Researchers seek to patent 'memory doubler' algorithm

http://www.eetimes.com/rss/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=202102334

PORTLAND, Ore. - In the opening scene of "Johnny Mnemonic," the film
version of the William Gibson short story, Keanu Reeves loads a
"memory doubler" to increase his brain implant's storage capacity. Now
a new "memory doubler" algorithm for embedded RAM has been invented by
NEC Laboratories America, Inc. and Northwestern University.

Dubbed Crames, for Compressed RAM for Embedded Systems, the memory
doubler partitions existing RAM into a solid-state disk that has two-
time compression with minimal latency. Crames will be unveiled in an
NEC smart cellphone to be introduced in Japan this fall.

"We were told that it was impossible to compress data in RAM without
unacceptable levels of latency," said electrical engineer Robert ***,
a professor at Northwestern University (Evanston, Ill.). "But Crames
does just that. With software alone it can compress 60 percent of your
memory, leaving 40 percent uncompressed and only introduce about 2.1
percent latency."

Latency for most computers is a measure of the time hard drives take
to locate and load data into RAM. But Crames partitions an embedded
application's RAM into compressed and uncompressed pages, relying on
programming techniques to avoid latency.

By configuring the compressed RAM as an attached solid-state disk, the
compressed memory block can be routed through a device driver
algorithm to transparently compress and decompress pages. The size of
both code and data are equally reduced by the process.

*** credits his graduate student Lei Yang with reducing the latency
of the Crames algorithm. "Lei Yang's compression algorithm is a heroic
effort, reducing data to less than half its original size with very
little latency," said ***. "It's like putting twice as much memory in
your device without increasing its cost or power consumption."

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| Mark Nelson - http://marknelson.us
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