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This is perhaps a silly question, and may be the result of a misunderstanding. I'm studying CPU's right now, and memory in particular. I was just reading about how much faster SRAM is than DRAM but more expensive. SRAM is very expensive: I shopped for a bit and found a battery powered SRAM card with 16 MB for around $400.
Recently a friend mentioned he has been running puppy linux in RAM, and that it is fast. I noticed, though, that tiny core linux can be even smaller... as small as 8 MB! This got me thinking: can we run linux in SRAM? Is that question even well-formed?
Googling this question proved ineffective, but it raised yet more questions. Could one run linux in L3 Cache? Intel Core i7 can have an L3 Cache big enough to fit the 8MB... but am I making a categorical error? What is the difference between this and 'embedded' linux?
That's the question: can we run linux in SRAM or L3 Cache? Is there anything faster? How fast can we linux!?
z.
3Embedded linuxes are often run on ram, or non volatile memory. Embedded linuxes are often just stripped down to run on specific hardware only, or use some less common kernel options like low latency – Journeyman Geek – 2013-03-25T01:35:31.457
2I wonder if there is any practical use for this question? – Robert Niestroj – 2013-03-25T12:15:39.920
4+1 for using "linux" as a verb (in the last sentence)! – Vorac – 2013-03-27T10:03:46.017