Origin of Reflective Memory Cards

The origin of reflective memory cards is closely related to the demand for real-time data communication and the development of computer network technology.

In the 1980s, with the increasing demand for distributed system applications requiring extremely high real-time performance, such as real-time command and control, aerospace flight simulation, and control systems, traditional network communication technologies struggled to meet the requirements in terms of data transmission latency and real-time performance. Against this backdrop, reflective memory technology emerged, leading to the development of reflective memory cards.

Companies like GE in the United States conducted extensive research and development in this area, gradually introducing more mature reflective memory card products. These early reflective memory cards could be inserted into various bus motherboards, such as PCI, CompactPCI/PXI, VME, etc. Their core principle involves creating a shared storage area on the memory bus. When one node writes data to a specific address in the reflective memory card, this data is immediately "reflected" to the same address space of all other nodes connected to the reflective memory card. This hardware-based data transmission method eliminates the need for complex software protocol stacks for data exchange, significantly reducing data transmission latency and meeting the stringent requirements of real-time systems for data transmission.

In summary, reflective memory cards originated from the strong demand for real-time, deterministic data communication and are the result of the continuous development of computer network technology and the specific needs of application scenarios. After years of development and improvement, the performance of reflective memory cards has continued to enhance, and their application fields have expanded significantly.