Gigabyte i-RAM

Ashton Mills takes a ride on the solid state super train.

We first set eyes on the i-RAM at Computex in Taipei earlier this year. It was, then, one of the most innovative and interesting releases at the show, and ever since we’ve been hanging out to get our hands on one.

Well, we got two.

For the uninitiated the i-RAM takes the premise of a RAM drive one step further by making it a pluggable DIY device on the cheap. By definition non-volitile RAM is expensive, and so the idea of a speedy, afforable, RAM drive that can retain data persistently has been a dream for some time.

There are similar products on the market, but they are generally targeted at the enterprise, requiring proprietary drivers or using external power supplies. And they’re super-expensive.

The i-RAM takes a different tack – its power comes from the PCI bus or, failing that, an onboard battery. And it needs no drivers – it appears to the system as, and acts just like, any other SATA hard drive. Combined with its ability to make use of standard and cheap DDR RAM the Gigabyte i-RAM is an afforable, simple to use, solid-state RAM drive that, by nature, is capable of supremo speeds.

Under the hood

Stats-wise the i-RAM can support up to 4GB of through the use of four 1GB DDR sticks. While the PC is connected to power (regardless of if the machine is actually on or not) the contents of the RAM are retained by keeping it fed from the PCI bus. If, for some reason, power is unavailable (blackout, moving your PC and so on) an onboard battery will keep the integrity of the contents for up to 16 hours.

Generally, this provides a good level of reliability but it’s far from foolproof. Whatever data is stored on the drive you’ll either want it to be temporary (such as using it as a scratch disk) or regularly backed up to more permanent media, like a local hard drive.

The i-RAM is connects to your system through a standard SATA connector and, in turn, appears to Windows like any other SATA drive. This is all thanks to an onboard Xilinx FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array), essentially a re-programmable IC which in this case acts as a both 64-bit memory controller and SATA controller in one to run the i-RAM and talk to the PC.