The number one challenge in disk storage performance lies in the inherent mechanical delays caused by the access times and latencies of disk drives. Accordingly, DRAM, in the form of main memory and disk cache, is frequently utilised to have the data of interest available quickly to the database engine. The key to optimised data performance is creating a systems architecture that can assure the highest chances that the data of interest is being read from or written to DRAM, not magnetic disk. This strategy provides new alternatives for configuring a range of systems with superior performance relative to 2D architectures. The most common application of DRAM, the first dimension, in most hardware architectures is inside the host system as main memory.
Main memory offers very fast access and very high bandwidth for all data that is located there.
However, this memory is completely volatile. If the host system experiences power loss or must be rebooted for any reason, all data in main memory will be lost and must be recreated. Because of volatility, main memory is used only for storing data being read and for write buffers waiting to be flushed to disk. Primary uses are buffers, global cache, named cache, and operating system management. A higher performance system configuration may have 1 4GB of DRAM configured in main memory.