🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Aug10.214244.20385@leland.Stanford.EDU> m@crito.Stanford.EDU (M  
Carling) writes:
> Why not just buy a solid-state SCSI disk with a 0.15 millisecond access  
> time?

because that is about 2000 times slower than 70ns memory,
and typically more expensive than RAM.

Actually, the driver code  will eat up most of the difference.
However, if the RAMdisk driver is well conceived, this does allow
for some real nice shared memory, without a lot of programming
and design overhead.  Lookup tables for semi-realtime data acquisition, spool  
space for data acquisition output (where data is bursty), and maybe
even for high-performance database engines.

Bottom line, is if you need high speed pseudo-disks for small, occasional 
short bursts of time, then RAMdisks are a good choice.  If you need more  
memory, and/or any sort of retention (most good solid-state disks have battery  
backup and/or a hard drive backup), the Solid State is the way to go.

- geoff
---------------------------------------------------------------
Geoffrey Brunkhorst, RCF                    brunkhorst@Mayo.edu
Guggenheim 10                                    (507) 284-1805
Mayo Foundation, Rochester MN, 55905 USA     fax (507) 284-5231