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."

Comments

Eh?

[eugene2k]

What's windows got to do with it?

Re:Eh?

[Ironhandx]

There was a false idea floating around back in the days of the SIMMS-> DIMMS transfer that SDRAM stood for Static Dynamic Ram and that it switched to DRAM as the abbreviation for DIMMS. This was actually propagated in marketing for awhile.

I've also seen people claim that SIMM stood for Static Inline Memory Module, what was actually the case was that SIMMS were most often a form of PRAM which is just battery backed DRAM, which added to the confusion.

Static Dynamic RAM was actually sort-of a term for awhile but Synchronous Dynamic Ram needed the abbreviation far more as it extremely quickly became the standard.

Therefore you have a situation where often SRAM and SDRAM can mean the same thing to some people.

My cousin who is a Computer Science grad who got his degree around that time actually learned from a Prof who also had incorrect information and argued with me for a long time on the matter until I managed to care enough to dig out the relevant technical documents and show him why he was wrong.

Less interesting than the writer thinks.

[queazocotal]

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'.

New Memory Technologies - The Impact

[RudyHartmann]

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.

this is good!

[Anonymous Coward]

now a reboot of windows won't solve anything!

Re:I don't see it

[sco08y]

Okay, I've broken the Slashdot rule and read the article.

Can anyone tell me why ...

No, because we didn't break the damned rule! Now, do you see why we have it?

Nothing new under the sun ...

[Alain Williams]

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.

Re:No, wait....

[hairyfeet]

Its trollbait, it won't benefit Windows any more than it would BSD, Linux, or OSX. I mean who even shuts down anymore, when you have hybrid sleep? The amount of power used is negligible and if the battery gets low Windows automatically switches to hibernate.

It seems to me the ones that would gain the most from this wouldn't be Windows but iOS and Android as it'd be great for cell phones. Just have the main OS shut down to this new RAM and have a tiny OS that simply listens for calls and SMS and wakes the larger OS if you have incoming communications. Hell with something like that we might actually have smartphones whose batteries last like the old dumbphones did, wouldn't that be nice?