There’s some servers using SSDs as a direct extension of RAM. It doesn’t currently have the write endurance or the latency to fully replace RAM. This solves one of those.
Imagine, though, if we could unify RAM and mass storage. That’s a major assumption in the memory heirarchy that goes away.
This was actually the main market for Intel Optame. It’s got great write endurance, and better latency than Flash. I think they ended up stopping making it because it wasn’t cost effective. I’m actually using some old Optame drives in my server for the OS boot drive.
There’s some servers using SSDs as a direct extension of RAM. It doesn’t currently have the write endurance or the latency to fully replace RAM. This solves one of those.
Imagine, though, if we could unify RAM and mass storage. That’s a major assumption in the memory heirarchy that goes away.
This was actually the main market for Intel Optame. It’s got great write endurance, and better latency than Flash. I think they ended up stopping making it because it wasn’t cost effective. I’m actually using some old Optame drives in my server for the OS boot drive.