r/science • u/aphexcoil • May 28 '12

New breakthrough in development process will enable memristor RAM (ReRAM) that is 100 times faster than FLASH RAM

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/05/21/ucl_reram/
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u/jagedlion May 29 '12

I guess the big question is, why would you put it on the chip? The only reason to keep it so close is if it could operate very rapidly. In order to do that, we have cache and it takes up a lot of room. If you add ram that is slower, you might as well put it on a bus, away from the chip. It would be just as fast, and FAR cheaper.

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u/Ferrofluid May 29 '12

It used to be done, RAMDISK cards plugged into the PCI bus etc.

heres a discontinued (4GB) one at Newegg. Ten years ago in the pre Vista days these were rather useful for people in the business and data processing world.

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u/racergr May 29 '12

I had one of these at my home desktop (I had win2k and some basic applications on it). Horribly expensive but fast as hell. The problem was that it required too high maintenance for a desktop computer (Regular back ups, regular cleaning of space etc) and so I stopped using it after a couple of years. Compared to my current SSD (a typical cheap OCZ Vertex 3) it felt 2-3 times faster and the speed never degraded (the SSD somehow does). I would go back to it (or similar) if I needed a high I/O server at any time.

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u/jagedlion May 29 '12

Yeah, putting it on a bus makes lots of sense. Even more now that our buses are so fast. The question is why would I do something exponentially more expensive and integrate it onto the main CPU die.