Will PCIe Flash Become Common In Laptops, Desktops? 372
Lucas123 writes "With Apple announcing that it is now using PCIe flash in its MacBook Air and it has plans to offer it in its Mac Pro later this year, some are speculating that the high-speed peripheral interface may become the standard for higher-end consumer laptops and workplace systems. 'It's coming,' said Joseph Unsworth, research vice president for NAND Flash & SSD at Gartner. The Mac Pro with PCIe flash is expected to exceed 1GB/sec throughput, twice the speed of SATA III SSDs. Apple claims the new MacBook Mini got a 45% performance boost from its PCIe flash. AnandTech has the Air clocked in at 800MB/s. Next year, Intel and Plextor are expected to begin shipping PCIe cards based on the new NGFF specification. Plextor's NGFF SSD measures just 22mm by 44mm in size and connects to a computer's motherboard through a PCIe 2.0 x2 interface. Those cards are smaller than today's half-height expansion cards and offer 770MB/s read and 550MB/s write speeds."
Yes (Score:5, Insightful)
In ten years we'll be using equipment that makes the current best look like pocket calculators, just like we're buying gear today for a few hundred that would have been worth tens of thousands ten years ago, if we could even manufacture it. Goddamn I love living in the future.
Re:Will it be a repeat? (Score:3, Insightful)
How exactly will they do the same with PCIe and SSDs? Explain.
Re:Not until capacity, price, and lifetime improve (Score:2, Insightful)
Flash is not meant to replace spinning drives.
Spinning drives are not meant to replace reel to reel tape.
The automobile is not meant to replace the horse.
Current generation Flash lasts about as long (Score:5, Insightful)
I recently found out that the newer Flash drives have the same or better life expectancy as magnetics, though. They have enough write cycles for like 40 years of hard use now, so that's basically a solved problem. Also, when they fail they normally become read-only, so you can copy everything over to a replacement drive. 18 months ago I wouldn't have purchased flash drives, but now that they have improved I will. To reinforce what I read, I have watched Flash drives perform reliably in busy database and web servers. Not that the eight or so flash drives in those servers are statistically significant, but it's nice when your own anecdotal experience is consistent with the studies.
Yes, of course one particular drive might last a long time or a short time. I've had magnetic disks that lasted a long time and magnetic disks that died quickly. On average, an SSD will last just as long as a spinning platter .
Re:Yes (Score:4, Insightful)
The real desktop/laptop performance measurement is iops at low queue depth. Large sustained rates are meaningless for all but servers. (I mean really, how often are you going to copy files big enough for these speeds to matter, and what are you going to copy it to that can keep up? Certainly not cloud storage or a USB drive.)
This is sounding to me like MHz myth 2.0
Re:Will it be a repeat? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Ummm, I kinda doubt it (Score:5, Insightful)
Ok, you had good points until here.
Any (good) programmer, artist, writer, or anyone else who creates on a computer for a living will tell you that they hate unresponsive applications. Open a new file and wait 5 seconds before you can see it? It's distracting, and it breaks your train of thought.
It's not ADHD, it's the fact that we're used to, from the "real world", to have instant response to actions -- pull out a piece of paper and you can read it immediately. Put a brush to the paper, and the colour shows up instantly. The brain expects the computers, which are trying to model this real world interaction, to work the same way.
Re:Yes (Score:4, Insightful)
Haha, but lots of Mac Pro users do exactly this. They edit video.
So, 0.1% or 0.2% of all computer users out there will find increased bandwidth very useful.
Re:But SONY is already doing it! (Score:4, Insightful)
It does need to! (Score:2, Insightful)
You mean the exact group that purchases Mac Pros? What are you thinking about!? This isn't a consumer machine.
Re:New MP isn't great for big jobs (Score:5, Insightful)
You guess? Where does it actually say this? If it can actually drive six or more monitors at reasonable resolutions (4k is silly, frankly, unless you have a 40 foot wide display) without external graphics bricks, that's definitely of interest. It doesn't solve the external drive brick problem, though.
What are you talking about "daisy chain" -- I'm talking about DVI, VGA, etc. They don't daisy chain. Are you talking about monitors that are "thunderbolt" or whatever? Don't own any, don't think it makes any sense to own any, already have a forest of perfectly good monitors anyway.
So your desk doesn't turn into a garbage dump? So you don't knock the drive off onto the floor? So the cat doesn't yank the plug out during a write? So Bubba doesn't walk off with my drives? So the drive noise is muted by the case? So the drives get power and cooling inside, instead of from some noisy-ass switcher brick? So there aren't more power strips on the desk than pics of the family? So I can pick it up and move it without a scad of external stuff trailing along behind it? And this is a machine that apparently is going to need all six of those fancy new plugs with DVI or VGA adapters to drive monitors, if in fact it can do that -- so the only option left is firewire drives, which present all the same problems.
Where? In your desk drawer? Glued to the ceiling? In the refrigerator? Seriously, this "put it all external" nonsense just isn't going to fly. USB is bad enough. Not going to exacerbate the brick problem. If the machine can't operate as a single unit, it's not for me, that's all. You want one, cheers, enjoy. I'm sure someone will want one. I'm also pretty sure they'll hate the thing once they face the reality of all that desk cruft, but I admit, it's only an opinion. :)
With you, perhaps. All they're getting out of me is laughter. It's a dumb design. It's form over function. Something Apple has a real problem with, although sometimes, as with the Mac Mini, they come along and fix it later.
Re:Yes (Score:4, Insightful)