Faster than SSDs: That’s the promise of DDRAMDisk storage, which uses RAM chips via NVMe.
You didn’t understand anything from the capo of the article, we translate it for you: SSDs are fast, but not fast enough for certain applications. The built-in flash memory reaches its limits, especially with random access. This is the premise of DDRAMDisk. The name is barbaric, but very explicit: it is about using RAM memory as storage.
Record read and write speeds
It works: in this configuration, the performance is simply impressive. In sequential reading and writing in Crystalmark, the configuration based on DDR4 reaches 15 and 14.7 Gb/s, and in random access (RND4K Q32T16), the speeds remain very high: 3.4 and 3.77 Gb/s.
Performance could be even higher, but the limit is in the connectivity: the eight PCIe Gen 4 lanes. To perform this magic, it takes a few tricks, including the use of four FPGA components “ Field-programmable gate array “. Compared to flash memory, however, RAM memory has a major disadvantage: without power, data is lost. To correct this, they use a battery cell built into the module.
Integration is tricky…
Moreover, there is another problem. You will need a huge box (with 18 storage modules) well ventilated (because it produces a lot of heat). We let you judge the photo below and imagine it in your PC. In short, not to put in all hands.
It is not known when and at what price the third version of the DDRAMDisk will be available. As a reminder, the first version was sold with 256 GB for 320 US dollars. In addition, the semiconductor crisis is still causing setbacks throughout the hardware industry.
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