While this technology seems great and interesting, I don't really see much of a benefit for someone who doesn't reboot their system often. The only time I ever reboot my iBook is after a system update that requires it. Usually several weeks go by before this is needed and even then my iBook usually boots to the login window in about 20 seconds.
However, if the entire 'system' was being run off the memory then I could see how that would dramatically increase the overall speed of the system while using it and that of course, would be extremely beneficial to everyone.
I'd rather see Apple change their base RAM configuration from 512MB to 1GB before they started stuffing NAND memory into their systems.
Apple does BTO. It's YOU that stuffs in the extra memory.
Blurb on Robson NAND tech.
Quote:
Intel demonstrated Robson using OS boot times and application loads. The demonstration took place on a NAND enabled system and one without, and in many cases the one with Robson showed 4 to 5 times the performance of a legacy system. For mobility users, Intel also says that using NAND flash technology, battery power will be preserved because there is a higher performance-per-watt ratio on a NAND-enabled system vs. a legacy HDD-only based system. Intel also recently invested heavily into Micron, to create a new joint venture on producing NAND flash memory and NAND based products.
Robson is more than just booting up fast. There are small functions that receive a large speedup as well. I'm all for anything that makes my computer faster and more efficient.
I think this could be a big thing for Apple as it continues to move into the living room. Not sure how fast the new mac mini boots, but I know my DVD player "boots" instantly. A big selling point for a computerized entrertainment system is convience and people aren't going to put up with long boot times if they just want to watch TV or a DVD.
What would really be nice, I think, would be to get rid of the need to swap to a mechanical harddrive. This is the only problem with my old PPC Mac Mini, because it takes ages to swap, even though I have a full 1 GB of memory, but when not swapping, it's plenty fast for my needs.
If some lowspeed, very cheap RAM could be somehow used "in front of" the harddisk as a swap-only buffer, this might speed up swapping and reduce disk activity a whole lot.
The RAM would have to be pretty dense, about 10-20 GB of it, but it wouldn't have to be fast, because it doesn't take much to be faster than a harddrive in those conditions. If the swap area runs full, there would still be the ability to swap to disk. AFAIK, such memory doesn't exist and I don't know if it would be possible to build such dense memory chips where speed is not important.
Using Flash for storage seems nice until you run into the fact that it's very expensive and has a short lifetime.
I don't like the idea. I think it's a largely useless marketing gimmick. Is it really going to make a difference waiting 5-10 seconds for the machine to load instead of 30? Also, it's just another element to go wrong and in the case of flash, it inevitably will. At least Ram has a lifetime warranty.
The more that machines get optimized with higher throughput and faster CPUs, the startup time is going to reduce to practically zero anyway.
All it'll do is make machines more expensive and less reliable for very little added benefit.
The more that machines get optimized with higher throughput and faster CPUs, the startup time is going to reduce to practically zero anyway.
No, there is a fundamental hard drive limitation because files have to be read from the drive. It has access times to deal with, delays in fetching particular files in many places on the drive. A system reads a LOT of files to boot. If you have a louder hard drive, that's what the clatter is. Flash memory can significantly reduce the access times.
What would really be nice, I think, would be to get rid of the need to swap to a mechanical harddrive. This is the only problem with my old PPC Mac Mini, because it takes ages to swap, even though I have a full 1 GB of memory, but when not swapping, it's plenty fast for my needs.
If some lowspeed, very cheap RAM could be somehow used "in front of" the harddisk as a swap-only buffer, this might speed up swapping and reduce disk activity a whole lot.
The RAM would have to be pretty dense, about 10-20 GB of it, but it wouldn't have to be fast, because it doesn't take much to be faster than a harddrive in those conditions. If the swap area runs full, there would still be the ability to swap to disk. AFAIK, such memory doesn't exist and I don't know if it would be possible to build such dense memory chips where speed is not important.
Using Flash for storage seems nice until you run into the fact that it's very expensive and has a short lifetime.
How much are you prepared to pay for this 10 to 20 GB of RAM?
Assume a cheap $75 per GB, that's $750 to $1,500 of RAM. If it could be gotten cheaper, say $50, you would still be talking $500 to $1,000.
No, there is a fundamental hard drive limitation because files have to be read from the drive. It has access times to deal with, delays in fetching particular files in many places on the drive. A system reads a LOT of files to boot. If you have a louder hard drive, that's what the clatter is. Flash memory can significantly reduce the access times.
Depends. Even several GB's of memory wouldn't guarantee that it would be hit successfully. The hd would constantly be moving files in and out of the RAM.
It's best to just have enough RAM in the first place, and not start fooling around with the drive for that purpose. I think it's overrated for many uses. No one will use more than a few hundred MB's on the drive because otherwise the price of the drive will be constrained by the price of the RAM. Maybe several years from now.
How much are you prepared to pay for this 10 to 20 GB of RAM?
Assume a cheap $75 per GB, that's $750 to $1,500 of RAM. If it could be gotten cheaper, say $50, you would still be talking $500 to $1,000.
That has to drop by a factor of ten.
Doesn't the 1 GB shuffle sell for only $79? Although I don't know if it uses the same type of ram, thought it did. If I'm wrong don't hesitate to correct my ignorance
Also, wouldn't there have to be some additional sofware written to properly utilize flash memory in conjunction with the physical ram and hard drive?
Doesn't the 1 GB shuffle sell for only $79? Although I don't know if it uses the same type of ram, thought it did. If I'm wrong don't hesitate to correct my ignorance
That's not RAM. That's FLASH.
Also, there would have to be some additional sofware written to properly utilize flash memory in conjunction with the physical ram and hard drive?[/QUOTE]
Yes. In the OS. Though they could add some code to it.
EDIT: changed the wording of "wouldn't there", to "there would". That was a mistake.
Doesn't the 1 GB shuffle sell for only $79? Although I don't know if it uses the same type of ram, thought it did. If I'm wrong don't hesitate to correct my ignorance
It's a different type of memory. "Flash" memory is different than what you put on DIMMs inside your computer.
Opps, I was under the impression that the NAND flash memory chips that Intel plans on putting in PCs was at least similar to that used in the iPod shuffle. Thanks for correcting me.
Opps, I was under the impression that the NAND flash memory chips that Intel plans on putting in PCs was at least similar to that used in the iPod shuffle. Thanks for correcting me.
They are similar type, I think there was some confusion here, I think it is because you called flash memory RAM.
At least some types of flash is considerably cheaper than computer RAM, I pointed out earlier that one can get a 4GB gum-pack USB flash drive for $100. It's still way too expensive to use as a system drive, and as others suggest, probably not ready. As a selective cache of often-read/ rarely written files, it might work very well.
Ah, I think I see the some of the errors of my ways. The discussion had moved to use of ram in buffering hard drive access. And I was still focused on the use of flash memory in Intel systems for boot up.
And yes I did refer to the memory in the iPod shuffle as ram, my bad.
conclusion: I'm hopelessly ignorant of even the basics in computing and remain in a constant state of confusion.
Ah, I think I see the some of the errors of my ways. The discussion had moved to use of ram in buffering hard drive access. And I was still focused on the use of flash memory in Intel systems for boot up.
And yes I did refer to the memory in the iPod shuffle as ram, my bad.
conclusion: I'm hopelessly ignorant of even the basics in computing and remain in a constant state of confusion.
Stick with us pal, and you will become ever more confused.
Comments
However, if the entire 'system' was being run off the memory then I could see how that would dramatically increase the overall speed of the system while using it and that of course, would be extremely beneficial to everyone.
I'd rather see Apple change their base RAM configuration from 512MB to 1GB before they started stuffing NAND memory into their systems.
Blurb on Robson NAND tech.
Intel demonstrated Robson using OS boot times and application loads. The demonstration took place on a NAND enabled system and one without, and in many cases the one with Robson showed 4 to 5 times the performance of a legacy system. For mobility users, Intel also says that using NAND flash technology, battery power will be preserved because there is a higher performance-per-watt ratio on a NAND-enabled system vs. a legacy HDD-only based system. Intel also recently invested heavily into Micron, to create a new joint venture on producing NAND flash memory and NAND based products.
Robson is more than just booting up fast. There are small functions that receive a large speedup as well. I'm all for anything that makes my computer faster and more efficient.
If some lowspeed, very cheap RAM could be somehow used "in front of" the harddisk as a swap-only buffer, this might speed up swapping and reduce disk activity a whole lot.
The RAM would have to be pretty dense, about 10-20 GB of it, but it wouldn't have to be fast, because it doesn't take much to be faster than a harddrive in those conditions. If the swap area runs full, there would still be the ability to swap to disk. AFAIK, such memory doesn't exist and I don't know if it would be possible to build such dense memory chips where speed is not important.
Using Flash for storage seems nice until you run into the fact that it's very expensive and has a short lifetime.
The more that machines get optimized with higher throughput and faster CPUs, the startup time is going to reduce to practically zero anyway.
All it'll do is make machines more expensive and less reliable for very little added benefit.
The more that machines get optimized with higher throughput and faster CPUs, the startup time is going to reduce to practically zero anyway.
No, there is a fundamental hard drive limitation because files have to be read from the drive. It has access times to deal with, delays in fetching particular files in many places on the drive. A system reads a LOT of files to boot. If you have a louder hard drive, that's what the clatter is. Flash memory can significantly reduce the access times.
What would really be nice, I think, would be to get rid of the need to swap to a mechanical harddrive. This is the only problem with my old PPC Mac Mini, because it takes ages to swap, even though I have a full 1 GB of memory, but when not swapping, it's plenty fast for my needs.
If some lowspeed, very cheap RAM could be somehow used "in front of" the harddisk as a swap-only buffer, this might speed up swapping and reduce disk activity a whole lot.
The RAM would have to be pretty dense, about 10-20 GB of it, but it wouldn't have to be fast, because it doesn't take much to be faster than a harddrive in those conditions. If the swap area runs full, there would still be the ability to swap to disk. AFAIK, such memory doesn't exist and I don't know if it would be possible to build such dense memory chips where speed is not important.
Using Flash for storage seems nice until you run into the fact that it's very expensive and has a short lifetime.
How much are you prepared to pay for this 10 to 20 GB of RAM?
Assume a cheap $75 per GB, that's $750 to $1,500 of RAM. If it could be gotten cheaper, say $50, you would still be talking $500 to $1,000.
That has to drop by a factor of ten.
No, there is a fundamental hard drive limitation because files have to be read from the drive. It has access times to deal with, delays in fetching particular files in many places on the drive. A system reads a LOT of files to boot. If you have a louder hard drive, that's what the clatter is. Flash memory can significantly reduce the access times.
Depends. Even several GB's of memory wouldn't guarantee that it would be hit successfully. The hd would constantly be moving files in and out of the RAM.
It's best to just have enough RAM in the first place, and not start fooling around with the drive for that purpose. I think it's overrated for many uses. No one will use more than a few hundred MB's on the drive because otherwise the price of the drive will be constrained by the price of the RAM. Maybe several years from now.
How much are you prepared to pay for this 10 to 20 GB of RAM?
Assume a cheap $75 per GB, that's $750 to $1,500 of RAM. If it could be gotten cheaper, say $50, you would still be talking $500 to $1,000.
That has to drop by a factor of ten.
Doesn't the 1 GB shuffle sell for only $79? Although I don't know if it uses the same type of ram, thought it did. If I'm wrong don't hesitate to correct my ignorance
Also, wouldn't there have to be some additional sofware written to properly utilize flash memory in conjunction with the physical ram and hard drive?
Doesn't the 1 GB shuffle sell for only $79? Although I don't know if it uses the same type of ram, thought it did. If I'm wrong don't hesitate to correct my ignorance
That's not RAM. That's FLASH.
Also, there would have to be some additional sofware written to properly utilize flash memory in conjunction with the physical ram and hard drive?[/QUOTE]
Yes. In the OS. Though they could add some code to it.
EDIT: changed the wording of "wouldn't there", to "there would". That was a mistake.
Doesn't the 1 GB shuffle sell for only $79? Although I don't know if it uses the same type of ram, thought it did. If I'm wrong don't hesitate to correct my ignorance
It's a different type of memory. "Flash" memory is different than what you put on DIMMs inside your computer.
Opps, I was under the impression that the NAND flash memory chips that Intel plans on putting in PCs was at least similar to that used in the iPod shuffle. Thanks for correcting me.
They are similar type, I think there was some confusion here, I think it is because you called flash memory RAM.
At least some types of flash is considerably cheaper than computer RAM, I pointed out earlier that one can get a 4GB gum-pack USB flash drive for $100. It's still way too expensive to use as a system drive, and as others suggest, probably not ready. As a selective cache of often-read/ rarely written files, it might work very well.
And yes I did refer to the memory in the iPod shuffle as ram, my bad.
conclusion: I'm hopelessly ignorant of even the basics in computing and remain in a constant state of confusion.
Ah, I think I see the some of the errors of my ways. The discussion had moved to use of ram in buffering hard drive access. And I was still focused on the use of flash memory in Intel systems for boot up.
And yes I did refer to the memory in the iPod shuffle as ram, my bad.
conclusion: I'm hopelessly ignorant of even the basics in computing and remain in a constant state of confusion.
Stick with us pal, and you will become ever more confused.