This. I'm surprised nobody else mentioned security. Instead of chilling DRAM sticks immediately after shutdown and trying to read its contents with specialized tools, people could just take the NVRAM out and analyze it at leisure.
I don't think it will be too difficult for security software to wipe their keys from memory before shutting down, and many programs already do this. But so much more would remain vulnerable unless the decrypted data structures were also wiped from memory. Implementing effective security with NVRAM-equipped computers might therefore negate much of the benefit of using NVRAM in the first place.
I don't think it will be too difficult for security software to wipe their keys from memory before shutting down, and many programs already do this. But so much more would remain vulnerable unless the decrypted data structures were also wiped from memory. Implementing effective security with NVRAM-equipped computers might therefore negate much of the benefit of using NVRAM in the first place.