There is so little performance gain from switching from DRAM to SRAM that it just doesn't really matter. Caches are very good at hiding accesses to memory, and, if you need to hit a flash drive/hard disk, you are hosed anyway.
Where people care a lot is in embedded microprocessors. SRAM is very scarce, and it's very definitely about area and power as DRAM basically isn't used.
The problem is that you can put almost 10x more flash in the same area as SRAM (and I'm being generous--it's probably more like 20x now) and memory (flash and SRAM) is more than 50% of the die area on a modern microcontroller.
Basically, every modern microcontroller ships with the maximum amount of SRAM that it is economically feasible to make.
In addition, for "modern" technology nodes, SRAM cost is going up. Moore's Law broke back at the 28nm node.
There is so little performance gain from switching from DRAM to SRAM that it just doesn't really matter. Caches are very good at hiding accesses to memory, and, if you need to hit a flash drive/hard disk, you are hosed anyway.
Where people care a lot is in embedded microprocessors. SRAM is very scarce, and it's very definitely about area and power as DRAM basically isn't used.
The problem is that you can put almost 10x more flash in the same area as SRAM (and I'm being generous--it's probably more like 20x now) and memory (flash and SRAM) is more than 50% of the die area on a modern microcontroller.
Basically, every modern microcontroller ships with the maximum amount of SRAM that it is economically feasible to make.
In addition, for "modern" technology nodes, SRAM cost is going up. Moore's Law broke back at the 28nm node.
http://electroiq.com/blog/2014/02/the-most-expensive-sram-in...