The Non-Volatile Random Access Memory, a type of memory that retains its contents when power is turned off. One type of NVRAM is SRAM that is made non-volatile by connecting it to a constant power source such as a battery. Another type of NVRAM uses EEPROM chips to save its contents when power is turned off. In this case, NVRAM is composed of a combination of SRAM and EEPROM chips. The Sun Ultra 45 and Ultra 25 workstation motherboards use a nonvolatile random access memory module (NVRAM) that stores parameters used for configuring system startup. Many leading semiconductor companies (Intel, Samsung, IBM, Freescale, TI, RAMTRON, and many more) are developing alternative technologies to flash and get rid of the entire drawback the flash has. Ramtron International Corporation (taken over by Cypress Semiconductor recently) has pioneered in commercializing F-RAM (Ferro Random Access Memory) technology. FRAM is available in huge production quantities. The source code of 8051 based microcontroller's can be integrated with FRAM. Features of F-RAM are( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramtron_International ): 1) Around 10,000 times greater endurance; 2) 3,000 times less power consumption; and 3) Nearly 500 times the write speed. Considering the speed and durability parameter F-RAM is better in comparison to Flash. However the maximum capacity available is hardly 1MB in a chip. The technology used in FRAM is based on DRAM i.e. the capacitor stores the charge but need to be refreshed due to leakage of charges by the capacitor. This limitation in F-RAM is eliminated by using the capacitor with a ferro-electric material called Lead Zirconate Titanate (PZT) which can retain the charge without power. In the present scenario there are few applications where F-RAM can perform far better than Flash. The long term future of F-RAM can be positive if the size increases and cost per MB falls.
Published in Chapter:
Significance of In-Memory Computing for Real-Time Big Data Analytics
Copyright: © 2014
|Pages: 18
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-5864-6.ch014
Abstract
Cloud computing provides online access of users’ data anytime, anywhere, any application, and any device. Due to the slower read/write operation of conventional disk resident databases, they are incapable of meeting the real-time, Online Transaction Processing (OLTP) requirements of cloud-based application, specifically e-Commerce application. Since In-Memory database store the database in RAM, In-Memory databases drastically reduce the read/write times leading to high throughput of a cloud-based OLTP systems. This chapter discusses In-Memory real time analytics.