RAMCloud creators say yes.
The idea of replacing hard disk drives with flash memory has been gaining steam in the IT industry. But a research group at Stanford University is going even further: they say the goal should be to replace hard disks with DRAM.
While it’s just in the prototype phase, the Stanford group is trying to make it a reality with a project called RAMCloud, which can aggregate memory from thousands of commodity servers to dramatically speed up data access. Hard disks, and perhaps flash, would still be used for backup, a crucial consideration because when DRAM loses power it also loses data. But in daily operations, all the information applications access would come directly from DRAM. via ars technica
