One day, storage=RAM? Options

[Virtuoso]

There were always be faster, albeit more expensive, technologies which we will utilise as cache on faster buses.

True, there will always be optimised forms of hardware. However, those will be for geeks like us who care about such stuff.

IIRC some mobile devices now treat their solid state memory flexibly between OS/cache/storage...?

I guess at some point, memory will be so fast that faster memory for certain applications won't be necessary in practical terms.

[lynxen32]

This is an interesting topic as I have been thinking about the elimination of the cpu ram structure on a mb. then someone on another forum mentions that you can eliminate all forms of transfer eliminating any latency by directing information directly to the screen from where it is stored, on the hdd. load times are slow because of slow devices, if hdd were really quick who would need a cpu or gpu? also what about cloud computing? it is rumored that with the climb of internet bandwidth processing information could be done on a network of computers through your internet sending the info back to your computer and depending on how many computers are processing on the link you could have a super computer in your living room much like folding@home is doing now. it takes the fun of home computing, but would it really matter when you could hire the nsa's new data monster to run a 3DMark WORLD RECORD?

This post has been edited by lynxen32: Mar 18 2012, 11:38 PM

[TinBane]

Kimmo:

Even if it were achievable, the new "RAM" would be local storage, and the new "HDD" would be bulk-remote network accessed storage?
Density, permanency, location, all these "features" have costs, and the cost is usually time.
Even if in the future we have planet-spanning networks as fast as RAM is these days, odds are our local interconnects will be even better.

But assuming it was possible, then making RAM = Storage would simply mean instant access. You could imagine that your programs wouldn't need to be open or shut, they'd always be open, unless you restarted them. So every program would be like alt-tabbing back in, except perhaps more high-tech and faster. :)

A lovely dream until you remember that companies like Adobe can probably squander every technological advantage we give them with their poorly optimised and bloated shit-code.

This post has been edited by TinBane: Mar 20 2012, 06:14 AM

[@~thehung]

one thing that needs to be considered is the potential natural ceiling the limitations of the human sensory apparatus will one day place on our storage demands.

multimedia will continue to be a most insatiable devourer of storage for a long time yet. but at some point, we'll be trying to write to screens with smaller dot pitches and at faster frame rates than what is discernable to our eyes.

we are already in a world of overkill with at least one medium: the written word. even without non-volatile RAM i could in theory have instant recall of practically everything ive ever read in my lifetime stored on my current system right now. lets say it was stored as ASCII. no person would ever be able to read it faster than a HDD+RAM combination could supply it.

but of course, once we start wiring ourselves into the cerebral cortex all bets are off...





This post has been edited by @~thehung: Mar 22 2012, 03:32 PM

[robzy]

True, there will always be optimised forms of hardware. However, those will be for geeks like us who care about such stuff.

I highly doubt that this will be the case.

IIRC some mobile devices now treat their solid state memory flexibly between OS/cache/storage...?

What do you mean exactly? "Solid state memory" is a meaningless term in this discussion.

I guess at some point, memory will be so fast that faster memory for certain applications won't be necessary in practical terms.

Again, I highly doubt that this will be the case. "640kB ought to be enough for anyone" echos in my mind.

Rob.

[TinBane]

thehung: We can already "receive" data from rat neurones, and "send" data to them. Ultimately by the time RAM = HDD, we should have pretty sophisticated HIDs, where resolution may not be limited to what our eyes can record, but what our brain can interpret. Once you add that, you don't even need to stop at vision. Touch, taste, sound, hell feelings of orientation (apparent gravity) will all be "up for grabs".

[TheSingularity]

thehung: We can already "receive" data from rat neurones, and "send" data to them. Ultimately by the time RAM = HDD, we should have pretty sophisticated HIDs, where resolution may not be limited to what our eyes can record, but what our brain can interpret. Once you add that, you don't even need to stop at vision. Touch, taste, sound, hell feelings of orientation (apparent gravity) will all be "up for grabs".

Cool to see someone else has seen the rat neurone/computer integration they did.

Too bad they seem to be keeping there current information on how it is going secret.

Full blown cybernetics here we come! As well as eventually the Singularity!!! Haha.

[Nich...]

I don't think that the distinction will ever disappear.

There were always be faster, albeit more expensive, technologies which we will utilise as cache on faster buses.

Well, yeah, but are you gonna even notice the difference between 1/3 and 3/4 of the blink of an eye?

Well, how fast is RAM these days - throughput and latency - vs current SSDs vs RAM from the mid 80s and early 90s?

Some of the volatility of RAM can be mitigated via things like onboard batteries, or just a more generalist UPS setup. But they can't be mitigated forever. Still, how much power/long would it take to keep a system running so that the OS or firmware detects no power for, say, a minute, and then dump RAM to a SSD, either a system drive or a dedicated scratchpad/virtual memory type drive?

I'd say that's potentially doable now, but how much are you willing to pay in this trade-off?

[@~thehung]

thehung: We can already "receive" data from rat neurones, and "send" data to them. Ultimately by the time RAM = HDD, we should have pretty sophisticated HIDs, where resolution may not be limited to what our eyes can record, but what our brain can interpret. Once you add that, you don't even need to stop at vision. Touch, taste, sound, hell feelings of orientation (apparent gravity) will all be "up for grabs".

but of course, once we start wiring ourselves into the cerebral cortex all bets are off...

[TinBane]

I aws that, i guess my point was that wiring neurones will probably come before the materials science required to make storage of high def stereo cision trivial.

[@~thehung]

i see.

hmm...but i cant make up my mind whether or not that is a "big claim"! :)

got any linkage to where we are at currently on that front?

[zebra]

Hi.

For what it's worth guys, yeah, for some of us, the future is "now". We use one of these at work:

http://www.ramsan.com/products/rackmount-r...rage/ramsan-440

It's a fibre-channel connected RAM array that "stores" data persistently.

Around 587,000 IOPS I've seen from it and maybe 4.2GB/sec of I/O down the pipe.

This technology isn't that new. Commoditising it and making it realistic for "every man" is something that is a little way off yet, however...

z

[mudg3]

Thats the same thing that died and took down virgin airways a while back yeah?

[zebra]

Thats the same thing that died and took down virgin airways a while back yeah?

Hey bloke.

Well, it's a tad more complex than that - but yeah, Virgin do have some TMS units.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/09/28/virgin_blue/

The problem was a bit more than a TMS unit failure, and whilst I am not an employee and don't have all the details (they were never publicly released!), I can tell you that the crux of the issue was related to the multipath layer in use/fail over methodology.

Interesting stuff...

z