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Samsung HDD Merges Flash, Conventional Storage

Posted by timothy on Sat Apr 30, 2005 03:06 PM
from the layering-the-layers dept.
Data Storage Hardware Technology
geekboxjockey points "This is a link to a story about a hybrid hard-drive technology from Samsung that involves the use of flash memory and conventional storage. A very interesting idea that could provide noticeable energy useage/speed improvements for HDD-based portable devices."
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  • Yeah ... to be used for something called a ***CACHE***.

    If you had 10GB of memory in a Linux/BSD box you'd get this "boost" too ...

    As for saving costs by lowering failure ... let's hope they don't use cheap flash controllers. Of all the flash based mp3 players I've had [usually got for free with a purchase] most of them fail on a lengthy write or two...

    More so let's hope we can still replace this hd+flash combo with a coventional HD.

    I know for my Presario laptop [Compaq 2100CA] the replacement HD [Hitachi 60GB] is ==>$710 CAD== while a faster Samsung 40GB is $90 ...

    So what i'm trying to say is ... less ass rapage please.

    Tom
    • Right, that thing looks like cache. I wonder how it will be operated on the OS level. Will it have internal processor to manage the cache and disk or will it be all done in the driver?

      the replacement HD [Hitachi 60GB] is ==>$710 CAD==

      You know, these HDDs tend to be standardized. Why not buy one and install yourself? While they tend to be twice as expensive as the normal desktop units, the kind of price you present is SICK.

      What I did was simple: I keep the original HDD and put in decently priced (an

      • I did get a replacement on my own. Hence the $90 for the 40GB drive...

        The history went

        1. Drive makes clicking noises
        2. Tom sends it to Futureshop to get serviced
        3. 56 days later I get laptop back
        4. Laptop was not fixed, still clicks
        5. Several months later it totally dies
        6. Tom goes to local shop and buys replacement drive for $90.

        Essentially the stores/manufacturers ALREADY rape us seven ways from sunday. This combo drive is just another way to potentially lock people down.

        Tom
        • Their reasoning seems to be:
          has laptop = is rich = can pay triple = let's charge some extra

          Yeah, I see this every time I go shopping for computer stuff.
          • Apple has had it share of horror stories too.

            The problem isn't so much as Compaq as just plan lazyness and greed [which the industry as a whole shares].

            Generally I don't see laptops as such a great buy unless you can try it before paying... specially with all the wintel hardware out there...

            Tom
          • Inferiority complex? If anything what canadians have that sucks is apathy. We bitch at you americans but then share the same faults and don't fix it...

            As for NHL, I personally hate pro hockey [and most sports that don't involve crashes or fire]. It's a scam and not worth the time and money.

            Tom
          • Hard disk write cycles and flash cycles are vastly different.

            iirc. the average disk is rated for 10^10 - 10^11 [taken from Seagates average one bit error per 10^14 bits read/written] re-writes per sector while the best flash is around 10^5 - 10^6 [Intel strataflash].

            Usually in a modern hard drive the motor will die before the platter becomes unusable.

            Tom

  • Swap File (Score:2, Interesting)

    by eXzite (839737)
    Will the OS have a way of selectively writing to the flash? What about swap files, etc, which will change all the time?

    This is great stuff though, swap files aside, most people could probably do everything they ever need from their laptop within 1Gig of flash, during a single work session.
        • Thats where the 10GB of primary memory comes it, so you won't need to swap. They thought of everything.

          • Re:Swap File (Score:4, Interesting)

            by MSZ (26307) on Saturday April 30 2005, @04:06PM (#12393844)
            For Linux, sure.
            For Windows, not unless they replace the memory management. It normally uses swap even when there's plenty of free memory and this is supposed to be a feature, not a design bug...

  • A gimmick (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Saven Marek (739395) on Saturday April 30 2005, @03:12PM (#12393582)
    flash memory like this in a hard drive is a gimmick, I think samsung are hoping nobody realises how few the write times are on flash memory, so you'll need to regularly replace the limited write time flash memory when it's worn out fairly often

    So what happens when trying to detect when the flash memory has been written to too many times? afaik this isn't easily done, so you end up dumping broken data to the disk until you notice "whooops my spreadsheet suddenly doesn't work that I need in 30 minutes or the boss will have my ass".

    • So what happens when trying to detect when the flash memory has been written to too many times? afaik this isn't easily done, so you end up dumping broken data to the disk until you notice "whooops my spreadsheet suddenly doesn't work that I need in 30 minutes or the boss will have my ass".

      you could be right, but I doubt it. What could be simpler than verifying all writes? of course, it's slow, so you might want to do it in a delayed fashion; eg have some memory in there, write to ram and to flash,

    • So what happens when trying to detect when the flash memory has been written to too many times?

      Actually, in most newer flash-based storage devices, this is already accounted for. Basically, the data is verified by attempting to read back the data - if it reads, you know you're fine, as the "space" in memory will only become "worn out" on a write.

      If a "space" fails verification, it is added to a list of known bad sectors - exactly how IDE drives have functioned for the past decade or so.
    • This is more of a "may be a problem" than a "will be a problem" kind of event. It's all dependent on how much data is actually moved, and how the Flash memory is configured. For example, if we have a 1GB buffer, then at a 100K-write life, we're talking about 100TB of data that can be transfered before the Flash memory wears out. The question is how does that 100TB number compare to the amount of data actually moved in a normal drive's lifetime?
    • They talk in the article about Longhorn using 64-bit memory addressing so you'll be getting gobs of main memory. When your page table is 10GB like they mention in the article then there would be little to no reason for another paging system inside the harddrive. As much as I like modularity this is just silly.

      It's definitely a gimmick, and a nearly useless one when everyone's upgraded to their 64-bit systems. Do you want your memory cached on something connected to the FSB or do you want it done out on a d
      • There is still a good reason: It is non-volatile.
      • YOu don't understand the fundamental difference between this and a "cache"

        This is NOT a cache. It is a permanent storage area on the hard drive which does not require the hard drive to spin up. I know one thing, in windows XP, my laptop hard drive spins up every 10 minutes because XP likes to do tons of shit even when i'm not using it. All it does is write 1 or 2K onto the disk, and for that it spins the damn drive up... every time. Witht his embedded flash memory it can write to it, and only after a long
        • I know one thing, in windows XP, my laptop hard drive spins up every 10 minutes because XP likes to do tons of shit even when i'm not using it. All it does is write 1 or 2K onto the disk, and for that it spins the damn drive up... every time.

          What part of 64-bit addressing did you not understand? Or was it the virtual memory part, cause I know that sometimes gets people?

          Of course it's only writing a few kB to disk, that's the page size that your virtual memory manager uses. What it means is that your real
          • The silly thing about the article is that they're touting this new Samsung drive while at the same time touting Longhorn's capability

            They are touting longhorn's ability because they are hinting that they will be decreasing the swapyness of the system when you use lots of RAM. They will also try to decrease having to load and unload libraries n stuff you need the most... They are basically saying, that with this new technology on the hard drive, along with tweaks from the OS, that you can pretty much live

    • Re:A gimmick (Score:2, Interesting)

      by oc255 (218044)
      Gimmick? Hmm...

      This is just electronic writes. Those who have worked with a high-performance SAN like the Hitachi 9900 [hds.com], Sun 6920 [sun.com], know that electronic writes is where all the performance comes from. When our SAN's 4gig of cache goes offline, my DBAs come running and everyone complains about terrible write/read speeds.

      Electronic writes (in a good amount) means that the data flies into memory and later on the disk system pumps the data out to the disk platters. Netapp is really great at doing this kind
      • While your dreaming sounds wonderful, and I wish it were so, this particular circumstance isn't a cache. It is permanent storage built for one thing and one thing only: to prevent the drive from spinning up and still store data permanently (up to a certain size)

        This flash memory will be slower than the hard drive's native writing. It will definately not work like a cache. It would destroy the flash memory in a matter of months, and would be much slower, if you used it like that.

        The purpose of this design
  • Isn't this already implemented in software in some form. As memory cache of sorts. I understand that with memory if you loose power you loose data so this just seems to act as a bridge. What happens if the power goes out and data has yet to be written but is in flash. Is what is in there automatically committed to the disk on the next power up? The article doesn't go into much detail unfortunately. It seems like a good idea if implemented properly but for me everytime I launch a new copy of explorer on a w
    • No this is not implemented in software yet. This isn't a cache. It is a storage buffer for a hard drive. It is significantly slower than a memory cache. It is even slower than the drive platters themselves. It is simply slow flash memory designed for one purpose only. That is to have a place to write to while the disk is spun down.

      Cache does not provide this function because cache is volatile and if you write to it, you will lose it unless it writes it to the platter. Whith this system, you can write to it

  • Nah... (Score:4, Funny)

    by ArbiterOne (715233) on Saturday April 30 2005, @03:15PM (#12393596) Homepage
    It won't really take off unless they release an amusing Flash video [hitachigst.com] involving dancing flash memory-HDD pairs singing about the joys of dual storage.

  • Hardvaporware ? (Score:3, Funny)

    by alexhs (877055) on Saturday April 30 2005, @03:15PM (#12393599) Homepage Journal
    > The Hybrid Hard Drive, developed by Samsung and Microsoft, is meant for mobile PCs running Longhorn, the next version of the Windows operating system.

    So the other hard drive manufacturers will have a loooong time to do the same...

        • Re:Hardvaporware ? (Score:4, Insightful)

          by mp3phish (747341) on Saturday April 30 2005, @06:18PM (#12394621)
          You imply that a powerbook made by Apple Computer would somehow implement futuristic types of storage faster than other platforms. You might need a history lesson:

          Apple was the last mainstream manufacturer in the industry to implement USB2.0 into their systems for use with Hi Speed USB flash memory devices.

          Apple was the last mainstream manufacturer in the industry to install SATA drives into their systems.

          Apple was the last mainstream manufacturer in the industry to install DVD burners into their systems.

          Apple was the last mainstream manufacturer in the industry to move from SCSI to IDE for consumer systems.

          I highly doubt Apple will be the first manufacturer to implement holographic storage into their laptops. As they are usually the last manufacturer to move to new types of storage technology in their products.
          • ...of course, you could also say...

            Apple was the first mainstream manufacturer in the industry to implement USB into their systems (iMac, May/August 1998).

            Apple was the first mainstream manufacturer in the industry to implement FireWire/IEEE1394 into their systems. (January 1999, Blue and White Power Mac G3)

            Apple was the first mainstream manufacturer in the industry to implement DVD burners into their systems (the original SuperDrive, DVR-103, was introduced in January 2001 alongside the Pioneer DVR-A03.

            • Apple was the first mainstream manufacturer in the industry to implement USB into their systems (iMac, May/August 1998).

              No, you're COMPLETELY wrong there. USB had been installed in PCs for a LONG time before Apple's iMac. I've personally got a DEC PentiumPro system with USB ports, from 1995 IIRC. What Apple actually did, was popularize them, by forcing their customers to use only USB peripherals. I'm still using it as my firewall, loaded up with 192MB of old SIMMs I don't have any other use for...

              Th

  • FROM Here to Eternity (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Doc Ruby (173196) on Saturday April 30 2005, @03:17PM (#12393612) Homepage Journal
    How about booting from the HD, then "caching" the computed startup image in the FROM? At shutdown, store kernel/OS variables in a table. At next boot, just suck in the image from FROM, and update runtime changes (clocks, counters, etc) from the table. Corrupt images get dropped by rebooting from HD when necessary. It's like notebook "hibernate", but stores the "clean" initial boot state instead of the (possibly corrupt) final OS state. Linux's initrd boot ramdisk phase offers a golden opportunity to just restart from the image cached in quick FROM. If Samsung patched the bootloader, it could sell a lot of these drives. I'd pay as much for a 100GB platter-only drive as I would for a 40GB boot hybrid drive.
      • It makes perfect sense, if not to you. Most of the image is the loaded code, selected by boot-time options. Some of it is the state of the variables after init, including devices, which is the same after every reboot. And some is the state of the variables, including devices, which varies by external factors (network, sensors) and by the last state before shutdown. That last recomputation is a tiny fraction of current boot time, which is largely the disk IO time as tiny bits of the OS and configs are read d

  • Déjà entendu ? (Score:5, Funny)

    by alexhs (877055) on Saturday April 30 2005, @03:20PM (#12393631) Homepage Journal
    "Let's suppose you had 10GB of primary memory--probably everything that you do could fit in memory," Allchin (Microsoft Windows chief) said.

    10 GiB ought to be enough for everyone...

  • Actually this story isn't entirely accurate (Score:5, Informative)

    by gru3hunt3r (782984) on Saturday April 30 2005, @03:24PM (#12393652) Journal
    There have been several vendors of Flash Based hard disks for a while. This is the first hybrid flash+magnetic drive -- and even this isn't all that different of an idea than say a Compaq smart array controller with battery backed write cache which used NVRAM to store data. It's innovative and i'd definitely buy a laptop that had it.

    I think many slashdotters will miss the big picture. This is mostly a power saving utility -- and it could offer performance gains assuming the files you use are available on the flash and the drive doesn't need to be spun up. (Of course when the drive DOES need to get spun up, plan on having a *really* long access time so I think this will be negligble). Buy basically it means you can leave auto-save on Microsoft Word enabled and not drain your battery.

    BUT since we're on the subject i'm a huge fan of flash only drives, they have several special applications because of their access times (in nanoseconds instead of milliseconds), extremely reliable (no moving parts, read/write cycles in the billions + ECC checking) and high bandwith they are NOT ideal for situations such as swap (JUST BUY MORE RAM IT'S CHEAPER AND FASTER!!) but instead they are perfect for situations were you need persistent storage of highly accessible files e.g. binlogs on a database.

    You can easily bump up the performance of MySQL or Oracle using one of these drives for A LOT less

    There is a company called BitMicro http://www.bitmicro.com/ [bitmicro.com] which produces ATA and SCSI, and Fibre Channel flash only hard disks.
    Using a flash only drive you will get a dramatic performance bump in any transaction database by storing the transaction files on the database.

    • Flash memory has have a limited number of writes, hard drives have a lot more writes by orders of magnitudes. Flash memory writing can also be very slow.

      I think what you mean is battery backed up memory, which I think is ordinary DRAM chips with battery backed memory controller to keep the memory refreshed.
      • Yes, I've burned up several flash sticks because I write to them constantly at work (usually 60-100 Mb application setup sets) so I can attest to the limited number of write cycles. Ordinary DRAM parts aren't suitable for battery backup unless you include refresh logic and in any event they always draw substantial amounts of power. The solid-state drives I've used have CMOS static RAM on them. CMOS logic gates don't draw much current unless they're in transition, which makes them ideal candidates for long-t
    • You can easily bump up the performance of MySQL or Oracle using one of these drives for A LOT less

      From TFA, "The Hybrid Hard Drive, developed by Samsung and Microsoft, is meant for mobile PCs"

      If you are doing anything on a laptop with a database that might require a "performance bump" as you put it, then I would suggest getting at a bare minimum a hefty workstation.

      I don't think too many companies would run a production database on a laptop.

  • Flash and harddrives (Score:3, Informative)

    by karvind (833059) <karvind AT gmail DOT com> on Saturday April 30 2005, @03:28PM (#12393665) Journal
    CeBIT 2005 [tomshardware.com] had demonstration of flash only hard drives. Since flash memory is considerably more expensive than magnetic mass storage - a hybrid approach is a better compromise.

    Also from WinHEC [vnunet.com], samsung is not the only player. The disk will be manufactured initially by Samsung, Hitachi and Seagate, and other manufacturers will be announced later.

    More details on Samsung's OneNAND hybrid technology:

    OneNAND Flash memory has been incorporated into the design of Microsoft Corp.'s prototype Hybrid Hard Drive (HHD), the first fully functional disk drive to combine NAND-based Flash with rotating storage media.

    The hybrid hard drive prototype uses 1 Gigabit OneNAND(TM) Flash as both the write buffer and boot buffer. In the hybrid write mode, the mechanical drive is spun down for the majority of the time, while data is written to the Flash write buffer. When the write buffer is filled, the rotating drive spins and the data from the write buffer is written to the hard drive.

    The hybrid drive saves power by keeping the spindle motor in idle mode almost all the time, while the operating system writes to the OneNAND write buffer. Moreover, by using OneNAND Flash with hard disk drive technology, disk drive performance is not compromised relative to conventional disk drives. This is due, in large part, to OneNAND's ultra-fast read speeds, which can be fully leveraged during the flushing of the contents of OneNAND's write buffer to the rotating drive. In addition, since the Samsung hybrid disk drive operates at a lower temperature than traditional rotating media, it greatly reduces the possibility of shock and impact damage, improving the overall reliability of the disk subsystem.

    While the cost of hybrid disk drives may slightly increase with the addition of OneNAND, any increase will be mitigated by several factors, including lower maintenance costs, 95 percent power savings when the disk is not spinning, faster boot time and substantially increased reliability. All of these changes are crucial to the ever increasing needs of today's mobile customer, making it likely that hybrid hard drive technology will enjoy rapid market adoption.

  • So if I get it right, this is just a drive with a very large, albeit slow, memory cache. They expect the users to address their data in separate chunks of 128MB. As soon as you go outside of this chunk you'll have to spin up the drive to read the file -- which will, of course, reduce the responsiveness of the system. Moreover, drives don't only wear out due to the disk spinning. Every spin-up and spin-down cycle causes additional wear, so I doubt this idea will reduce the failure rate for laptop disks. Actu
  • The article says that they're thinking the higher cost of the drives will be offset by maintenance/power savings.

    Me, as a laptop buyer, doesn't give a rip about either of those. Power? So what, I fill up on power at the coffee shop, at my office, etc, if I'm concerned about paying for it. It's virtually impossible to do maintenance on a laptop, other than wrap it in a box and send it in, in which case if it's a personal machine, I just use my desktop, and if it's a work machine, I still get my salary.

    T
      • Exactly.. Likewise your employer can have less downtime therefore getting more work for the salary they are paying you...

        Not to mention the most important issue: the power savings you get while on a battery..

        It sounds like the parent poster is just trying to be grumpy and think that because he never uses a battery, and he doesn't know how to replace a hard drive in a laptop (actually, most laptop mfg's consider HDD's as end user servicable nowadays) and that if it goes down on him while he is at work he w
  • I believe this won't be directly used as cache (as the limited write cycles of flash memory would make this impossible), but it will provide an area where relatively static information (like the kernel, libraries, etc) can be stored and accessed without spinning the drive up. Obviously the OS needs to get involved because only it is in a position to know what files should be placed in this cache.

    If MRAM ever becomes economical, it might be useful as a non-volatile general-purpose cache. That would be handy
  • It seems that most people are forgetting a very important fact - flash memory has a limited number of writes. For normal usage (e.g. sd card/usb memory key) you will never encounter these, but as soon as you do something like this...

    This just doesn't make sense to me, instead of caching in system memory (how the power savings are done in linux laptop-mode) they are caching to flash which is slower, the only advantage is the data won't be lost in flash.

    However what about swap? Does the flash cache disti

  • Using flash (or, better yet, MRAM - faster, unlimited writes), to hold disk metadate, file and folder allocation information, etc, rather than just as a giant write-back cache.

    Support for this would have to be included on a filesystem level, but if this were available I'd imagine the FOSS community would have it testable in a few days, and stable enough for general use in a few weeks.

  • Can we please stop calling everything technology? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by cgenman (325138) on Saturday April 30 2005, @04:27PM (#12393958) Homepage
    They're using 64 bit technology. The other guys have dual-memory technology. I have technology on my wrist that allows me to tell time.

    Can we please stop calling everything technology? At one point the word had meaning, but it's been so over used now that it means nothing. Now it's just a way to make something look more impressive than it actually is, a for-nerds buzzword. "Our emergent 64 bit technology allows for vertical integration along all of your supply-chain specifications." It's a painfully overused buzzword. 64 bit technology. Plastics technology. SUV technology. Technological technology.

    Some things still deserve the term. Pretty much anything fusion-related can be given the term fusion technology. But the term technology is being applied to a lot of things that are just design choices. Win 3.1 could have had 64 bit memory addressing, they just didn't because it would have been a huge wasted of prescious resources. Calling it "64 bit technology" is like saying a car has 4-door technology: it's a design choice, not a radical piece of tech.

    And these damn kids keep throwing their frisbies on my lawn.

  • Not Nuff (Score:3, Funny)

    by eSims (723865) on Saturday April 30 2005, @04:40PM (#12394020) Homepage
    "Let's suppose you had 10GB of primary memory--probably everything that you do could fit in memory," Allchin said.

    Yeah, everything except Longhorn :-p

  • I like the idea. Just as long as they don't try to patent it, because I already came up with it on my own [dolphinling.net].

    • Obviously didn't read anything about this tech...

      This isn't anything like dynamic ram in the drive. It is a static buffer which does not require being written to the platter. When the system crashes or power fails, you don't lose your data while its on flash memory. In a memory buffer you do..

      This is NOT a cache. It isn't used as a faster buffer between your system and the platter. It is NOT used to improve performance. It's ONLY PURPOSE is to be written to while the disk is spun down. This prevents the d
    • This may be a bad idea so correct me if I'm all wrong here.

      You have valid concerns, but you have to watch out and not go with what everyone else on slashdot is saying...

      This flash space on the drive has nothing to do with improving performance, etc etc... It's ONLY concern is to help prevent the disk from having to spin up when you need to write to it.

      Imagine using MS word while you have autosave on. So every 2 minutes your 2K word file gets written out to disk. Well, you are on battery.. your power man

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