The technology industry is ever changing and always pushing the envelope. With each new version and update release, we expect systems to work more quickly and efficiently. Looking for ways to conserve our most precious commodity – “time” – is usually at the forefront of most innovative breakthroughs. “In-Memory Computing” is no exception. Luckily for the us, though, it does more than just save time…
What is In-Memory Computing?
Simply put, In-Memory Computing (IMC) is the technology that allows us to store information in the random access memory (RAM) of multiple dedicated computer servers versus relational databases that are much slower and rely on disk space. Since it is much easier to access data from RAM, it will ultimately save on time, money, and total cost of ownership (TCO).
What are the advantages of In-Memory Computing?
One of the advantages of In-Memory Computing is that it lowers administration costs in a scale-up approach. It is a cheaper alternative to traditional data processing. Since the price of memory has gone down, In-Memory processing a popular option for many companies. In a scale-down approach, there is a high cost of cluster software conversion to the message passing interface (MPI). The MPI is the standardized messaging system of computers that run on a parallel program across distributed memory.
Another benefit in choosing IMC technology is that it is much easier to deploy and maintain, which makes it a popular option for many IT departments. Since the implementation process is much shorter, the system will be up and running much quicker than with a traditional Business Intelligence (BI) system.
IMC would allow a better utilization of resources by maximizing the number of jobs the system is working on at one time, thus ensuring a high return on performance. Scale-up approaches will be more efficient than scale-out in this scenario because the processor cores use the same memory. This allows the system to globally manage resources.
In-Memory Computing systems have greater software capability in that it is fairly simple to increase memory footprint within incremental scalability. It can be upgraded during runtime or programmatically with a scale-up system.
Overall, In-Memory Computing technology offer better resource productivity, make system upgrades less complex, and lower the TCO for many companies. In addition, the ease of accessibility to information through this type of processing provides quick analysis of data and higher performance rates.
