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ddr3  memory to usb adapter

Former Member

Hi. not sure if there a product already in market. they  seem to be all flash type.

the gold is to give a new life to my old laptop that has only  255MB ram and 512kb max upgradable. its a bit slow  linux and virtualbox apliances and hard disk swap partition.

there are people using usb flash  devices  as  swap but they all warn about fast damaging usb devices.

so way not an adapter ddr3 to boost memory on the fly to old computers like laptops, raspberrypi, old 486 computers or maybe even tablets.

maybe also implementing a software that would manage withch programs run on original memory and witch run on usb ddr3 memmory device

 

cheers image

  • You would still be limited by the max throughput of USB (I'm assuming you've got 2.0) around 480 Mb/s. Which isn't going to be anywhere the speed RAM operates at. You'd be able to increase how much data the system was caching, but accessibiltity would not be in the range you're looking for, it would be ower performance than you have now. In all honesty, the limitations of that laptop are severe enough to warrant getting a newer device.

  • Another issue because RAM is volatile memory you would have to either partition & format the drive every time you booted it up or come up with a cleaver way to have it formatted every time the device is plugged in or the PC is turned on. For the computer you are talking about you need to just byte the bullet & replace it.

  • As mentioned by Ryan Dowell, it wouldnt be fast, but the fact that RAM is volitile doesnt really matter, because you could probably just have a nand chip with the partition information on it. But it would be difficult to build such a device because RAM is accessed by memory location, and then sends out the data at that location, so you would have to change the signal to communicate through usb (which is basically very fast serial) which would be a difficult task. you're probably better off buying a mechanical external harddrive as they last longer than nand chips and would still provide the memory neccesary.

  • in reply to jds123

    External hard drives often come with between 8 and 128MB of RAM serving as a cache.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_buffer

    so frequently you would be accessing RAM anyway, even when using a hard drive,

    with the benefit of the hard drive's non-volatile storage.

     

    In general you want to use expensive peripherals with expensive computers,

    and cheap peripherals with cheap computers.  Otherwise the mismatch will

    usually result in wasted capability.