How do you put a 4gb RAM slot for memory onto an Arduino?

Projects General Guidance
1

Hey, Mohammad here, I was wondering that instead of using an SD Card shield to hold memory, could one expend the flash ram to 4gb by slamming a RAM slot onto Arduino. I have 2 computer chips but I don't know how to put it into Arduino. Is there a shield for this, or can I hack a computers RAM slots and solder them onto Arduino? Just interested I plan to make a computer with Arduino. (YES I KNOW WHAT A RASPBERRY PI IS but I wish to use Arduino instead)


Here is my 2 RAM slot cards


Here is the one that matters

2

You cannot extend any of the internal memories of the Arduino, either flash, eeprom or SRAM. The address busses are not exposed to the outside. YOu would have to make a controller board that will interface to the arduino via Digital I/O, serial, I2C or one wire. (I think I covered everything there...)

3

I really LoLed arty this one.

4

You more or less answered the question at square 1 --> yes, the Arduino is NOT a RaspberryPi.

What you can do is connect certain 8-pin chips to the Arduino SPI port and increase RAM and eeprom storage space that way. Look up 23LC1024 and 25LC1024 at mouser.com or digikey.com.

5

You can also mimic the address & control registers of the serial memorys and control parallel access memories.

mohammad45's pictures don't seem to open, or my security software is blocking them.
Are they DRAM modules? That will take a different controller.

6

Nope, pictures don't open.

7

If an Arduino could read from an external RAM at 1 million bytes per second it would take over an hour to read 4Gb (if my maths is correct - which it often isn't).

...R

8

I think a chip of ram has too much pins to control.

9

Oops, sorry about the images.

Here are my 4gb RAM card


And here is both of them, 64mb and 4gb

10

What you can do is connect certain 8-pin chips to the Arduino SPI port and increase RAM and eeprom storage space that way. Look up 23LC1024 and 25LC1024 at mouser.com or digikey.com.

While a ic timer CAN hold smaller circuits and small small bits of data, it only CLOCKS the circuit, counting it as a processor, which only READS memory and clocks circuits by sending x bytes at a second. Would be useful to read memory faster, other than that, does nothing for memory.

11

Those are DRAMs, that's not very friendly for using with an 8-bit microcontroller.
Need a lot of support chips to provide address, have to mux down 64 or 32 bit data down to 8 bit, have to deal with refreshing the data at some rate to keep it intact. Messy.

12

For the Uno and mega you can't really extend the memory. However the same's not true ( I think )on the DUE. You may need to design a new PCB to do it.

Mark

13

Crossroads brings up another good point:
Arduinos are 8Bit
Computers are 32Bit or more.

This makes interfacing between the two quite difficult and slow if you try to use 32Bit memory on an 8bit device.

14

It could be done, but just because it could, doesn't mean that it should. If you have a specific project in mind that needs that much memory on an arduino, there's almost certainly a better way. On the other hand, if you want to do it for it's own sake and are prepared for the fact that it will be hard, why not?

15

You can extend the memory on the Mega and also on the Due, well at least the SAM used on the Due is capable of addressing 4x 16MB of SRAM (possibly more using other types of RAM) but with the Due design you can't get access to all the pins. If you do your own SAM-based board you can address at least 64MB externally.

Rob

16

Thanks for the info. I think I'll save these for when I'm working with the DUE or if i'm working with the PI.