Micron Wants NVDIMM "Hybrid Memory" to Become Reality
Micron has been working on NVDIMMs, a 'hybrid' storage solution, aiming to bridge the gap between DRAM and SSDs. The idea is that all the data in the DRAM would get written to NAND memory upon losing power.
The biggest problem with our current standard of RAM, the Dual-Inline Memory Module (DIMM) is that all data stored is instantly lost when the module loses power. Whilst we've learned how to deal with this limitation through Hibernation and Sleep modes, neither are ideal as the former involves a slow process of writing the contents of the DIMMs to a Hard Drive or SSD and the latter leaves RAM running which consumes power. This situation is the primary reason why most laptops will drain a fully charged battery in just a few days of being in sleep mode and has the potential to cause significant problems for desktops in the event of a power cut. For home users this may be a small annoyance, but in an enterprise environment this is clearly impermissible.
It appears that Micron's new technology of Non-Volatile Dual-Inline Memory Modules or NVDIMNs may provide a lasting solution to this problem. A NVDIMM is surprisingly simple: Onboard an NVDIMM is DRAM, this is used like the computer memory we are used to now, in fact, it is the same. On top of this, there is an amount of NAND memory and a system of capacitors onboard. Today's capacitors are constructed well enough and powerful enough to give the module enough time, after the power is cut, to write all the contents of the DRAM to the NAND memory. Upon restoring power, all the information should be written back from the NAND memory to the DRAM, and normal operations continue.
Though this only partially solves the slow recovery time from Hibernation, it is still significantly quicker to load the contents of DRAM from NAND memory than from a HDD and more importantly will provide full data recovery in the event of a power cut since the onboard capacitors would always be charged and thus the contents can be quickly saved to the onboard NAND memory in case of power loss.
Micron's first demonstration of this technology, its first NVDIMM, had 4 GB of DRAM onboard and 8 GB of NAND memory. No reason has been given for the double NAND over DRAM, but we can assume it has to do with the limited lifetime of flash memory, which decays over writes.
Though it is still unknown when this technology will come to the market, Micron is confident that NVDIMMs will bridge the gap between DRAM and SSDs and will be attractive for both enterprise and consumer environments.

You dont say
http://i2.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/007/666/_57c8a1a431a592af806925e57258202f.png
Should make the system start up much quicker.
Cheaper than a UPS and most home users do not have a UPS; most don't even know or care that these exists (at least among my none geek friends) !
Just my 2 cents.
Some sort of computer with a built-in battery?
Next you'll suggest they add in the keyboard and screen to the same chassis...
Some sort of RAM module with a built-in battery.
Your sarcasm is totally misplaced, you did not even understand my point. Reading comprehension fail.
We do not need another half assed/half baked hybrid solution. We need to go off volatile altogether. This solves one issue while creating others. I keep thinking about the awkward time needed to copy everything back from NAND to RAM. That would be like trying to start with the handbrake on..
Most computers however, function on an electronic switch, and automatically turn back on once the power is restored.
If this could save the state on power loss and immediately restore it when the power turns back on, that's a huge boon to small businesses who can't afford generators, and it completely gets away from the UPS headache.
Anyone know if just saving DRAM contents is enough to restore the system state fully?
I installed my Steam client and all my steam games on a RAM Disc, it used a real time backup solution that saved the RAM Disc every 15 minutes to my Revo 3 x2. When The PC would power off it would do an auto save, basically taking a snapshot of the RAM Disc then mounting it on system start-up. This solution worked great on a 48GB Ram disc while the OS and system had 16GB of memory available to operate from.
This solution required a lot of back-end maintenance, making sure it was backing up right and all that. This tech is aimed at allowing us to boot right into a RamDisc type of OS running environment. Replacing Mass RAID arrays of SSDs as the preferred method of ludicrous amounts of speed.
Just saying my 48GB Ramdisc was Writing at 7.5GB/s and Reading at 8GB/s, imagine if it was running across 240GB of ultra high speed DDR4 all the while being stored safely against power loss by actual NAND
-CB
I too have seen the stupid fast speeds of a ramdisk. Not as great at the speeds the as cbfelterbush has... but still able to write at 3GB/s in real world windows use. I've never benchmarked it, but I assume its limit is much higher. Running 4 sticks of 8gb Crucial Ballistix RAM in quad channel mode on an 2011 socket mobo
DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
Timing 8-8-8-24
Cas Latency 8
Voltage 1.5V
Now I have 3 SDD's (two first gen 60gb ones and one Corsair GT 180gb one for the OS), I find the boot of photoshop CS5.1 64-bit only about a second faster to load vs my SSD's. Not really worth using a ramdisk for (though it is a bit snappier when it is booted up with filters and whatnot). I mostly use it for scratch disk or even I ever need to run a big dictionary file. Best ramdisk program I have found is "Dataram RAMDisk".
They use regular memory slots and act like regular memory. They simply have a NAND flash data backup in case of a power failure.
Considering that each module would have its own NAND, it could take a few seconds to a few dozen seconds. That's a helluva lot better than taking an additional several minutes to several hours to get it all back up and running.