Who Needs DRAM? We Have Fiber

Reminiscent of acoustic memory on early calculators

Reminds me of the time I was sitting on a regional jet on the airport in Philly where planes were stacked up because a runway was under construction. Near sunset we'd finally reached the head of the line of many planes of all different sizes and I thought it looked like a scene out of a retro science-fiction movie say Flash Gordon or Buck Rogers and what a miracle it is to be alive in the 21st century -- then this redneck in the seat behind me says "I can't believe I paid $1000 for this!"

Turned out he was flying home to the finger lakes after doing a job pulling a literally astronomical length of fiber through a data center in the land of us-east-1 a little south of Washington, DC. Like all that optic fiber that they didn't lay to your house [1] is a data center and no doubt there is enough to use as a delay line memory.

[1] empowering Elon Musk to blot out the stars