Can volatile memory be replaced with flash memory ?

[Externet]

An old pocket-WindowsCE PDA -personal digital assistant- loses all its data stored when the battery discharges as in seldom sporadic use.
If its volatile memory chip had the same footprint/pinout of a flash memory chip, could such be replaced ?
I have not inspected its guts yet, but would it be possible, or, is there a family of flash chips in the market engineered for that specific 'upgrade' purpose ?

I believe flash chips do need a higher than functional voltage for writing data; which could make the task not possible unless a chip has provisions implementing such. Is that the case among which other hurdles ?

 

[kubeek]

This depends on which memory you replace. If it is the kind of long-term storage memory being hold by a battery, then you might be able to do it. However if you´re trying to achieve something in the way of sleep mode RAM suspension, the system will most likely expect the ram to be garbage on power up an rewrite it anyway.

 

[()blivion]

As far as I know, no, you really can't do something like that.

This is because RAM almost always needs to be accessed very quickly, and FLASH/EEPROM is very slow to write. Also, FLASH/EEPROM has a number of cycles before it wears out and breaks down. So even if you could get it to work with the speeds, you would burn out the chip right quickly.

Now there *COULD* be some kind of single hybrid RAM/FLASH chip floating around that was designed for doing exactly what you are talking about. But I wouldn't know what it would be called or where to get one. Maybe someone else does?


Edit: As stated below, there could be some other kind of bleeding edge SiFi chips out there that can give you your cake and let you eat it too, but with specifically FLASH or EEPROM physics... no, it can't really be done that I am aware of. Two entirely different intended applications.

 

[kubeek]

()blivion: depends on technology and money. FRAMs claim to have access times in ns, which could suit very well the old casio databanks and similar old stuff that needs battery to retain data, and they had no problems with sending me samples of their products.