How NAND Flash Can Reduce DRAM Requirements

Benchmarks show NAND advantage over DRAM in PCsIn a comment to a recent Memory Guy post I stated that NAND flash can reduce DRAM requirements, even in PCs.  Some readers have told me that they wonder how this could be, so I will write this post to explain.

Some years ago Objective Analysis noticed that clever server administrators were able to use SSDs to reduce their systems’ DRAM requirements.  Not only did this save them money, but it lowered power and cooling requirements as well.

Thinking that this might work on other kinds of computers, we commissioned a number of benchmarks to be performed on a PC.

These benchmarks found that after a system already has a certain minimum amount of DRAM, users can get a bigger performance boost by adding a dollar’s worth NAND flash than they can get by adding a dollar’s worth of DRAM.

In every case the minimum amount of DRAM was very small.

This benchmark data was compiled, written up, and explained in depth in the report: How PC NAND Will Undermine DRAM, which can Continue reading “How NAND Flash Can Reduce DRAM Requirements”