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Windows Has a Future In RAM: AgigaTech Samples DDR3+Flash DIMM
An anonymous reader writes "AgigaTech appears to be the first company to produce a non-volatile SDRAM DIMM — an SDRAM memory module that retains its contents even without power supply. The modules combine DDR2/3 SDRAM with NAND Flash as well as a data transfer controller and an ultracapacitor-based power source to support a data transfer from the SDRAM to Flash and vice versa. If this memory makes it into production, this is something that I instantly will want and will stand in line for."
What's windows got to do with it?
Apple has "Mac vs PC", Microsoft has "Laptop Hunters", Linux has recession
"The most obvious application is the vision of keeping, for example, Windows completely stored in a DIMM." - is that it? Is that one sentence the reason for the headline?
Apple has "Mac vs PC", Microsoft has "Laptop Hunters", Linux has recession
Instant on and zero-watt suspend instead of having to hibernate. This would be faster even than booting from SSD. The summary is implying that windows (or other OS) would reside installed on RAM instead of to the hard-drive, so there would be no load time.
Viking has been doing this for awhile. This is their second incarnation.
http://www.vikingtechnology.com/arxcis-nv
there is your reason you then cant download .....enjoy your future of having retards for computer users.
I'm a little skeptical that this will revolutionize IT. How is this an improvement over a system on a UPS with a lot of RAM and aggressive caching? Data centers, which seem to be this product's first market target, already have this in place.
This will require essentially the same software infrastructure as normal suspend to RAM.
The system still has to go through the steps:
Check to see if any critical tasks are running - if so, pause suspend, and ask user.
Same with any communications tasks that may be interrupted.
Stop tasks.
Save state from all hardware to RAM.
Suspend to RAM.
Just capturing an image of the running system does not result in a system that will resume.
It's not a case of put one of these magical DIMMs in, and you're fine for power cuts.
Is it possibly interesting - sure.
But in real life, it may have very little advantage over a seperate flash device, for main memory.
Now, as a super-fast SSD - truly awesome.
Also - WTF - this should never be patentable.
This is not an invention worthy of patent.
It does nothing novel that is not implicit in the problem statement.
'I want a non-volatile RAM'.
this will do wonders for security. Oh wait.
Okay, I've broken the Slashdot rule and read the article.
Can anyone tell me why this is so much better than traditional RAM with a SATA attached SSD? Or using hibernate to disk with an SSD? Is SATA so slow and laggy that there's a big benefit to attaching flash chips to our RAM slots?
Retaining data in RAM without power is cool as a technical feat, but my SSD doesn't take long to fill my RAM chips.
Since computers began we have had hierarchal memory systems. Cache is the most expensive, but the fastest. DRAM is much cheaper slower and denser, but also volatile. Flash is faster than rotating media, slower than DRAM, but non-vloatile. It also has the drawback of limited programming cycles. Magnetic media is very dense, non-vloatile and slow. It is also mechanicly delicate. There are new technologies being developed that are both fast, dense, and non-volatile. With a fast enough, cheap and non-volatile memroy system, you would not need cache, RAM or disk. You could use on unified memory system. This is where I think many syustems are going. Windows, Linux, or OSX have nothing to do with it. Though they will all be greatly impacted.
Oh, yeah! Wise guy, huh? Woob woob woob woob! Nyuk! Nyuk!
you really want code to get stuck in ram and leak???
I like the reboot to start clean
now a reboot of windows won't solve anything!
this will do wonders for security.
WTF is a non-volatile dynamic RAM?
Motorola's spinoff co. Freescale already developed an arguably better concept based on magnetically-stored bits called MRAM. Unfortunately they never got it to scale freely enough to make actual DIMM modules with it. What they do have is lots of types of embedded memory chips for small applications, embedded systems and whatnot. Those are on the market now.
The MRAM concept would be awesome if they ever got it onto a PC or server motherboard, though. It requires zero power to retain its data, since the individual flipping bit states are stored by tiny magnets. That means you could turn your computer on/off just like a dumb appliance like an old TV set or radio, and you'd still be right where you left off (like S3 sleep state with no power supplied). Or you could cease worrying about battery backup systems, since it could lose power and come right back.
I remember some 40 years ago using a PDP-7. When I got tired at about 4am I would note the accumulator and program counter and switch the machine off. Coming back later I restored these and continued the program - it having remained in the core memory that the machine had.
This is nothing more than battery backed disk storage used by ram sans and array controllers for years. Only the packaging is different...but yea go ahead and grant them patents anyway.
I'm sick of hacks I want persistant storage with infinite read/write cycles at least as dense as flash and performant as dram. Lets get ReRam or something working ... enough crappy hacks.
Okay you morons, wake up! Did we already forget the lesson about encryption keys being recoverable in RAM by rebooting into a minimal kernel and cooling the chips? And now you want ram that is capable of permanently storing those keys?!
Come here so I can beat all of you senseless with a large cluebat...
What this means is that the support dept's favourite saying "switch it off and on again" won't work. If this takes off, they'll have to actually start diagnosing and fixing software faults.
On the upside, maybe then we'll get better quality software .... no, I didn't think so either.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Two obvious use-cases: A mail spool directory and a database transaction log directory. Both can benefit enormously from RAM speeds yet must survive power failures. As a bonus, they don't usually use that much storage, so a few GB or tens of GB is probably fine.
Does Slashdot charge for obvious advertisements like this one?
Your Worst Fucking Nightmare,
Clint
ahem...
A classic suspend-to-disk to a SSD partition or file is more efficient as the operating system knows which memory area needs to be saved and which not (not in use, disk cache, code, bus mastering areas).
At resume time the operating system needs to reinitialize the hardware and check anyway if the memory contents is still valid. Not that much for an embedded system with components welded to the board - but then you won't have memory as modules.
Ha! Well played!
Even before SSD drives came into the mainstream (I had a 1MB SSD in my 80286 which had 8ms latency) this technique already existed:
- 5.25" RAM drive with Flash (CF) backup from Acard as well as the DDRDrive which is a plugin card
- HyperDrive RAM-based SSD which was a PATA solution
- Rack mount systems (NAS, DAS) which were basically RAM and batteries with a few either SSD's or even HDD's as backup solution. TI's RAMSAN for example.
- SAN based "accelerators" which sat on FibreChannel
- 2.5" and 3.5" SAS and FC RAM disks which had SLC as backup from STEC and a few other manufacturers. Sure they cost $15k/drive but they have been available for about a decade now.
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Yes, this is a revolution. When everybody has RAM that keeps content when powered off, this will revolutionize computer forensics and malware information gathering.
Otherwise it'll be a big privacy hole - it'd be easy for jackbooted thugs to see what you were up to, just by pulling your DIMMs.
They still can't manage to make a good OS, shouldn't they get that right before they jump into Memory and screw that up
The original article mentions patents 8,200,885 and 8,200,929 then mentions prior art (Gigabyte’s i-RAM).
The article also talks about installing Windows on these modules, as if it is the only operating system.
What a shame.
I read TFA. Saw a picture of the DIMM and it said in big bold letters, AGIGARAM...
A gig of ram? Is that all?
Too small, do not want. /s
You would stand in a line? Caveman...
This would seem to only harden transactions at power-down, not on an ongoing basis.
Windows Superfetch breaks damn near every disk caching scheme in existence. This product would probably be better suited for 'nix based platforms that do not suffer from "M$ knows best!" syndrome.
this is something that I instantly will want and will stand in line for."
awww, another little apple-like-fanb0i, hey?
Considering the first RAM drive I saw was on Tech TV before G4 bought it, I think they have pretty solid ones designed now. Also, considering an enclosure and a buttload of RAM sticks takes like 20W to run so a UPS could run it for days, anyone could build something even faster and better-ish right now.
If this really does work it'll be tremendously useful - even if 20 years later than predicted (Yes, flash-backed ram modules were being touted as the next big thing that long ago)