Magnetic Memory (RAM) will make rebooting obsolete
Just read an interesting article on the development of magnetic RAM, which when completed will make rebooting PCs a thing of the past in just a few years: http://www.mytelus.com/news/article.do?pageID=cp_tech_home&articleID=1343531 I hate having to wait while my computer is dragged awake...this should be very useful.
It sounds all spiffy. But I must say the concept of hyperram does sound somewhat better... can't wait either way.
Actually it sounds a lot like the Magnetic Core Memories which were used in early computers between the time they stopped using tubes but before IC memory first became available.
With those computers you could halt the processor, record the values in the registers then turn off the power. After you turned on the power again, you could restore the register values and start the processor running again like nothing had ever happened.
Historical note, the computers in the Challenger Space Shuttle used Core memory, those memory modules were recovered from the ocean floor and Nasa read the contents of those memory cores. They didn't gain much in the way of useful data for the investigation, but it does testify to some of the value such memory could have. Columbia's computers were upgraded and used IC memory chips so that feat wasn't possible in the latest disaster.
very cool. i hate having to restart or waiting for the computer to turn on. but maybe thats because im inpatient..
*drool*
i could do wth that righhhht now
computer deal store get any windows OS and PC with free magnetic ram.
scroots
Sounds good, but ram is all about performance, if it can operate at a high frequency and low latency then bring it on. Otherwise I'm afraid it'll not become mainstream, particularly since high bandwidth fsb's are becoming more prevailent.
Possible use for this... get rid of the battery on the BIOS chip, using the magnetic RAM instead. Then, if they do take it that far, maybe eventually have the entire OS operate out of the magnetic memory, essential programs too, and make hard drives obsolete. Maybe a little far-fetched, but think about the potential. I've been hearing these ideas from hardware geeks for the last 5 years.
how would you empty it though?
wave a magnet over it? or de magnatise it? in a carefully conrolled manor.
scroots
I would imagine you remove something from it by writing something else in it's place. This may end up going the route of "bubble memory", an interesting technology but ultimately a failure, it turned out to be too slow to keep up with the faster processors. OTOH, the core memory I mentioned above was faster than the IC memory which ultimately replaced it though the IC memory eventually made up and then exceeded that speed difference. The IC memory did manage to replace the core memory while it was still slower, it was just so much cheaper to produce and maintain that the slower speed was worth working around.
I also remember people looking at the 16K chips and saying that the ultimate memory density had been reached. It was talk like that which was one of the original driving forces behind the development of the bubble memory.
The possablities for magnetics have been around for a long time, however people always tend to avoid them like the plauge.
3 1/2 inch flopies were out-dated by the CD, then that was outdated by "ZipDisks", however, ever since the 'CD Go train' everyone has jumped into they no longer wish to change to a better system (neither do I).
But the reason for it is the same reason people use Microsoft, everyone else uses it. It becomes very chaotic when changing from one format to another, even if it is outdated. Some (most?) web sites will not get on the new PHP that is comming out because it doesn't use MySQL, they plan on SQLite (a much faster SQL), yet just about no one will re-program to fit the new PHP because they don't think its worth the effort (is it really?).
The ZipDisks hold far more information then any CD, and the CD makers have recently made about a 200 MB jump upwards in storage while it still lacks far behind the most recent magnetic storage disks.
This new "Magnetic RAM" will be the most logical step in the feild of putting people back onto the "Magnetic Train" that anyone has come up with to date. It will [more then likely, the article gives me a 404, so I can't check] not bother many people, be compliant with regular existing cards, and proably make a few advances in super computers.
3 1/2 inch flopies were out-dated by the CD, then that was outdated by "ZipDisks", however, ever since the 'CD Go train' everyone has jumped into they no longer wish to change to a better system (neither do I).
CDs were not outdated by Zip disks, the Zip disk was simply too small and with todays huge disk drives and huge programs even CDs are on the small side. Also going against the Zip disks were the fact that IoMega made them which meant they were low quality.
Originally Posted by WA
Magnetic Memory (RAM) will make rebooting obsolete
great. now how will i fix my system after windows crashes?
Appearantly, MRAM is due to be released sometime in 2004.
Originally posted by Veneficus
http://www.internetnews.com/infra/article.php/2219411
Appearantly, MRAM is due to be released sometime in 2004.
That article is a breath of fresh air. It looks like this memory technology has both the speed and the packaging density that'll allow it to be a true replacement for the current memory technologies. Add in it's lower power requirements (less heat in big systems and longer battery life in portable systems) and it looks like this is going to be a real big winner.
I wonder if it's too late to invest in these people?
Originally posted by joh6nn
great. now how will i fix my system after windows crashes?
LOL.
You can always invest in a nice sledge hammer ;).
Originally posted by Roy Sinclair
I wonder if it's too late to invest in these people?
I don't know anything about investment or how that works, but these guys are looking for licensees...
http://www.btgplc.com/portfolio/MRAM.html
Originally posted by Drakain Zeil
Some (most?) web sites will not get on the new PHP that is comming out because it doesn't use MySQL, they plan on SQLite (a much faster SQL), yet just about no one will re-program to fit the new PHP because they don't think its worth the effort (is it really?).
I'd just like to point out that this is incorrect.
PHP5 (which I have been involved in beta testing for some months now) still fully supports MySQL. It is, as always, up to the server administrator to configure software to works as required. For instance, PHP supports PostgreSQL, but not by default. MySQL support is NOT being removed, and also it's very opinionistic to say that SQLite is faster (are there are benchmarks showing that?)
I personally will not be changing from MySQL simply because MySQL is IMHO pretty much the best SQL server option out there. I will however be upgrading PHP on all of my servers as soon as a stable PHP5 release is out (not long left now) and I think you will find most other sysadmins will be doing the same.
Oh yeah and CDs weren't outdated by Zip disks? Other way around... plus Zips were supposed to replace floppies... you hardly ever see them any more now, whereas the humble floppy is still here, as of course is the CD and now the DVD. And of course the other stuff about Zips that Roy said :D
MRAM is an extremely exciting technology which I feel is long overdue. As has been pointed out, the ideas behind it have been around for ages, and even working products. Hopefully these new developments will bring it to mainstream use... but although I love the idea of having all my stuff stored in high-speed memory, I doubt that hard drives will vanish anytime soon. They will most likely remain a cheap mass-storage option for quite some time.
Another thing that fascinated me was the recent work by IBM on memory crystals. Now, I read about this in New Scientist about two years ago, but I haven't got the time to search through my back issues. Basically they managed to fit shedloads of info in a crystal, and read different parts by rotating the crystal at different angles or something.
But the part that really blew my mind was that apparently the information was contained in the structure of the crystal as a whole... meaning that even if the crystal got broken, so long as it was not too bad, all the information could still be safely recovered. Amazing...
I think I have heard the same idea put forward by a sci-fi writer... I think it was in a Clarke book. He's always so ahead of his time... for instance what he said about global communications satellites decades ago, way before Sputnik even. And in The Fountains of Paradise I think it was, he describes massive towers of C60 (buckminsterfullerence) with elevators on, to go to geosynchronous orbit. Cool...
::] krycek [::
What's all this crying about how long it takes to reboot the computer, I go to start shutdown and reboot, turn my head breifly to look at my fishies and then my computer is back to windows again. Takes a bit under 40 seconds.
Magnetic core ram does seem to be a nice idea, I'm planning on building a new system next year to take advantage of higher fsb and maybe even 64bit processors (because I can ;)) so if it shows any significant gain over current ram I may chuck some of that in.
Yup I built an Opteron system last week and they rock :)
::] krycek [::
Originally posted by krycek
I think I have heard the same idea put forward by a sci-fi writer... I think it was in a Clarke book. He's always so ahead of his time... for instance what he said about global communications satellites decades ago, way before Sputnik even. And in The Fountains of Paradise I think it was, he describes massive towers of C60 (buckminsterfullerence) with elevators on, to go to geosynchronous orbit. Cool...
::] krycek [::
http://www.spaceelevator.com/ -- Not actually his idea but he was instrumental in keeping the concept alive and getting more scientists to consider it.