memory

It's a thumb drive with the size and power of a supercomputer.

The San Diego Supercomputer Center in January will start the engines on Gordon, a supercomputer that uses flash memory extensively to handle massive amounts of data. Using flash as an integral building block means the supercomputer will crank through data-intensive problems, such as analyzing human genomes, 10 times faster than traditional designs.

The idea for using flash memory was shunned by commercial companies, San Diego Supercomputer Center officials told Wired. But they were able to convince the National Science Foundation about three years ago to invest the $… Read more

The CompactFlash Association has finished its work designing a successor to today's high-end memory card format, naming its successor XQD and promising much higher data-transfer speeds.

CompactFlash, unlike many other memory card formats, has managed to withstand the onslaught of SD Card, but it's relegated to a high-end niche such as professional SLR cameras and Canon's new C300 cinema-oriented videocamera. CompactFlash capacity and transfer speeds beat SD today, but to stay ahead of the competition, it's got to improve.

Enter XQD, a project the CompactFlash Association announced last year. The new cards use the PCI Express … Read more

Yesterday Apple released an update to Safari, which it claims, among other issues, fixes two prominent ones that resulted in high memory usage and periodic instances where loaded pages would flash white (seen when switching to a different window or at times when interacting with the page).

Unfortunately even though Safari no longer flashes loaded pages white, there may still be instances where you can encounter similar behaviors. With version 5.0, Apple split Safari's process into two components: a main Safari parent program, and a child process called Safari Web Content that is responsible for rendering the scripts … Read more

IBM and Micron Technology are beginning to produce a new memory chip based on technology designed to boost memory speeds 15-fold.

The technology, the companies announced today, will be used to make a Hybrid Memory Cube chip that will be commercially manufactured by Micron, the largest manufacturer of memory chips in the United States and one of the largest in the world. IBM plans to manufacture and supply the "controller" silicon that will be used in the memory as well as in the 3D-chip technology.

The joint efforts are designed to result in memory chips that realize the … Read more

Last week, German tech site macerkopf.de stated that sources close to the development of iOS 5.0.2 claimed the update was coming this week to address battery performance issues that have been plaguing several iPhone 4S users since its release. Today, the site claims that the update will be delayed because of memory leaks in the code.

The most scandalous reports about the iPhone 4S thus far have been the battery performance issues, a problem that even Apple admitted, which it is not one to do very often.

The current version of iOS (5.0.1) was supposed … Read more

Checkers is a game that's easy enough for even young children to play, but that doesn't mean it can't be a challenge when you're faced with a skillful opponent. 100% Free Checkers Board Game Windows offers a variety of skill levels and options, but we couldn't help but be a bit put off by the game's constant pressure to upgrade to Championship Checkers Pro.

When we launched 100% Free Checkers we had to wait a while for the program to get past the opening logo and actually launch the game. We then entered our … Read more

Virident, a Milpitas, Calif.-based company creating flash-based solid-state drives (SSDs), has raised $20 million in its third round of funding and landed Cisco and Intel as new investors. Virident has raised $50 million to date.

The five-year-old company says today's funding will fuel the creation of a new memory solution called FlashMax that it claims will run databases ten times faster than older drives.

Virident hopes to create partnerships with large data centers, businesses such as systems integrators and consulting firms, and potential investors. Besides Cisco and Intel, the company also has an unnamed investor who is a &… Read more

Chipmaker LSI said today it has signed a deal to acquire privately held flash storage processor provider SandForce for $322 million in cash.

The acquisition will give the Milpitas, Calif.-based-semiconductor maker--previously known as LSI Logic--an expanded presence in the fast-growing market for solid-state drives made with NAND flash memory chips, like those typically found in smartphones and tablet computers. As flash prices decline, demand for flash SSDs is expected to overshadow traditional hard drives.

"Adding SandForce's technology to LSI's broad storage portfolio is consistent with our mission to accelerate storage and networking," LSI Chief Executive … Read more

RAM is a high-speed memory workspace that the system uses for running programs, loading operating system components, and performing most of its computing tasks.

If you use programs that take up a lot of RAM, you may see the system slow down while the system makes use of the slow hard drive to manage memory contents, to the point where it may sometimes crawl to a near standstill while tasks are running.

As a result, having ample RAM is great for system performance, so I always recommend to go with as much RAM as you can afford to put in … Read more