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Anon updates GNU/linux (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/greentext@sh.itjust.works
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[–] 1 point 1 year ago (6 children)

A special kind of RAM that is power cycle persistent but has other downsides and thus didn't really have success on the PC market?

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (5 children)

    Its not 'special kind'. Flash memory is a type of nvram. It was a test to see if you would catch on. Theres also neat things like phase change RAM, aka DVD-RAM.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    Well it's special in the sense that opposed to the most common kind of RAM, DRAM and SRAM, it has non volatile storage. Which is why it's referred to as NVRAM instead of simply RAM. Saying RAM usually implies volatile storage in a PC, certainly does in the context of an OS install on a HDD and SSD, and in that context a SSD isn't RAM. Yes there are minutiae to the terminology, but I don't see how that's relevant here.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (3 children)

    Its relevant because its primary use doesnt change how the memory is accessed. The only reason NVRAM doesnt see use as primary system ram is that they are much slower and many types have limited write cycles making them unsuitable for the job.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

    In the context of setting up a PC a SSD is a drive, not RAM. You couldn't pull out your RAM DIMMs and just run on your NVME/SATA SSD as RAM instead (unless your CPU/MB support that which to my knowledge isn't common). I'm not saying that flash memory isn't random access memory in the general sense of the word, I'm saying that when talking about a PC specifically RAM refers to special memory the motherboard makes directly available to the CPU, and a SSD isn't that.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    Next you're going to tell me Apple Macs are not PCs.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    No I'm going to tell you that is still irrelevant. The OP said:

    I’ve had one that thought that “SSD” was a kind of RAM, and insisted on installing Windows on a hard drive.

    It seems the student thought a SSD is RAM in the sense of "volatile CPU storage" and thus unfit for an OS install. And a SSD is not RAM in that sense of the word.

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