IRam Speeds Windows XP Start Up

Spinner (Spinner) New add-in card uses DRAM-based storage to help systems boot up in just seconds.

June 3, 2005 8:28 PM ET in News,

Giga-byte’s IRam is a PC add-in card with four DDR DRAM slots that’s designed to be used as a PC drive. Because the IRam uses DRAM rather than a hard disk to store information, data can be retrieved from the drive up to 60 times faster than is possible with a hard drive, according to Giga-byte, which showed the board at the Computex exhibition in Taipei this week.

For users who are tired of sitting around and waiting for their Windows-based PCs to boot up, they can install Windows on the IRam and use that as the drive to start the system more quickly, Handley says. When the card is used in this way, starting Windows XP is a matter of seconds, rather than a minute or more, he says.

Source: PCWorld

7 Comments:

  1. Rob
    4 Jun '05, 3:41 am

    IRam raid 0 ?

    Only thing I can see is that it can only store for 12 hours without power, making long outages and shipping a big problem. I would like to see one on a database though..

  2. Enverex
    4 Jun '05, 9:30 am

    Um, sounds all well and good, but the PCI bus really isn't up to very high transfer rates is it. Sure, it's fine for Hard-Drives via SCSI, but RAM is a different ball game...

  3. D00D (Guest)
    4 Jun '05, 4:17 pm

    Well lets roll out some PCI Express slot versions... maybe an X4 slot for all of us who have/dream about the DFI boards...

  4. shwaip
    4 Jun '05, 4:41 pm
    Quoting Enverex

    Um, sounds all well and good, but the PCI bus really isn't up to very high transfer rates is it. Sure, it's fine for Hard-Drives via SCSI, but RAM is a different ball game...

    I beleive it uses SATA, rather than the pci port to communicate.

  5. D00D (Guest)
    4 Jun '05, 4:47 pm

    One question, Since the ram is connected with a serial cable to the motherboard serial connector, wouldn't that limit the speed rather than the pci bus, or is the pci bus still in play here? It kind of sounds like it is just for a place to put the card and to power it, rather than transfer data. Am I wrong here?

  6. shwaip
    4 Jun '05, 5:04 pm

    Yes, the SATA controller is used for data, and is therefore going to be the limit - depending on how the SATA controller is implemented on the motherboard, you're going to get different max transfer rates.

  7. D00D (Guest)
    4 Jun '05, 7:47 pm

    so, the card itself shouldn't limit the speed, like to sata150 right, or will it? Because if the only limit was the motherboard, than this is exactly where Sata300 would actually be useful.

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