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Data Storage Hardware Technology

Samsung HDD Merges Flash, Conventional Storage 152

Posted by timothy from the layering-the-layers dept.
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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Samsung HDD Merges Flash, Conventional Storage More

Samsung HDD Merges Flash, Conventional Storage

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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
    • The thing is, you wouldn't want to use volatile memory as write cache (even if you run Linux, some might cut the electricity), even if it works nice for reading. Having a flash memory integrated with the hard drive gives you the possibility to have all your data safely stored, and not staying in cache for 10+ minutes.
      • The thing is, you wouldn't want to use volatile memory as write cache (even if you run Linux, some might cut the electricity), even if it works nice for reading. Having a flash memory integrated with the hard drive gives you the possibility to have all your data safely stored, and not staying in cache for 10+ minutes.

        But the thing about flash memory is that they wear out after a certain number of write cycles. You wouldn't want to use that for your cache too!
        • But the thing about flash memory is that they wear out after a certain number of write cycles. You wouldn't want to use that for your cache too!

          I do understand they aren't perfect. I also know there are ways to work around that, like checking the integrity of the flash (basically the same technique already used for disk drives, you could also use ECC technologies for example).

          I however also know that as far as my hard drives go, the very same problem applies. They also have a limited lifetime (both disk

          • 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
    • 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.

  • 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.
    • That doesn't really matter. It's about preventing the hdd to spin up. If that means storing a swapfile page on flash, then it has to be so.

  • A gimmick (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Saven Marek ( 739395 ) on Saturday April 30, 2005 @04:12PM (#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,

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

      by Cruithne ( 658153 )
      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?
      • I guess it depends on what normal is. It takes a few days to move 2TB of data across a network usually. If you were thrashing swap constantly, 100TB could be a month. For desktop use, I'd say it would be at least a few years.

    • Re:A gimmick (Score:3, Insightful)

      by St. Arbirix ( 218306 )
      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.

      • Re:A gimmick (Score:3, Informative)

        by mp3phish ( 747341 )
        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, Informative)

              by ModMeFlamebait ( 781879 )
              It is just a matter of time before this is implemented on the OS level (in linux, macOS, and longhorn)

              yeah, /proc/sys/vm/laptop_mode and associated acpi scripts are sure a long way into the future. not. it has been present in 2.4 linux kernels for quite a time. when longhorn comes out, it'll be *years* behind schedule
              • it has been present in 2.4 linux kernels for quite a time. when longhorn comes out, it'll be *years* behind schedule

                Yea.. but you have to admit that the linux kernel has a long way to go for quality acpi support.

                You might say this feature is in linux, and has been for a while. That doesn't change anything I stated in the above post. It only says that Linux has had this feature. I never said it didn't. And my statements aren't based on Linux not having it. In fact, I don't care for windows. It just so ha
        • I didn't get from the article that this was for permanent storage - how is the disk controller going to know what to store in flash and what to store on disk? If it's a cache thing, then the controller can just cache each write and the OS doesn't need to know when it actually got written to the disk - it just gets the "write succeeded" ack back faster and reads to cached material are really speedy. But if it's a permanent-storage thing, that implies that what it really looks like is that the first 128MB
          • This flash isn't a "fast storage" space. It exsits solely to be written to while the disk is spun down. It has no other purpose.

            Trying to say it will improve performance by reading faster than disk is preposterous. This type of flash memory is not only slower, but has a limited write lifetime. Thus it could not be used effectively as a cache.

            The permanent storage I speak of is when you write to it while the disk is down. If the power fails or if the system crashes, it is permanently on the disk and can be

    • 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
        • Why not just use battery backed RAM? It doesn't have to be the super-fast power hungry desktop RAM. 100+MB/sec would be more than good enough.

          Stick in a few of those low self-discharge "watch" batteries that last for years.

          If the batteries run out, just behave like a normal harddrive.

          Then you'll have a reasonably fast nonvolatile cache, and the drive can take its time to figure out what is the best way to write out all the data.
          • Why not just use battery backed RAM?

            High end storage systems do this already.. It's a good idea... But they do it for another reason: to gain extra performance while under heavy load, and still prevent data loss on a system crash or power failure.

            I believe (but may be wrong) that using this cheap flash memory in here is lower maintenance, cheaper to produce, less complex of a design, and more reliable than the battery backed up system. And since this isn't ment to improve system speed, but to prevent th
      • Laptops and desktops/servers are really much different problems. A laptop has limits to power, weight, size, and heat load, so you wouldn't do a battery-backed-RAM disk cache system for use in unplugged mode - you'd want to do something with flash, and your goal is minimizing power and disk usage, not maximizing speed.

        Desktops and servers are a much different game - your goal is maximizing speed, size&weight aren't a problem, and you have lots of electricity available to power everything except when

    • When they demoed this at WinHEC last week I asked about this. They said it would take about 40 years of typical use to degrade completely. Even then it degrades gracefully so the cache just shrinks until you end up with a normal hard drive (assuming it lasts that long).
      • The press release wasn't very deep or very long - did the trade show folks provide more information about how it worked? 40 years is obviously not the working time for something that caches every disk write, so they're doing something to decide what to cache and what not to cache, which seems to be driving much of the Slashdot discussion.
  • 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
    • This is a really old idea. Initially, the idea was to run some system memory or drive cache off of a battery. Then, a portion of memory would remain persistant across reboots. The memory would act as the flash memory in the article does, except that it would be normal system memory, so it would be fast, but you would have to worry about battery failure. I'd like to see something like this in the linux kernel. You could imagine having it support spooling reads and writes from any type of block device to
    • 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 @04:15PM (#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 @04:15PM (#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...

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

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Saturday April 30, 2005 @04:17PM (#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.
  • AFAIK, modern filesystems can store their journal on a different device. You just need to change journal flushing logic.

  • Déjà entendu ? (Score:5, Funny)

    by alexhs ( 877055 ) on Saturday April 30, 2005 @04:20PM (#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 @04:24PM (#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
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • gru3hunt3r's says: Compaq smart array controller with battery backed write cache which used NVRAM to store data.

      I can certainly back him up on that. We have them at work. Last week the disk performance went down a third on one disk array. On the BIOS bootup screen did we saw an error message that effectively said the battery had failed on the disk controller so it had to wait for each write to go to disk rather just return ok when it was written to cache. Things recovered when the battery was replaced

    • 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 drives are great.. what does bitmicro have for price/gb?
    • You can easily bump up the performance of MySQL or Oracle using one of these drives for A LOT less

      I too am very concerned about getting extended battery life while running Oracle 8i Server on my laptop (with mysql).

      As for BitMicro, I received a quote from them for a 1GB flash HD, and it was around $990 USD.

      No thanks. I'd rather use a CFcard with an IDE adapter. Granted, it's not quite the same; but it's certainly a more reasonable value.

  • Flash and harddrives (Score:3, Informative)

    by karvind ( 833059 ) <karvind.gmail@com> on Saturday April 30, 2005 @04:28PM (#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
    • As you point out, you're not doing the maintenance yourself. But you're sending it in for it to be done.

      If the manufacturer can budget less money for maintenance, he can budget more for features or lower the price of the laptop.

      • 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
    • ok, ok, I shouldn't feed the trolls, but I recently had my laptop disk die from heat death and the loaner PC get stolen while it was in the shop :-)

      If you really have a good backup system, with everything updated to a server or desktop at least daily and preferably constantly when you're online, and some way to restore a machine image rapidly, then you *might* not lose several days of work reinstalling everything when your disk gets trashed *after* the corporate IT droids back in New Jersey have mailed you

  • All Laptop Data in Main Memory?

    So when you're going out of battery, it's like your session(*) never was...

    (*) and the work you did, too

  • 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

  • Very short lifetime.... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by yani ( 50270 )
    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

    • yes and no. Flash has a limited number of writes per cell. However, like a hard disk, most flash has backup blocks that can be enabled and disabled as needed when the good blocks go bad. Also, flash controllers (i.e. the chip that attaches a NAND chip to the USB bus in your flash keychain) implement something called wear leveling, whereby the flash writes occur evenly throughout the memory device even though the host may be overwriting one block more frequently. Think of it as intentional fragmentation.
      • On that last topic: the "laptop mode" feature in the linux kernel does something that's fundamentally pretty similar; it delays all writes to the disk until a read comes up (because delaying reads would block applications, but delaying writes doesn't). This gives the drive a lot more chance to spin down, because the spindown timer doesn't get reset just so that syslogd can write "--MARK--" to disk. It's slightly dangerous in that your data might take considerably longer to actually reach the disk, but if ba
        • Good point. Like you mentioned, you are trading some reliability for that power savings. The flash method relies on the fact that IDE (or whatever bus) writes are fairly power-inexpensive, and that the flash at the other end of the bus is nonvolatile and consumes marginally more power than the system RAM but less than the spin-up-and-write-to-disk operation.

          On the other hand, modern xDRAM is fairly power efficient at doing refreshes (auto-refresh command vs. old skool mem controller refresh), so I'm surp
  • 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 @05:27PM (#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.

  • The problem of keeping the hard drive spun down is solved by having dynamic RAM in the drive. Having flash in the drive only saves a few seconds flushing the RAM before system power down. But flash is much slower in writing than is RAM.

    It seems to me this is just an excuse to boost up the prices of hard drives.

    • 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

  • Not Nuff (Score:3, Funny)

    by eSims ( 723865 ) on Saturday April 30, 2005 @05:40PM (#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

  • Wouldn't it be better to use RAM instead of Flash memory on the HDD's, of course RAM can't store something permanent but it's faster. Well most/all HDD's already have some MB's of Cache on them, but if they had more you could possibly use a RAM drive for swap space and leaving your main RAM untouched, RAM is as far as i know faster than HDD's so it would be a speed gain it the OS supported this and loaded itself onto this RAM drive. This may be a bad idea so correct me if I'm all wrong here.
    • 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
  • TFA reads "With its 64-bit technology, Longhorn can support up to 128GB of main memory"

    that should be 16TB, really quite a lot more...

    source : http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb; EN-US;q294418 [microsoft.com]
  • We should all support them in their effort to reduce our dependence on oil!

  • 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].

  • Microsoft Windows chief Jim Allchin said in a recent interview. "Let's suppose you had 10GB of primary memory--probably everything that you do could fit in memory," Allchin said.

    Probabaly!!! What the hell is the average person going to do on a laptop that need 10GB of memory? Nice to know that the MS Windows chief is aiming for lofty goals in efficency.
  • 10GB???

    Just about everything anyone on a sane OS wants to do should fit under 1GB.
  • You don't need flash memory or a battery backed RAM on a laptop to reduce power usage. A laptop has a battery. You know exactly when that battery is going to die. A stable operating system would just use the RAM of the computer as a battery powered backup, and write back when power gets low, if neccessary. A laptop is not like a desktop where someone could trip over the powercord, or test the building's main power switch. You have power for hours. (and some laptops even have enough power for 1 minute batter
    • It's definitely an Insightful article, but I've posted several comments on this thread so I can't also moderate it.

      On the other hand, laptops usually *don't* really know how much power they have left - battery behaviour is much less linear than you'd expect, and my experience with the battery gauges and automatic-save systems on the last half dozen laptops I've used is that they're pretty accurate when the battery is new, and increasingly unreliable as the battery gets older, so it fails to do the friendly

  • If you had a large RAM lazey-write cache you would loose everything come that big crash.

    With a flash based cache on the drive, the drive would just keep on writing the next time it gets power.

    The low access times of this, would actually mean that you could do some funky stuff (like moving data around in a file) really fast with out fear of loosing anything.

    For databases think how this would impact transaction based things...
  • I have a 5Gig Seagate USB drive. While it might be months before I've written 128MB of changes, when I'm using it I'm randomly referencing over 4Gig of data files. How would a little flash cache save it from spinning all the time?
    • While there's a lot of material you're occasionally using, for the most part most people's usage doesn't behave like that unless they're watching movies or something. A few megabytes of real text wrapped up in some bloated Office format, plus some programs that get cached in RAM (MS may not be the world's experts at caching, but they're good enough to do that much), plus occasional bursts of swapping which may be annoying but aren't randomly spread out on disk.

      Also, if you're using Microsoft Outlook for

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