ULTRARAM will allow you to close your laptop, come back a thousand years later and pick up where you left off
ULTRARAM will allow you to close your laptop, come back a thousand years later and pick up where you left off
We already had this, it's called Intel Optane Persistent Memory and Intel killed it off last year: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/docs/memory-storage/optane-persistent-memory/overview.html
The memory speed was slightly slower than DDR4 but the benefits didn't seem to outweigh the downsides. I think it probably kicked a lot of ass for specific use cases (eg. in-memory database that needs persistence), but the market was too small. Plus, SSDs are getting so ridiculously fast that it would put pressure on a product like this too.
Can’t wait for my ram to last 1000 years just for the hinge on my laptop screen to last 2 (guess what just broke on my laptop after 2 years)
Of course, this is still a new and emerging technology and it’s too early to say when we might see it in our devices, or how much it will cost.
Looks really cool, buy yeah my guess is i will cost to much to be viable for most things.
Maybe it could be good for moving and storing servers?
it'll hit business servers first... speed and power draw = profits. Even if they cost 1000x more than SSDs, the power savings and speed alone could pay for itself in a datacenter.
Perfect for when civilization collapses and we have to do some wasteland 2 shenannigans to get the lost knowledge of the past back by hoarding laptops.
Now... Let's see what 1000 years of cosmic radiation does to the data.
Shout out to whoever picked that thumbnail image.
This sounds neat, but it also seems like it does not have much practical advantage over hibernation except faster wake.
The power draw and nonvolatility could mean it can replace SSDs and hard drives entirely. Just store everything in RAM.
Sounds like a niche use-case for pizza delivery drivers stumbling into cryo chambers
But only if I get to look into the beautiful eye of my favorite purple haired friend
So does it allow this by granting immortality or by necromancy?
By uploading your consciousness to the cloud. Basic plans start at $4.99/mo
I love the security implications of this. /s
?
So you know those encrypted files you might have? You know how your computer is able to display them? Yeah, you enter the passcode and then it and any information derived from it is (probably, barring special hardware) stored in RAM to in order do that. This isn't usually an issue because turning your computer off will quickly erase the RAM and it can no longer be used to open that file.
This sounds like a giant security risk?
Sounds more like a very small security risk, to me. For most people if someone steals their laptop it doesn't really matter what kind of RAM is in it.
If you're in some kind of high-security role then use a laptop with volatile RAM instead. Non-volatile will probably be more expensive than the old stuff for quite a while so it's not going anywhere.
Maybe, it depends how it works.
Memory is often unencrypted and/or contains encryption keys. Many programs rely on the assumption that it's cleared on powerdown for security.
Depending on how this memory enters the long term state it seems that a lot of legacy software might become vulnerable to a really simple attack.
Pulling the plug might no longer be something that forces someone to engage in rubber hose analysis.
So basically just a quicker SSD for systemctl hibernate?
Yeah, sounds like a best of both worlds situation where you wouldn't have to decide whether to suspend or hibernate anymore
"Right. Now... what was I working on, again?"
I don't think a battery, soldering joints or displays would last that long...
I have to regretfully say I would have had an apocalypse bingo but I didn't have "Laptop of Dorian Gray" on my scorecard
But how do I download more?
I don't understand the point of this. That's what the hard drive I for. The RAM is meant to be wiped.
RAM is not meant to be wiped. It's just we haven't found a way to make it constant, but still as quick as it is now.
Yeah. I mean, sometimes RAM getting “wiped” is a “feature”, e.g., you don’t want somebody to be able to pull information from RAM after you shut off your computer… but that’s not really what it’s designed for (and you can recover data from powered off RAM in some lucky cases). It’d be sweet if we could have fast non-volatile memory. Having a computer use 0 power when suspended and not having to worry about hibernating to disk would be sweet! I do kind of wonder about the security RAMifications of that, but I guess it’s not much worse than having a laptop suspended currently.
Wouldn't it kill your hard drive quickly if every bit in memory was constantly written there - if it was all virtual memory? I think of it like "stuff in my desk" vs "stuff on top of my desk", and now nobody mixes up the papers on my desk when I walk away.
Have you tried turning it off and on again?
Our Families Windows XP Laptop had a RAM to storage feature that essentially did the same. I think Windows killed it off but if I had to guess it's just not a good idea to avoid rebooting properly so I really can't see the use for this.
I keep my encryption keys in ram. No thank you.