<i>Ousterhout's proposed system is based on dynamic random access memory (DRAM). [..] In a data center, fetching bits from DRAM and sending them over the center's internal network should be 100 to 1,000 times faster than getting it from a disk.</i><p>So the "trick" is "caching data in memory" but with <i>more</i> memory and spread across multiple machines. This is already the bread and butter for many infrastructure developers and sysadmins.<p>It'll be more interesting to see what memristor technology brings. The first commercially available solutions are due in the next couple of years and we'll most likely have cost effective, non-volatile DRAM-speed memory by 2020.