Future Technology - Instant Booting

**CaffeineAddict** · 05-19-2002, 02:40 AM

Well maybe not instant but as this article compares... its like turning on a tv instead of booting a computer.

The benefits of Magnetic RAM, which looks to be very close to becoming a reality:

http://www.howstuffworks.com/mram.htm

( Market ETA 2003-2004. )

**Andrew Chappell** · 05-19-2002, 07:14 AM

With suspend to ram, I get boot times in the region of 2 seconds. If They could produce a non volatile version of this then I would be pretty pleased - saving electricity as well!

**King_Xerxes** · 05-19-2002, 08:50 AM

Magnetic RAM?

Oh Lord, no...

I thought technology was moving away from magnetic storage because of how unstable it is. Can you imagine if you had to throw out these RAM chips as quickly as you have to throw out floppy disks???

**Aaron Cake** · 05-19-2002, 09:23 AM

Is it just me, or does magnetic RAM simply = hard drive.

Perhaps these IBM engineers should work on suspend to disk instead. Each machine should come with a small partition (based on the RAM size) that the BIOS writes the contents of RAM to on shutdown. This partition would be a proprietary filesystem, and would be automatically resized in the event you changed the amount of RAM....Wait a sec, hasen't this been done before?

**ShinkunoNamida** · 05-19-2002, 10:54 AM

what about solid state memory (i think this is what the call it?) like smart media cards? It's a bit more expensive but the data lasts a long time and it can be really fast.

**CaffeineAddict** · 05-19-2002, 02:14 PM

Well what about this... it's mentioned at the end of the MRAM article... sounds interesting as well, what are some problems/benefits?

http://www.howstuffworks.com/holographic-memory.htm

**MP3DUB** · 05-19-2002, 04:12 PM

A harddrive is magnetic storage, but slow, and dram is fast, but unstable. combine them into a nonvolitile fast solution, and that certainly is something. and this is certianly more relatable to a hard drive and not a floppy drive. and flash memory is quite fast, as well as nonvolitile, but it has a limited life span of write/erase cycles.

**phil.45** · 05-19-2002, 04:24 PM

They`ve got to be kidding? Using magnetic ram was dropped decades ago (then call magnetic core memory, using ferrite cores to create the magnetic field), because solid-state memory is far more reliable. Who the hell wants to take a step back?

IBM are clutching at straws with this, just cause they aint that big anymore and they want to be on top again.

**mikeinsanmarcos** · 05-19-2002, 07:07 PM

I get 4-6 second cold boot times right now, I think its only a matter of time until computer speeds approach instant on...

Windows XP
Athlon 1600+
512 Megs PC2700 DDR CAS2
7200 RPM WD Hdd