CODEWITHSUNDEEP
ramcpu-architecture
XgigPro
XgigPro

Reputation: 134

Is it possible to make CPU work on large persistent storage medium directly without using RAM?

Is it possible to make CPU work on large persistent storage medium directly without using RAM ? I am fine if performance is low here.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 64

Answers (1)

Fernando Gonzalez Sanchez
Fernando Gonzalez Sanchez

Reputation: 3485

You will need to specify the CPU architecture you are interested, most standard architectures (x86, Power, ARM) assume the existence of RAM for their data bus, I am afraid only a custom board for this processors would allow to use something like SSD instead of RAM.

Some numbers comparing RAM vs SSD latencies: https://gist.github.com/jboner/2841832

Also, RAM is there for a reason, to "smooth" access to bigger storage from CPU, have a look at this image (from https://www.reddit.com/r/hardware/comments/2bdnny/dram_vs_pcie_ssd_how_long_before_ram_is_obsolete/)

enter image description here

As side note, it is possible to access persistent storage without CPU involving (although RAM is still needed), see https://www.techopedia.com/definition/2767/direct-memory-access-dma or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_memory_access

Upvotes: 1

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