Non-Sequential Memory

Even true random-access devices like modern electronic memory share a certain disadvantage with primitive technologies like magnetic-tape storage - though we can access any location at any time, we must still deal with the fact that they are arranged in a certain fixed order, which we cannot change. Thus, operating systems include memory-allocation and garbage collection schemes which produce CPU overhead. There might be another, more elegant way to deal with this problem.

Current memory chips have relatively simple interfaces - usually a set of address lines which select a location, and a set of data lines which allow reading and writing to that location. It would be useful to create a new type of memory - a non-sequential random-access memory. The interface would resemble a hardware version of "malloc()" or other familiar concept. Rather than simply perform memory allocation in hardware, which has been proposed before, why not simply eliminate the need for memory allocation as we know it? Simply do not arrange the individual memory cells in fixed sequential order, but allow them to form chains on command using an architecture similar to that of an FPGA (field-programmable gate array), where one may dynamically program connections between elements at nearly any physical distance from one another. Thus, the new chip could perform the basic functions of memory allocation without much actual processing taking place; nothing resembling "garbage collection" would be needed, as unused cells would simply be disconnected from their chains (in our case, blocks of contiguous data) and be free for use by any other chain.