In-Memory Computing

Introduction

A major challenge In processing the volume of data required for IoT solutions is sourcing sufficient computing power to perform before-aggregation computations. When this needs to be carried out record by record, many traditional data environments, which use disk storage to store data, are not sufficiently powerful to complete the task, or may take days to deliver results.

An in-memory database (IMDB) is a database management system that primarily relies on main memory (RAM) for computer data storage. It can be thousands of times faster than a disk storage database and is useful for real-time analytics that need to happen very quickly. In-memory computing also has very good compression algorithms, which makes it possible to better utilise the storage space.

Diagram courtesy of Jorge Lizama, GHD

Some key vendors of in-memory computer systems are shown in the diagram below.

Diagram courtesy of Jorge Lizama, GHD

Sources: The information on this page has been sourced primarily from the following:

• Case Study titled Studying movement behaviour in a building: A case study of obtaining analytics from IoT data