You may not realise it, but todays ram is responsible for countless amounts of swearing, rage and possibly even death. Every time you use a computer you are only a power failure away from losing valuable time effort and information, and it is all rams fault!
Todays ram can only store information for a fraction of a second. In fact it must be refreshed constantly to stop data being lost.
So why do we use it?
Well, it’s mostly about speed. Anyone using a computer with little ram will know that paging to a hard drive is really sloooow! NAND memory (the type inside your USB flash drive) is faster, but not in the league of RAM. So we have been stuck with it for some time now.
However, the cavalry is on the horizon. Researchers have been looking for alternatives for many years now. Here are my favourite contenders for the future of memory.
An MRAM chip
An MRAM chip
MRAM:
Magneto Resistive RAM data is not stored as electric charge or current flows like current ram, rather, it is stored by magnetic elements. These ferro-magnetic elements can have there polarity switched “on” and “off”.
The magic of this design is that if power is lost the magnetic elements retain all the data. That means that even if your computer is off a week, when switched on it will continue exactly where it left off! No Tears, swearing or foot stomping required!
You may be asking why aren’t we using it now? Well, it has been released to market in specialised applications, but the technology is currently expensive and in need of further work to reduce it’s cell size. Give it a few more years.
NRAM Design
NRAM Design
NRAM:
Nano RAM is based on the mechanical position of carbon nanotubes on a chip. When arranged in an extremely clever way NRAM can behave in a similar way to MRAM with the bonus of being smaller allowing more memory density and using very small amounts of power.
What is means to you:
The introduction of these types of ram will have a massive effect on PC design and software. Some benefits being:
- Instant ON – The only time you should need to boot your computer will be the first time you start it.
- No more sleep or hibernate – This is great for laptop users. No more battery drain in sleep mode!
- Longer battery Life – Not only will the ram use less power, but when you close the lid no further power is required.
- Better Reliability: New memory types will store information more efficiently and reliably. Perfect for servers!
When will we be using it?
Unfortunately, manufacturers have invested billions in current NAND flash and DDR memory fabrication, so it will be some time before they feel the need to move to a new platform.
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[...] have blogged about memory technology before, however, an article I stumbled over a few days ago got my attention more than any other in [...]