[dataflow]

"Real quick" is human speak. For large amounts of memory it's still bound by RAM speed for a machine, which is much lower (a couple orders of magnitude I believe) than, say, cache speed. Things might be different if there was a RAM equivalent of SSD TRIM (making the RAM module zero itself without transferring lots of zeros across the bus), but there isn't.

[throwaway894345]

I'm completely unfamiliar with how the CPU communicates with the memory modules, but is there not a way for the CPU to tell the memory modules to zero out a whole range of memory rather than one byte/sector/whatever-the-standard-unit-is at a time?

As I type this, I'm realizing how little I know about the protocol between the CPU and the memory modules--if anyone has an accessible link on the subject, I'd be grateful.

[dataflow]

That's what I referred to as "TRIM for RAM". I'm not aware of it being a thing. And I don't know the protocol, but I'm also not sure it's just a matter of protocol. It might require additional circuitry per bit of memory that would increase the cost.

[mjevans]

'trim' for RAM is a virtual to physical page table hack. Memory that isn't backed by a page is just a zero, it doesn't need to be initialized. Offhand it's supposed to be before it's handed to a process, but I don't know if there are E.G. mechanisms to use some spare cycles to proactively zero non-allocated memory that's a candidate for being attached to VM space.

[andrewf]

Oldie but a goodie: https://people.freebsd.org/~lstewart/articles/cpumemory.pdf