 bits per second and the unit or packets are 4 bits, then we have a baud rate of 12.5.

How to Calculate MT/s

In systems that make only one transfer per clock cycle, we can say that MT/s = MHz, or GT/s = GHz. But in modern systems where it is sought to increase the bandwidth with several transfers per cycle, as in the case of DDR, this is no longer true.

See Also: What is the Capacity of RAM Memory

To calculate the MT/s of any bus, you must apply the following formula:

Hz Transfers per cycle = T/s

For example, if a bus can transmit 4 times in each clock cycle and works at a speed of 1 GHz, then we will have 1Ghz x 4 transfers = 1GT/s. Or what is the same, 1000 MT/s or 1,000,000,000 T/s.