Introducing UltraRAM. It’s an idea that’s been around for a while but has never really been achievable. That is, until recently. Scientists from the Physics and Engineering Department of the UK’s Lancaster University have published a paper on the breakthrough tech that could turn RAM and hard drives into one thing.

It’s happened to all of us at least once. You’ve opened one too many Chrome tabs – so, five – and felt everything you’re working on grind to a halt. That’s your PC swapping things from your RAM to the pagefile on your hard drive.

Hard drives, the kinds with the spinning parts, are a lot slower than RAM. But hard drives don’t need constant power to retain their contents whereas RAM does. That’s the difference between volatile (RAM) and non-volatile (hard drive) memory.

UltraRAM — when the powers of RAM and SSDs combine

UltraRAM, according to the paper, would combine the non-volatile stability of hard drives with the high speeds and energy efficiency of RAM. It hasn’t actually been done yet, but it should be theoretically possible now.

In essence, the paper details how Indium arsenide (InAs) quantum wells and aluminium antimonide (AlSb) barriers can be used to create a triple-barrier resonant tunnelling (TBRT) structure. This is a fancy way of saying that UltraRAM is going to science the absolute hell out of this thing.

It might sound like sorcery now, but so did the concept of solid-state drives (SSDs) back in the day. Remember how expensive those were when they first came out? Expect the same here. While the idea of buying some UltraRAM instead of RAM and an SSD does sound very appealing, it’ll probably be a few years still before you can stick some in your PC.

Source: Tom’s Hardware