PCI RAM / HDD Emulator

[PaulK]

I thought this was the best forum to post this question in..but I was wondering if any of you have ever seen a PCI battery backed RAM card that could be booted from and used like a HDD. Maybe there is nothing out there like this yet so thats why we need to make one.. With the prices of memory like they are there is no reason not to have a 2gb hardware ram drive..imagine loading windows in just seconds. Just a thought anyway.

[JigPu]

Great idea!! Never seen one myself, but would still be awesome to install any HD intensive program on! Only disadvantage I can think of is when the battery dies. The bats keeping your CMOS RAM alive function for a LONG time, but still not forever.

Mabey I should load SETI on that thing!
JigPu

Wait a sec... me just realize something... The RAM card would only run at PCI frequency (33Mhz or so). Too bad it can't run at bus speed or higher!

[JaY_III]

they have thumb drives....
its a flash card upto 256 megs that fits in your USB and acts as a harddrive.....
i know you can get windows 98 down to 120megs...... so if you coul d boot from that............

[jonesy333]

Yes. gigabbyte have release exactly what you are talking about:

http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/Storage/Products_Overview.aspx?ProductID=2180


the i-RAM is a solid-state drive produced by Gigabyte which has four DIMM slots to allow PC DDR RAM to be used to store data.

It connects via a SATA port and is seen by the PC as a hard drive, and may therefore be booted from directly. However, the i-RAM is bottlenecked by the SATA interface, limiting bandwidth to a maximum sustained throughput of 150MB/sec. This speed limitation is offset by near instant access, with latency results of 0.1ms recorded.

DRAM however is volatile, so any loss of power will cause loss of data. The i-RAM is powered by plugging into a PCI slot, which powers it while the PC is plugged in (using standby power if the PC is off). It also has a 16 hour battery, which operates when the PC is unplugged or there is a power outage.

The i-RAM supports Unbuffered / Non-ECC DDR 200/266/333/400MHz RAM modules of different capacities (up to 1 GiB), speeds and brand for a maximum capacity of 4 GiB. Because of this, the i-RAM is very expensive per GB, but offers a silent storage method with higher responsiveness and performance than a traditional hard drive.

[EmAn]

Wow... Thread revival at its finest! all the way from '01!

[curtis1552]

Yay!!
But wouldn't it be easier to have 2Gig Ram and load a linux distro entirely into the ram? (like Puppy linux) which would allow a faster access time?

[petteyg359]

Dang... this beats the 5 year revival from a few days ago, EmAn :)

[Mpegger]

Gotta build the post count somehow. :beer:

But I have to give credit to the reanimator. He/she used the correct suffixes for the ram, GiB and not GB. I predict great things will come of this poster. :attn:

[gangaskan]

Gotta build the post count somehow. :beer:

But I have to give credit to the reanimator. He/she used the correct suffixes for the ram, GiB and not GB. I predict great things will come of this poster. :attn:

because copy and pasting is so hard ;)


whats up with all these newbies bumping oooooolllld threads seems to be the trend now aday's ....

[Mpegger]

because copy and pasting is so hard ;)

Ahhhh.. c&p from wikipedia. No more great things being seen in the future for them. :shrug:

[gangaskan]

Ahhhh.. c&p from wikipedia. No more great things being seen in the future for them. :shrug:


nope! :p