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Will RAM ever replace the hard drive?

By RAM, I'll assume you mean any form of memory stored on an integrated circuit. In that case, RAM needs to achieve two goals before it can replace hard disks:

1. Be nonvolatile. Magnetic RAM has this feature.
2. Be cheaper per unit storage. No RAM technology has this feature.

It's not impossible to achieve (2), but historically it's never happened.
 
The RAM hasn't really replaced the hard drive. However, the hard drive replaced the RAM (just think about page file).
The non-volatile RAM has reached the capacity of the hard drives of 5-8 years ago (a 1GByte memory stick of now, compared to a 2 GB hard drive of 1996). Anyway, the cost per storage unit isn't really comparable between the two.
One more thing - while hard drives are much slower than static or dynamic RAM, they are really fast compared to flash memory used in memory sticks.
 
One more thing - while hard drives are much slower than static or dynamic RAM, they are really fast compared to flash memory used in memory sticks.
Click to expand...

Not really. Hard drives have an edge in STR (maybe 50-60MB/sec. STR compared to 10-30MB/sec. for flash memory), but flash is easily two orders of magnitude faster in terms of seek time (which tends to dominate desktop computing hard drive usage). Flash is measured in microseconds, hard drives in milliseconds (1 ms = 1000 us). This is why flash-based SSDs are so blazingly fast, even though they technically don't transfer data as quickly as a normal hard drive.
 
I think someday our secondary storage systems (IE hard drives) will be replaced with solid state storage systems without a doubt. Don't forget that our currently solid state RAM used to be mechanical as well (mercury delay lines, vacuum tubes, relays, magnetic donut cores, etc) but of course it will have to be non-volatile as well.
 
You can get solid-state drives already... but, they are expensive. Something will eventually replace the hard drive I think... IBM was developing holographic storage... don't know where that went... where you could store 100's of terabytes in a 1 inch cube kind of idea. Not today ;-) maybe tomorrow 😉

Jeff
 
Originally posted by: Matthias99
One more thing - while hard drives are much slower than static or dynamic RAM, they are really fast compared to flash memory used in memory sticks.
Click to expand...

Not really. Hard drives have an edge in STR (maybe 50-60MB/sec. STR compared to 10-30MB/sec. for flash memory), but flash is easily two orders of magnitude faster in terms of seek time (which tends to dominate desktop computing hard drive usage). Flash is measured in microseconds, hard drives in milliseconds (1 ms = 1000 us). This is why flash-based SSDs are so blazingly fast, even though they technically don't transfer data as quickly as a normal hard drive.
Click to expand...

My 128 MB memory stick certainly doesn't have 30 MB/s transfer rate, more like a 2 MB/s write. However, my hard drive is having some 20+MB/s read transfer rate.
 
Originally posted by: Calin
Originally posted by: Matthias99
One more thing - while hard drives are much slower than static or dynamic RAM, they are really fast compared to flash memory used in memory sticks.
Click to expand...

Not really. Hard drives have an edge in STR (maybe 50-60MB/sec. STR compared to 10-30MB/sec. for flash memory), but flash is easily two orders of magnitude faster in terms of seek time (which tends to dominate desktop computing hard drive usage). Flash is measured in microseconds, hard drives in milliseconds (1 ms = 1000 us). This is why flash-based SSDs are so blazingly fast, even though they technically don't transfer data as quickly as a normal hard drive.
Click to expand...

My 128 MB memory stick certainly doesn't have 30 MB/s transfer rate, more like a 2 MB/s write. However, my hard drive is having some 20+MB/s read transfer rate.
Click to expand...

Are you talking about flash memory? For normal memory, it is:

http://computer.howstuffworks.com/ram4.htm

Flash memory:

http://www.vtec.co.uk/memory_transfer_speeds.asp

450mb/s is pretty fast. And at 50ns access time, that's really fast.
 
The hard drive will be replaced; it is a product that has moving parts and thus prone to failure. In addition it makes heat and noise. Now for the conjecture part. The replacement for it will likely not be what we view as "conventional RAM". Rather it will be an entirely new technology, maybe molecular-atomic, maybe supercooled something, maybe light based, maybe nano-mahine based. Whatever it is will have to solve (after early stage development) the issues of failure, heat and noise. In addition, it will increase storage capacity by several magnitudes and ultimately at a lower cost. It will do so and smash existing technology. You heard it here first.
 
Originally posted by: Deskstar
The hard drive will be replaced; it is a product that has moving parts and thus prone to failure.
Click to expand...

This is absolutely correct. The fact that a hard drive has moving parts is exactly what will doom it as a technology. As bus speeds, processor speeds, and RAM speeds continue to increase, the bottleneck will ultimately be the physical rotation and mechanical reading of a disk substrate. As someone pointed out earlier in this post, there are RAM based hard drives for high end governmental applications tha tcost thousands of dollars. It might be like that now, but remember a VCR used to cost $1000 at a time a $1000 was worth more than it is today. DVD burners were $500 not to long ago. Every new technology can go into mass production and come down in price. How do you think people feel that shelled out $17,000 for a 40' LCD five years ago?

The technology drives itself. Ultimately the technology will demand faster "disk" access to keep pace with other electronic information flow. At that time, the technolgy in its infacy today will be thrust mainstream by someone who wants to make a truckload of cash.
 
Originally posted by: SagaLore
Originally posted by: Calin
Originally posted by: Matthias99
One more thing - while hard drives are much slower than static or dynamic RAM, they are really fast compared to flash memory used in memory sticks.
Click to expand...

Not really. Hard drives have an edge in STR (maybe 50-60MB/sec. STR compared to 10-30MB/sec. for flash memory), but flash is easily two orders of magnitude faster in terms of seek time (which tends to dominate desktop computing hard drive usage). Flash is measured in microseconds, hard drives in milliseconds (1 ms = 1000 us). This is why flash-based SSDs are so blazingly fast, even though they technically don't transfer data as quickly as a normal hard drive.
Click to expand...

My 128 MB memory stick certainly doesn't have 30 MB/s transfer rate, more like a 2 MB/s write. However, my hard drive is having some 20+MB/s read transfer rate.
Click to expand...

Are you talking about flash memory? For normal memory, it is:

http://computer.howstuffworks.com/ram4.htm

Flash memory:

http://www.vtec.co.uk/memory_transfer_speeds.asp

450mb/s is pretty fast. And at 50ns access time, that's really fast.
Click to expand...
450mb/s is the theoretical transfer rate of the standard, not of the device.
 
ram drives will never make it mainstream. by then, optical glass cubes will replace the hard drive, where lasers will be etching in and out data. my uncle is a comp engineer and tells me his co-owned corp, along with some other company, has plans for this.
 
Originally posted by: AMD Die Hard
How do you think people feel that shelled out $17,000 for a 40' LCD five years ago?
Click to expand...

A 40 foot LCD!!?? WOW! I think that'd be worth $17,000 but where would I put it!? 😛
If I could afford $17,000 for something like a TV, I doubt I'd miss the money.
 
no reason why WinXP can't be put on ROM too (Embedded XP). It'll be a while before active components replace optical or magnetic storage economically... since..more transistors, more heat and power kind of thingie. Hard drives are economical in this decade. You can get 10G 20G ram drives... but they are as expensive as hell... and not really too quick. I dont know how reliable they are either... plus yer power bill will go up.
Any ideas on holographic storage? Who knows what'll happen.
 
Originally posted by: AMD Die Hard
Originally posted by: Deskstar
The hard drive will be replaced; it is a product that has moving parts and thus prone to failure.
Click to expand...

This is absolutely correct. The fact that a hard drive has moving parts is exactly what will doom it as a technology. As bus speeds, processor speeds, and RAM speeds continue to increase, the bottleneck will ultimately be the physical rotation and mechanical reading of a disk substrate. As someone pointed out earlier in this post, there are RAM based hard drives for high end governmental applications tha tcost thousands of dollars. It might be like that now, but remember a VCR used to cost $1000 at a time a $1000 was worth more than it is today. DVD burners were $500 not to long ago. Every new technology can go into mass production and come down in price. How do you think people feel that shelled out $17,000 for a 40' LCD five years ago?

The technology drives itself. Ultimately the technology will demand faster "disk" access to keep pace with other electronic information flow. At that time, the technolgy in its infacy today will be thrust mainstream by someone who wants to make a truckload of cash.
Click to expand...

How do you think people feel that shelled out $17,000 for a 40' LCD five years ago?
Click to expand...
Do you mean to say plasma. Five years ago plasma set ranged from $17,000 to 50,000. I almost bought one for a christmas gift in 1999 untill I got to Sound Advise and found out the price.
 
Originally posted by: Howard
Originally posted by: SagaLore
Originally posted by: Calin
Originally posted by: Matthias99
One more thing - while hard drives are much slower than static or dynamic RAM, they are really fast compared to flash memory used in memory sticks.
Click to expand...

Not really. Hard drives have an edge in STR (maybe 50-60MB/sec. STR compared to 10-30MB/sec. for flash memory), but flash is easily two orders of magnitude faster in terms of seek time (which tends to dominate desktop computing hard drive usage). Flash is measured in microseconds, hard drives in milliseconds (1 ms = 1000 us). This is why flash-based SSDs are so blazingly fast, even though they technically don't transfer data as quickly as a normal hard drive.
Click to expand...

My 128 MB memory stick certainly doesn't have 30 MB/s transfer rate, more like a 2 MB/s write. However, my hard drive is having some 20+MB/s read transfer rate.
Click to expand...

Are you talking about flash memory? For normal memory, it is:

http://computer.howstuffworks.com/ram4.htm

Flash memory:

http://www.vtec.co.uk/memory_transfer_speeds.asp

450mb/s is pretty fast. And at 50ns access time, that's really fast.
Click to expand...
450mb/s is the theoretical transfer rate of the standard, not of the device.
Click to expand...


I highly doubt what that store is saying. And I dont know of any one who makes flash chips that fast.
 
450MB/s is the speed of USB 2.0 not the flash drive. this is the speed that the data from the drive gets to the computer. the speed of the drive however is not that fast. picture this

1)cpu sends a signal to the flash drive to read data (at 450MB/s)
2)flash drive finds information and retrieves it (much slower)
3)flash drive sends information back to the cpu (450MB/s)

the speed of the operation is only as fast as its slowest part
 
Originally posted by: kcthomas
450MB/s is the speed of USB 2.0 not the flash drive. this is the speed that the data from the drive gets to the computer. the speed of the drive however is not that fast. picture this

1)cpu sends a signal to the flash drive to read data (at 450MB/s)
2)flash drive finds information and retrieves it (much slower)
3)flash drive sends information back to the cpu (450MB/s)

the speed of the operation is only as fast as its slowest part
Click to expand...

Not Pointing to anyone in paticular, but know and learn the differance between
MB/s and Mb/s
MB/s is megaBYTES per second
Mb/s or mb/s is megaBITS per second

USB, 1394/Firewire, Ethernet, and neworking interfaces all use megaBITs pers second or Gb/s GigaBITS (not gigaBYTES) per second as their unit of measurement.
 
There was something in Scientific American about some new research with carbon nanotubes, and their use in memory. Something like this:
Carbon nanofibers are stretched over a valley with a conductor. Depending on the presence or absense of power, and maybe its polarity I don't remember, the tubes either lay above the valley, or else they bend downward to contact the conductor. They retain their shape too when the power is disconnected. So that could conceivably be some form of "semi-solid state" storage...in the future, maybe.
 
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