New Flash Drive Design Said To Transform Networks For Big Data

And they add that flash memory is an enticing way to go because it’s only one
tenth as expensive and consumes about a tenth as much power as RAM.

They have built a prototype network of 20 servers, each connected to a
field-programmable gate array (FPGA), a chip that can be reprogrammed to mimic
different types of electrical circuits. Each FPGA was then connected to two
500GB flash chips and to the two FPGAs nearest it in the server rack.

“Because the FPGAs were connected to each other, they created a very fast
network that allowed any server to retrieve data from any flash drive,”
MIT says.