The merger of ram, ssd and flash is within a few years reach? Ultraram

[EAZ1964]

Will the next step after optane, mean a full integration of ram, ssd and flash, making hardware even simpler and storage cheaper?
Developments from the UK university of Lancaster:

UltraRAM Breakthrough Brings New Memory and Storage Tech to Silicon

Claims DRAM-like speeds and non-volatility for a thousand years.

www.tomshardware.com

ULTRARAM: A Low‐Energy, High‐Endurance, Compound‐Semiconductor Memory on Silicon

Universal memory is widely viewed as being unachievable, as it must allow robustly stored data to be easily changed. High quality, compound-semiconductor memory cells on Si substrates are presented h...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

 

[Robbie]

With most architectures of today I find it difficult to see a use for it beyond Optane-like uses - but there is a big 'but' caveat:

Architectures are changing and AMD is leaning on L1 / L2 cache with ever-increasing size and optimisation. It is possible to see a future where onboard cache encroaches so much on traditional RAM territory that UltraRAM could possibly cover the rest. So large & efficient cache + UltraRAM = no need for regular RAM?

If you look at Apple's approach with Apple Silicon we see them using a very high bandwidth and shared lump of unified memory on its SoC that covers traditional GPU use too. It is undoubtedly extremely fast and efficient and yet it is doing it with just regular LPDDR4X. It is easy to see an UltraRAM-like technology being incorporated in Apple's unified memory, removing the need for the islands of raw NAND flash on the SoC completely.

Intel is the leviathan in the corner that was caught sucking its thumb for too long. It has invested heavily in many new areas so whilst it is difficult to judge where they are going with CPUs / SOCs just yet, they do have a recent history in this area.