3 ms·
Can I use a computer without RAM?
- ggm 8y agoI think the narrow answer is, that if the computer has on-chip L1 cache, then if you can arrange for the L1 cache to contain all the information you need to run a program, there is no reason in principle why you couldn't run entirely in L1 cache off the die, and never touch the off-chip memory access channels. Arranging for state to lie in L1 cache without RAM is a challenge, I wonder if some combination of things from a JTAG header and chip behaviour could get you there? the Boot ROM, in some sense, is the information you minimally are looking at. So, a boot rom, with state to prep L1 cache and then a run command, which operates totally in L1 cache? (I imagine some operations on L1 attempt write-back and would be bad, but perhaps that can be mitigated by some clever tricks to act like the write-back worked?)