The merging of volatile and nonvolatile memory technology is apparently in the works. It’s called MRAM, the merciful acronym for Magnetoresistive Random Access Memory. So what? How is this important? Just another memory standard to come and go? Well… if this "hybrid" technology is perfected and ever comes to the market, it will potentially make the biggest splash seen in memory development in quite some time.

Imagine this in your dream PC, 4 GB of the fastest DDR RAM available and it is nonvolatile. OK… so you are not sure what that means? The DDR RAM currently in our PCs is volatile, which means that it only retains data while our PCs are powered up. Turn the system off and everything in memory disappears. We have available to us nonvolatile RAM in the form of USB Thumb drives and various other forms of flash memory (Compact Flash, Smart Media, MMC, SD, XD) and what ever is loaded into these little gems stays put, but in terms of speed relative to main system RAM, this stuff is all pitifully sluggish. MRAM will combine that which is virtuous of both these technologies.

Still don’t see what is to be exited about? OK…. you sit down to your system, turn it on, and get near instantaneous booting to the same state it was the last time you turned it off. So take the time it typically takes your system to boot; add the time it takes to launch Doom, Far Cry, what ever; add the additional time to load your last saved game, and compress that all into a matter of seconds. Get the picture now?

Of course this would not be without certain problems. Viral infestations which stay resident in memory would be a little bit more insidious. So there would need to be a means of clearing this RAM at will in order to obtain a clean new system boot from the HDD. Additionally, current Flash memory degrades over time and has a finite lifespan. So… in any case, while this will be an interesting technology development to anticipate, it’s not going to be on the shelves any time soon.