Flash Memory in computers.

[MattC]

Intel is in the news with their new conroe chip. In one article http://news.designtechnica.com/talkback106.html, the author mentioned Intel's upcoming use of flash memory in computers as a way of reducing load times for frequently used data.

Can someone explain to me why it has taken the industry so long to get flash memory into computers? The advantages of using flash memory, in conjunction with regular hard drives (for capacity) and RAM, have been talked about for a number of years. The benefits in terms of power consumptions (for laptops) isn't new, either. I don't understand why it's taken so long for a chipset maker to utilize flash memory.

[the tree]

Ever droped a flash card?

[bascule]

Flash wears out after something like 100,000 write cycles.

 

New technologies like MRAM (magnetic) and NRAM (nanotube based) will provide non-volatile memory which does not wear out over time.

 

Once these technologies become commonplace, we can look forward to computers being "instant on"

[Dave]

Ever droped a flash card?

 

Ever dropped a hard drive?

 

On a slightly less cynical note, I would expect the main feature (apart from wearing out) is that of cost. You can easily buy a huge hard drive for the same price as a 2GB USB stick these days.

[5614]

My Dad suggested the other day that we should scrap hard drives and use flash memory.

 

It is a similar price, there are no moving parts so less can go wrong etc.

 

However like bascule points out there is a limiting number of times you can write to a flash drive and so using one as a hard drive is not a very clever idea.

[bluesmudge]

For one your HDD has a cache which depending on the setup should store most frequently used HDD addresses, or the most recently used HDD addresses . . flash cards instead of a HDD is definately the way forward, but thats a massive amount of achitecture change in one go. Plus a certain amout of your computer's core operation is set around the fact data access is slow from a HDD.

And did you know, though the Ipod started with a spining HDD, the newer ones have flash in them? . . . so my lecturer recently pointed out, though i trust him less since his half hour rant about greek architecture.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

My Dad suggested the other day that we should scrap hard drives and use flash memory.

 

It is a similar price' date=' there are no moving parts so less can go wrong etc.

 

However like bascule points out there is a limiting number of times you can write to a flash drive and so using one as a hard drive is not a very clever idea.[/quote']

Flash memory costs much more than a hard drive of similar capacity, once you get to about 20gigs and up.

[herme3]

Go to: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/features/foreveryone/performance.mspx

 

Scroll down and read the section named, "External memory devices."

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

That's exactly what MattC was talking about in the first post, except as an operating system option rather than built-in.

[Pleiades]

It doesn’t take any huge infrastructure changes, you can buy cheap simple adapters that allow you to plug a CompactFlash card directly into an IDE cable and use it as a hard drive, and you can even boot an OS from them.

 

As far as I’m aware, flash memory is worn only when data is erased or written, you should be able to read data from a flash card an indefinite number of times, as long as there is no writing or erasing.

 

How is flash any faster than a hard drive? Even the fastest flash cards say160x (24 megabytes per second), are slower than most hard drives.

 

Flash is good in a high shock or high vibration environment, and it uses a lot less energy but apart from that, I don’t see any advantages to putting flash in computers.

 

As far as I’m aware, the large iPods (20GB+) still use hard drives, the 4 GB ones might use flash and I’m pretty sure the Nano does.

 

Currently a 4GB CompactFlash card costs about 180 USD, for the same price you could buy a 400BG hard drive, admittedly the hard drive is physically much larger, but come one, that’s a big price difference per GB.

[Steph]

regular iPods and iPod Mini use hard-drives,

Nanos and Shuffles use flash drives...

 

I think Gigabyte released a card where you can put RAM. the card will supply power to the memory (via a rechargeable battery or via the powersupply as long as it is plugged) enabling you to use it as a hard-drive. Maximum is 4GB i think, but this is enough to put to OS on and have an near-instant on and completely quiet boot (note, it uses a s-ATA inteface, but I forgot which one... I would think 2.0).

 

Flash memory is faster. the reason it seems slower is because there is a bottleneck due to your USB interface, and the physical distance to your CPU.

 

oh and IDE cables are sooo 20th century! get s-ATA cables already!

[Pleiades]

So why don’t we see USB 2.0 flash drives than can use all of the 500 Mbit/s that USB 2.0 has? Or have I been lied to about the speed of USB 2.0?

 

I won’t be free of the IDE legacy until my 3 IDE hard drives and my 3 IDE CD drives all die. My computer has a few years left in it yet.