Using flash as ram

[WanderingFool]

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2045531/flash-breakthrough-promises-faster-storage-terabytes-of-memory.html

 

...

Diablo, which has been selling memory controllers for about 10 years, has figured out a way to use the standard DDR-3 interface and protocols to connect flash instead of RAM to a server's CPU. Flash is far less expensive than RAM, but also more compact. The MCS components, which come in 200GB and 400GB sizes, will fit into standard DIMM slots that typically accommodate just 32GB or so of memory. The only adaptation manufacturers will need to make is adding a few lines of code to the BIOS, Wagner said.

...

 

This seems promising, even if it is just used for servers.  My only hope is that the technology can trickle down to the consumer level, so we can have truly fast SSD's or extreme amounts of RAM (albeit ones that can die out)

[allthatremains94]

My only concerns are speeds and Latency, but it would be pretty cool to have EVERYTHING run off of the flash-storage-majigger-thing.

[Kuzma]

O_O Talk about ram disks XD literally; I see RAM in Raid 1+0 (10) in the future...

[Judahnator]

Very nice article. I cant wait to have EVERY VM UNDER THE SUN running in my server.

 

And for no other reason then because i have enough RAM.

[stevv]

yeah, forget about pci-e ssd... let's just use the ram slots!

[kuddlesworth9419]

It would be cool if we could have both normal RAM and flash RAM so one would be for storage and the other for system memory.

[qwertywarrior]

lol i read it as

using fish for ram

[Beskamir]

It would be cool if we could have both normal RAM and flash RAM so one would be for storage and the other for system memory.

what about GDDR5 ram for system ram and then flash ram for storage?

[LAwLz]

what about GDDR5 ram for system ram and then flash ram for storage?

Bad idea. Why would we use GDDR5 for system RAM? Much higher latency than DDR3. Latency isn't that much of an issue for GPUs since they are so amazing at parappel computing, but for a CPU which works very linearly, low latency is very important.

There is a reason why we don't use GDDR5 for CPUs, and that's because DDR3 is better suited for the task. GDDR5 is a modified version of DDR3 by the way, it's not based on some unreleased DDR5. Makes sense for a gaming console because the GPU will benefit a lot from it, but it doesn't really make sense for a desktop computer where we can have both.

[allthatremains94]

It would be cool if we could have both normal RAM and flash RAM so one would be for storage and the other for system memory.

That's exactly what they're doing from what I see, as they said systems will be shipping out with 16GB of RAM and 800GB of Flash.