A Stanford University researcher is studying a technology that could drastically improve the performance of internal caches in modern-day CPUs and GPUs. This technology is known as hybrid gain cell memory (Blocks and Files reports), which combines features from SRAM and DRAM to primarily boost storage density.
According to the lead member of the research team, Stanford Professor of Electrical Engineering Philip Wong, there is a "memory wall problem" with a GPU's built-in SRAM-based cache that has to be loaded with data from comparatively slow DRAM. This transition purportedly takes too much time and electrical energy, making a successor for traditional SRAM with better performance properties something to be desired.
