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  • Yay memristor technology, it will be at least 10 yrs or more before we see cool products based on these "new" devices. But they should hold a ton of promise for memory implementations.
    – Chris O
    Commented Aug 30, 2013 at 16:14
  • DRUM is fast, but not very dense, and the cost per character is high. (What?? DRAM??? Never mind.)
    – Daniel R Hicks
    Commented Aug 30, 2013 at 17:22
  • 1
    NVRAM is not the same as battery backed SRAM. NVRAM has a capacitor per bit that can be sufficiently insulated that any charge does not leak away, but can also be sensed, and programmed. The bit cell structure is fairly large, and in some technologies involved more exotic fab steps, so NVRAM is a low density high cost technology. But it also has very long storage lifetime. CMOS SRAM draws very little power when idle, and so backing it up with a battery is cost effective. The once common PC "CMOS" device is one example.
    – RBerteig
    Commented Aug 30, 2013 at 19:24
  • 1
    SRAM+battery assembly is not a true NVRAM. True NVRAM built on EEPROM.
    – user539484
    Commented Aug 30, 2013 at 23:13
  • @RBerteig: My understanding is that an NVRAM is a marriage of an SRAM with a non-volatile store and a large enough energy storage medium to allow the SRAM to be copied to the non-volatile store without extermal power. If the SRAM and non-volatile store were in separate chips, transferring one to the other would take awhile (and consume a lot of energy). Marrying them together allows the transfer to occur much faster.
    – supercat
    Commented Sep 1, 2013 at 20:27