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Forgive me ahead of time if this question sounds dumb.

Is there anyway that an iPhone or any smartphone in general could borrow/share the memory from a PC (or any of it's other similar resources). I would quite assume but correct me if I'm wrong that this wouldn't be possible with the current USB speeds but perhaps some way this idea could be a reality?

I ask this because my iPhone and other smartphones have struggled with low memory issues and was very curious if it would be physically possible to achieve this type of device resource sharing. Any feedback you have on why or why this wouldn't work now/ever is appreciated.

(Sorry if this was asked in the wrong category, I found similar ones here)

Calculated
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  • USB access would be way slower than RAM access. It's even slower than hard disk access so I don't see why that would be plausible. – MC10 Aug 07 '15 at 22:16
  • If we theoretically removed the limits on USB would it then be possible? – Calculated Aug 07 '15 at 22:22
  • What limits? If we reached a point where USB transfer was as fast as RAM access then RAM would probably be magnitudes faster by then. We aren't limiting USB on purpose. – MC10 Aug 07 '15 at 22:28
  • See this SU article. Not the same question, but the answer applies http://superuser.com/questions/617864/why-not-use-ssd-space-as-ram – Keltari Aug 07 '15 at 22:34
  • I'm pretty sure we've had a question specifically at least about sharing RAM between multiple PCs, but I can't find it right now. – user Aug 07 '15 at 22:34

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Theoretically, yes. In reality, It's a REALLY bad idea.

There is the possibility to use the PC RAM in a really convoluted way, but it would be much to slow to be of any use.

The first thing that comes to mind is using a RAM Disk on the PC, accessing it from the iPhone (mounting it in some way, I'm sure there's a command line tool for it) then creating a SWAP file on that RAM Disk. Extremely slow, but possible.

One could speed up the process by creating the software to be passing raw bits instead of protocol overhead and to only be using the RAM on the PC that's required.

Keltari
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Quinton M.
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