Flash Memory Summit 2012: OCZ shows off a SSD that uses DRAM as the memory
OCZ's AEON Series drive is probably one of the coolest things I saw at Flash Memory Summit 2012. This drive ditches the typical NAND memory in favor of using DRAM chips which have no durability issues. These chips are clocked at around 40MHz as opposed to a typical DDR3 stick which could be clocked as high as 800MHz.
Essentially this drive is like your DDR RAM in your PC. It's faster than a typical SSD due to the use of volatile memory, however, if the power goes out, the data is lost. It's almost like a RAM disk, though the bandwidth is limited by the interface. In the event of a power loss, the data is flushed to typical NAND memory.
The drive's capacity is up to 64GB as of right now, and has super low latency (20 microseconds or less) and typically is about 1 microsecond. The chip is built to be used in servers and features a 6GB/s SAS connection. Note that these are preliminary specifications which are subject to change. Even still, this is a sweet drive!
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