MetaRAM - What is MetaRAM?
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MetaRAM is not a new breakthrough technology, but more of a twist on an existing technology. The most interesting part of MetaRAM is also its big selling point. MetaRAM is a new technology, but it is built upon an existing technology. MetaRAM will work in existing memory slots and with existing memory controllers. MetaRAM "tricks" the memory controller into thinking it's normal RAM and nothing more.
I mentioned earlier that it will work in existing memory slots. It will theoretically work in any DDR2-registered DIMMs. I saw theoretically, because I want to see it working and booting up into an OS before I say it will work. A lot of these types of technologies are supposed to work flawlessly, but their real world use is quite different.
So they say it should work just fine without any hardware or software help. The physical compatibility is easy to mimic, you can simply stick memory ICs onto a stick of memory that will fit in a DDR2 slot. The real problem for MetaRAM comes in getting the motherboard, OS and software to recognize it and play nice with the massive amounts of RAM.
To get around the hardware and software issues to having massive amounts of RAM on a single chip, MetaRAM gets help from two chips on the memory sticks. The first chip is the Access Manager. It's responsible for address and command management. The other chip is the Flow Controller; it's in charge of data management. Together they form almost a mini memory chipset for the MetaRAM. This additional "chipset," while it does provide the organization that will allow it to run on current systems, will only add additional latency.
So what is the magic trick that this new memory controller on the memory sticks pulls off? It's not as futuristic as it may seem. While I'm sure that it is difficult to program, understanding it is fairly simple.
Current computers are limited by the amount of slots they have, typically four. The memory controller is able to handle a certain size of memory. Right now, for consumer PCs it's either 4 GB or 8 GB. This works out to at most 2 GB per stick.
MetaRAM will have 8 GB and 16 GB sticks available at launch. The memory controller would typically cry and not boot with this amount of memory, because it doesn't know how to handle it. What MetaRAM does is virtually break the chips down to smaller sizes for the computer memory controller to handle.
Take an 8 GB stick for example; 8 GB is no go for most memory controllers. If we break that down to eight 1 GB sticks or four 2 GB sticks, all is well again. This is the concept that MetaRAM uses. Using this method should work well with an OS and software. They tend not to care how the memory is organized, but just that it is there and usable. CPU-Z might freak out big time, but that could be easily fixed; if not, it's not a "need to have" application.
Next: Who needs MetaRAM? >>
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