Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!tank!ncar!mailrus!bbn!bbn.com!slackey
From: slackey@bbn.com (Stan Lackey)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Solid State Secondary Storage
Keywords: ram, wafer, disk
Message-ID: <34236@bbn.COM>
Date: 6 Jan 89 18:52:23 GMT
References: <248@vlsi.ll.mit.edu>
Sender: news@bbn.COM
Reply-To: slackey@BBN.COM (Stan Lackey)
Distribution: comp
Organization: Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc., Cambridge MA
Lines: 18

In article <248@vlsi.ll.mit.edu> young@vlsi.ll.mit.edu (George Young) writes:
>Our wafer scale integration group is considering developing a new kind
>of computer memory unit -- something we hope might fill in the present
>gap in memory speed and price between magnetic disk and ram.
>Each wafer should add only ~$350 to the manufacturing cost of the whole unit.
>access time of maybe ~10 microseconds.  So we are left with a box that is:
>It also should be smaller, lighter, and more rugged than disk.
>The Question Is:  What's it good for?

My first reaction is that it would be good as a superfast paging device
for diskless workstations.  Right now, when you put a 5Meg application
on a 4Meg workstation, your paging (and the paging of the rest of the
users using the same application) can really clog the net, interfering
with all file system accesses.  A hundred-megabyte ramdisk between your 
micro and your ethernet port, if the cost is significantly less than just
RAM, seems like it could really improve perceived performance and reduce
network contention a LOT.
-Stan