Flash Memory And Its future 197
NETHED writes "C|NET News is running an article about Flash Memory's future. Here is a How Stuff Works link about Flash memory. An interesting read especially considering how small these things are currently. Does the slashdot crowd have a new size benchmark for small sizes?"
...have a new size benchmark.... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:...have a new size benchmark.... (Score:2)
well... (Score:5, Funny)
less than 6 inches?
Re:well... (Score:1)
Re:well... (Score:3, Funny)
The Timothy or the Timmy. As explained by
The number of intelligent stories posted by a Timothy in a year.
The IQ of a Timothy.
How many times a Timothy posts opinion as a comment and not as story.
See we're talking really,realy low numbers here.
Go on my karma can take it.
New size benchmark... (Score:5, Funny)
LoC \ cm^2 ?
In regards to measuring... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:In regards to measuring... (Score:1)
Re:In regards to measuring... (Score:2)
If you go back far enough, every manufacturer has had times in their history where they made crap. I've seen Seagate, Maxtor, WD, and others all have specific models that had > 5% 1st year failure rates, which is way, way too high. But they're all pretty good now.
Re:In regards to measuring... (Score:2)
News Flash! (Score:5, Funny)
Quake for GP32 (Score:2, Interesting)
Make it small enough to power a gameboy sized device and run GLQuake and then get back to me.
A proof of concept (2 fps) port of Quake has been ported [telia.com] to Game Park's GP32 handheld. The author claims that integerization of the arithmetic would bring it up to full frame rate.
Re:News Flash! (Score:2)
Re:Trigger Happy TV. (Score:3, Funny)
Yeah, I'm reading Slashdot.
No, it's rubbish!
Ciao!
Re:Trigger Happy TV. (Score:2)
Yeah, I'm reading Slashdot.
No, it's rubbish!
Ciao!
+1 Loud
It's not the size, (Score:2, Funny)
Re:It's not the size, (Score:1)
Posting... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Posting... (Score:2)
Re:Posting... (Score:2)
Is that why your sig is all UNIX commands rather than a link to your sexual conquests?
Damn (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Damn (Score:1)
I thought IBM had the small size (Score:3, Insightful)
Next on Ask Slashdot: How small is your 'Library of Congress'? Wink Wink, Nudge Nudge.
Compatibility (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Compatibility (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Compatibility (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Compatibility (Score:2)
Small enough to handle, but no smaller (Score:5, Insightful)
I used to like SmartMedia. Until I folded one in a backpack accidentally. It's too thin. The SD chits are almost too small for convenient use. There's a useful size for media, and not everyone can deal with fragile postage-stamp parts that need to get handled occasionally.
I like CompactFlash. It's virtually indestructable, big enough to see on a messy desk, small enough to fit in a PDA nicely, and just the right form-factor for carrying a few with me on a digicam expedition. Replacing a flash card with a hard drive in the same form factor and bus connection, now that's cool. There are multiple vendors, each trying to push the boundaries of access speed and capacity. I know the addressing space is nearing a limit.
And principally, it's not peppered with pounds of private proprietary protected patented perversions.
Re:Small enough to handle, but no smaller (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Small enough to handle, but no smaller (Score:1, Interesting)
Plus the goddamn connectors are PROTECTED! What the fizzuck is up with all those formats with exposed metal pads??? Who was the genius that designed that? NO positive connection, you just put it in the slot and "hope it works!" CF cards are VERY durable (ever dropped one? washed one in your wa
Re:Small enough to handle, but no smaller (Score:5, Informative)
COMPACT FLASH IS THE SAME PINOUT AS IDE
Yes, you can use a compact flash card as an IDE drive. I use them as my
They read slow (~4MB/s) and write slower (~2MB/s) but they're reliable and have no moving parts.
It is for this reason [it is an IDE drive] that I feel compact flash rocks and is far more versitile then the rest of the formats.
Re:Small enough to handle, but no smaller (Score:4, Insightful)
1, Do not hot swap of an ordinary IDE controller. You will bork it.
2, Do not put a swap partition onto a flash drive. You will find out REAL FAST how quickly you can get through 1 million writes.
Dave
Re:Small enough to handle, but no smaller (Score:2)
1, Do not hot swap of an ordinary IDE controller. You will bork it.
2, Do not put a swap partition onto a flash drive. You will find out REAL FAST how quickly you can get through 1 million writes.
Dave
Amen. I have a Minolta Dimage 5 camera and I wondered why the right side of it gets so hot. So I pull out the Compact Flash card and it is DAMN HOT! If someone used this as a IDE swap partition I rather suspect that it would rapidly become a fire hazard if it did not completely immo
How do you connect it? (Score:2)
But connecting my CFs to the IDE bus sounds cool, so I would be glad if you could give some details
Re:How do you connect it? (Score:4, Informative)
Use one of these [linitx.com] to connect it to a spare IDE connector. The adaptor also needs power.
Unfortunately, I have not seen any similar adaptors that connect to a laptop style connector (with power) because if there where it would make a cool direct HD replacement for an older laptop.
Re:How do you connect it? (Score:2)
As mentioned above, that probably wouldn't be a good idea. Virtual memory gets rewritten a lot, and you may hit yout 1 million write limit.
Re:How do you connect it? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Small enough to handle, but no smaller (Score:2)
No smaller than a US nickel please. Dimes are my least favorite coin for this very reason--small enough to lose quite easily, yet way more valuable than pennies. Pennies are easy to lose too, but who cares? I routinely give them back to the cashiers for "penny karma".
My data, of course, is worth more than a nickel. Ideally, the flash should be as cheap as a nickel, or better yet the nickel should be replaced as a national currency with however much flash fits in a nickel-shaped package.
I mean, money
Benchmark? (Score:3, Funny)
Sure (Score:2)
In console cartridges... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:In console cartridges... (Score:2, Interesting)
I have never gotten around to taking apart a game cartridge before, but I have seen in some of the translucent (it was a Game Boy color game)cases a battery like a CMOS battery. which leads me to belive that the data is sometimes carried on a volital RAM chip
It would not surprise me if it varies on which cartrige uses what medium
However with the advance of CD based systems, I guess that intergating the game saves on the game cartrige has gone the wayside
Re:In console cartridges... (Score:5, Informative)
The NES, SNES, etc used battery-backed RAM to save your game with. Things like flash memory were just too expensive (or didn't exist) back then. This is why a well-used Zelda cartridge doesn't save games very well after a few years, yet some of them still do even today - almost 20 years later. The secret? A simple CR2032 battery, at least in the NES carts. Yup, the same battery that most motherboards now use (do any still use those old battery boxes you hooked on with jumper pins?). Whenever I need to repair an NES cart, I'm sure to have a dead motherboard or 2 to scavenge from.
I can't speak for GameGear, if it WAS batter backed it'd be a much smaller form-factor battery, I'd imagine. Any Slashdotters know?
Re:In console cartridges... (Score:5, Informative)
Small Correction. (Score:2)
Re:In console cartridges... (Score:2)
Money to be made... (Score:4, Insightful)
Despite the limitations of Flash memory that the article states, it appears that there will still be room for a lot of money in this industry. Given the current amount of products with flash memory, I doubt we'll see a big shift to a new technology. I'm guessing it'll be more like DVD-Rs. CDrs are still good, but in a few years I'm sure we'll all be burning on DVDs.
Some interesting additions (Score:5, Interesting)
Pretty amazing, and when i think about it probably the best contender to actually replacing the floppy standard.
Hard to belive that a few years ago the huge and easily destructible jaz disks were the alternative at 1 gig and slooooow speeds.
What the article didn't mention is the write times which are also improving, but cost slighly more. And lastly the newbigg cards require devices (ie cameras) that support a 32 bit file system, most consumer digi cams can't write on those cards (2 gig and up although one of lareger ones is still 16 bit)
Maciek
I don't spell check and i can't type
famous last words (Score:2)
Why not small hard-drives? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Why not small hard-drives? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Why not small hard-drives? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why not small hard-drives? (Score:2)
Because the microdrives are slow, can't take much of a beating and pretty expensive, I've still to know a single photographer to use one... They all just get big CFs or loads of smaller CFs...
Re:Why not small hard-drives? (Score:2)
Well, I don't know what kind of digital camera you have, but my Toshisba PDR-M70 burns through batteries much faster than my iPod. I can use my iPod all day and still have power left over. My digital camera usually runs out of power before I can fill up the 64MB flash card.
Partial solution - devices that copy memory cards (Score:5, Interesting)
I think a really great product would be at attachment for the iPod to transfer CF card contents onto the iPod - or better yet, let me hook up a camera with a firewire connection and transfer pictures over to the iPod HD just like iPhoto on a Mac would.
Even though the iPod life is not great, it would be fine for several dumps of a 512mb CF card...
You want the Archos Multimedia MP3 player (Score:2)
Re:Why not small hard-drives? (Score:2, Interesting)
Well maybe cost, I am sure memory has to be cheaper than a finely tuned drive mechanism and platter, on production scales.
_CMK
Re:Why not small hard-drives? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Two words (Score:5, Informative)
Moving parts.
Hard-drives are not as robust as solid state memory devices. Usually the first thing to go on any computer is the hard-drive because the mechanical parts fail, causing data loss. This is especially true for portable devices that may be dropped.
Re:Why not small hard-drives? (Score:2)
I use a couple of IBM Microdrives in my camera. I'd lose 210 images (more or less) if one of them failed/was destroyed/got lost.
That's more than enough risk for me. So, don't make them bigger, make them quicker/cheaper/more reliable.
Rob.
Small size benchmark.. (Score:5, Funny)
oh... hmm wait... scratch that... arg! I mean nevermind..
CompactFlash all the way (Score:5, Insightful)
It's small enough to fit into cameras and the like, yet big enough to be a "sensible size". It's only common sense that a slightly larger form factor will (in the future) allow greater storage than the smaller ones, at a lower price, with higher reliability.
Furthermore, it doesn't seem to be as bogged down with patents as the other formats, different companies can make CompactFlash cards, while things like the Sony Memory Stick are made by... well... Sony.
Oh, and lastly, unlike Secure-Digital and another one which I've temporarily forgotten the name of - it has no built-in Digital Rights Management - at least not that I've come across. I avoid anything to do with DRM on principle, even if I'm missing out by doing so.
Re:CompactFlash all the way (Score:1)
I've got a Nikon 990, 4 - 256MB CF cards (3 different brands), 4 - 128MB CF cards (2 different brands), and I've never experienced data loss.
I think I've taken over 25,000 photos with the Nikon 990 and have not yet experienced a corrupted jpg.
25,000 pictures on a 990? (Score:2)
Re:CompactFlash all the way (Score:2)
I've had several cameras; Kodak 280, Canon S100, Pro90 and S30, all took CF, and I never saw this problem. I've used about a dozen different cards, up to now I have a 512M that I just bought for $99 (!) at CompUSA last week. With a 600 shot capacity and a couple of other cards in my pocket, I can finally leave the laptop at home on vacation.
Re:CompactFlash all the way (Score:2)
The only problem I've ever heard of with a CF camera with handling more memory is that some of them couldn't handle more than 999 pictures on one ca
IEEE Spectrum article (Score:5, Informative)
xD Flash Memory (Score:5, Informative)
Re:xD Flash Memory (Score:1)
It's better to compare its durability in term of no. of r/w it can do before failure, but we can't really compare it without those figures.
No one size (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:No one size (Score:2)
I can't afford 20GB of CF cards. Can you?
AMD (Score:2)
So what's the problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
One thing of interest is that for decades both the storage capacity of computers has grown along with the amount of information we need to store. However we are reaching the threshold where the amount of information we need to store will plateau. A perfect example is audio files. We are now storing audio data at a high enough quality that any additional improvement will not be discernable by a person with normal hearing. Thus in the future the storage required for a typical song will not be any larger. On the contrary, assuming that compression algorithms keep advancing, we may actually need less storage in the future for audio data. We will eventually see video reach a similar plateau, where a high enough resolution will be achieved to satisfy even the most devoted technophiles.
Finally, all aspects of networking are improving (wireless, broadband home internet access, etc). The greater the bandwidth and connectivity, the less information required to be cached on the device ahead of time. Think about it - the carriers would much rather you have a cell phone with limited storage capacity if it means you have to consume more bandwidth accessing information from the network.
Dan East
Re:So what's the problem? (Score:2)
One thing of interest is that for decades both the storage capacity of computers has grown along with the amount of information we need to store. However we are reaching the threshold where the amount of information we need to store will plateau. A perfect example is audio files. We are now storing audio data at a high enough quality that any additional improvement will not be discernable by a person with normal hearing. Thus in the future the storage required for a typical song will not be
Best I recall ... (Score:2)
Still 11 years running on that format
Re:Best I recall ... (Score:2)
Re:So what's the problem? (Score:2)
Re: Compression is for the net (Score:2)
Well, competition is the best way to measure... (Score:1)
Hard drives will eventually reach a limit due to the laws of physics, and I think flash is a much better infrastructure than hard drives. In other words, I believe that a 3.5" HD which has reached the limits of the laws of physics will have much less capacity than a block of flash with the same cubic cm (reaching the limits of the laws of physics).
Re:Well, competition is the best way to measure... (Score:1)
Did someone say flash? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Did someone say flash? (Score:2)
Bastards.
Flash mem. is handy (Score:5, Interesting)
I write a lot of documents and I find using a flash key chain drive practical. I pop the drive in at school and upload the documents via USB to the keychain drive. I do the same at home to have mulitple backups. I'm paranoid - but - I also haven't lost anything.
I don't know about failure rates on these things but I have enough backups not to worry.
Handy Indeed (Score:4, Interesting)
I also write a fair amount documents myself. I used to put them in a folder on my hard drive because there's a lot of space there to begin with, and I don't really have a need to transport my docs anywhere other than at home. If you upgrade regularly or do a lot of "house cleaning" on your HDD, (as in remove junk stuff you don't need anymore), or if you move files around a lot on your computer, or partition..things start to disappear over time.
My biggest problem was moving files around trying to organize them, and saving documents in different locations on my hard drive. I wound up forgetting where i put certian docs. When i clean up my HDD and remove stuff i don't need anymore, I wound up deleting some documents I wish I still had.
This is where CompactFlash came in for me. I was never a fan of floppy disks to begin with because the data capacity is so small by today's standards. That, and their really horrible with holding data for a extended period of time. Bad sectors are a royal nightmare if you store anything of value on a floppy.
So i got myself a 64meg CF card, a PCMCIA card reader, and a USB card reader, and it's a true lifesaver and a great replacement for floppies. The pendrives are awesome for portability and transporting things from PC to PC, I plan to get one of those as well.
I was never a fan of zip disks etc, either. It's still the same basic idea of a floppy only more modernized. It's not solid-state, and aren't nearly as reliable as other mediums.
CD-Rs are still my main method of backing up data. Their capacity/cost/reliability ratio is great for things like mp3s and video files. However, documents aren't all that big to begin wtih unless you have hordes of them to backup. That and it's read only once you burn. So i find it wasteful to burn a CD-R for a few megs worth of documents, even if CD-Rs are under
CD-RWs are too cumbersome for me to really be worthwhile. If you want to store data at work, school, a friend's house, etc, they have to have a CD-RW burner as well. Not exactly an efficient way to store data on the go like flash is.
So Compactflash was the sweet-spot for me. Good storage compacty for what i want to use it for. Great reliablity, durable, reuseable, portable, and comes in a nice array of capacities from 8MB to 1GB.
The new XD flash cards are way too small for me. Something nearly as small as a dime isn't something i want to store my data on. Odds are I'd lose the card before I got my money's worth of use out of it. SD/SM/MMC cards are too thin and tend to break easy. Compact flash is big enough where you don't have to worry so much about it breaking or losing it, big enough to hold in your hand comfortabily, yet small enough for use in PDAs and cameras. Their great!
To answer your question about failure rates:
If kept in a dry and cool place, and if you take care of it (as in not dropping it on hard surfaces, etc) The average lifespan of a CF card is about *1 million* reads and writes. However, another thing to take into consideration is data retention. A lot of CF cards and pen drives specify data retention up to 10 years.
So they're pretty damn reliable for as small as they are.
***Figure source: http://www.memorywizards.com/pd_flash_usb_drv.cfm
Not anytime soon (Score:2)
Hmm... (Score:5, Funny)
We... don't like to talk about it. Oh... oh you mean the memory thing...
FM as a HD...? (Score:3, Interesting)
"So why don't we just use Flash memory for everything? Because the cost per megabyte for a hard disk is drastically cheaper, and the capacity is substantially more. You can buy a 40-gigabyte (40,000-MB) hard drive for less than $200, while a 192-MB CompactFlash card will generally cost you more. "
Notice how they make no mention of long term use, which would seem to support that you can rewrite flash memory to your heart's content, but I've heard otherwise. I've been told that the FM card would only last so long, as it couldn't handle all the writing (like swapping for virtual memory)... anyone have any such experience to back this up? And if so, why would this happen? Do the gates or oxide layer simply wear out? Or is it 'this brand only' problem, such as maybe a problem with the CF micro-contoller?
Re:FM as a HD...? (Score:3, Informative)
Flash can usually only be written/erased 100K to 1 million times.
Writing data is inherently destructive to the tunnel oxide layer in each storage transistor.
When you write applications storing data in flash you have to be aware of this or you can burn it out very quickly !
This is also the reason why flash cannot entirely replace hard drives.
FWIW, some of the newer memory formats in development do not have this restrictions (MRAM, ovonic,etc )
compact flash makes a great boot device (Score:4, Informative)
My how times have changed... (Score:2, Interesting)
My first hard drive was a 25 megabyte hard drive for an IBM compatible. It was about 20 pounds, and at the time I thought "wow, I'll never fill this thing up!". All the text files I could ever want, and even a few images and 1-second WAVs! Sudde
"flash shouldn't work"? (Score:5, Insightful)
What the hell is this? There's no physical reason that voltage can't be stored for years. And flash obviously does work, so to say it 'shouldn't' is stupid.
Waiting for when Flash dies (Score:2)
I am seriously hoping for the time when MRAM (try RAMTRON, which I think is one of the only manufactures of it) ramps up in density; DRAM speed, unlimited rewrite, AND stores after power off to boot.
Size benchmark? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Size benchmark? (Score:2)
Flash write limitations (Score:2, Insightful)
Forget About size.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Compact Flash (standard in high end cameras or devices where you need the most space. 512 Meg and 1 Gig+ available now)
Smartmedia (standard in items that do not require much space -- or where they did not "know any better" -- Lot's of camera's and Mp3 players)
MMC Expensive and caps out about 128 Meg)
SD Being used more and more -- getting bigger and bigger -- but did not all of us already have about $10,000 dollars worth of media in other formats by the time this broke the "64 meg" barrier?
Memory Stick Die Sony die...Why did we need this?
Xd (sic)? picture cards New cards being used by the new cameras. Small as a finger nail. But why? why? why? Why so many form factors?
Anybody on the bleeding edge will have aquired a variety of the above types of memory. I for one am always holding out for a device that supports CF -- since my first camera was CF, and I have the most cards in that factor -- and it makes me sick to my stomache to buy a new device that uses a type of memory that serves no purpose other than to make all of my existing memory useless.
Work in the LoC, I sez (Score:2)
How about how many can fit inside the pysical building of the Library of Congress? Then, for information density, we can even do the Libraries-of-Congress-per-Libraries-of-Congress measurement!
Instead of that USELESS Gb/in^2 measurement that we get sometimes, we can have a drive that holds 2.4e^73 LoC/LoC!
What about NAND flash?? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:What about NAND flash?? (Score:1)
Re:What about NAND flash?? (Score:2)