this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2023
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Random question that crossed my mind yesterday:
In the era of NVME and SSDs, why is RAM still a thing? Is there any reason (other than technological inertia) that we should have two different kinds of memory, when the primary reason for that is no longer relevant?
RAM is way way faster than SSD
RAM can serve up data in memory 1000 times faster than a NVMe drive
Also RAM doesn't have a limited number of lifetime writes.
Yes, I get that. But I'm really wondering why that is? If memory is digital, and storage is digital, why not develop a RAM-less architecture? Why not have a storage bus with the same throughput as memory does currently? Is it just because of the cost of the chips?
The reason RAMis fast is because it doesn't have to store anything for any period of time. It is literally a place for running g programs to store data. Ram also is part of the CPU address space so each address in ram can be randomly read and written to.
SSDs have the controller on the motherboard and the controller on the drive