Windows Has a Future In RAM: AgigaTech Samples DDR3+Flash DIMM 139
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."
No, wait.... (Score:3, Informative)
"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?
Zero watt 'suspend' instead of 'hibernate' (Score:2, Informative)
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.
Old News (Score:3, Informative)
Viking has been doing this for awhile. This is their second incarnation.
http://www.vikingtechnology.com/arxcis-nv
Re:Eh? (Score:5, Informative)
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.