I once speculated to a friend about 15 years ago that eventually solid state storage space would be so fast that it could serve as active memory. I can’t wait to tell him.
I once speculated to a friend about 15 years ago that eventually solid state storage space would be so fast that it could serve as active memory. I can’t wait to tell him.
It would have to be always active, checking for radiation induced flips, not just powered off.
It should be fine for normal use cases when used with error correcting codes without any active scrubbing.
According error rates for ECC RAM (which should be at least by an order of magnitude comparable) of 1 bit error per gigabyte of RAM per 1.8 hours1, we would assume ~5000 errors in a year. The average likelyhood of hitting an already affected byte is approx. (5000/2)/1e9=2e-6. So that probability * 5000 errors is about a 1.2 percent chance that two errors occur in one byte after a year. It grows exponentially once you start going a past a year. But in total, I would say that standard error correcting codes should be sufficient to catch all errors, even if in hibernation for a whole year.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECC_memory
I took this article specifically to mean, and that it was referring to, a new form of non-volatile solid state storage. Active memory is by definition, volatile. This article seems to be talking about non volatile RAM, fast enough to function as active RAM. This alone would redefine what a reboot is.