Samsung Develops World's Fastest Embedded Memory With eMMC 5.0 Support 77
hypnosec writes "Samsung has announced the world's fastest NAND memory that supports the eMMC 5.0 standard. The new memory chips are based on 10nm class NAND flash technology and feature an interface speed of 400MB/s. Further, the 32GB and 64GB densities have a random read and write speed of 7,000 IOPS (inputs/outputs per second) while the sequential read and write speeds stand at 250MB/s and 90MB/s respectively. The chips will provide for better multitasking, HD video recording, gaming and browsing."
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Well, to be honest, it does say "embedded".
Re:"The chips will provide for..." (Score:5, Informative)
Embedded memory does not mean memory for embedded applications. It means memory that is included as a part of a larger subsystem, sometimes in a multi-chip module (MCM), sometimes in a package-on-package (POP), and the 2 main reasons for it is typically real estate constraints, as well as performance. For instance, this chip is a NAND flash that could go into MCMs that include application processors or basebands in cellphones, or it could be a part of multi-memory packages, where it's combined w/ DDR3 DRAM to provide all the memory that a portable app - such as a cell phone or GPS unit - may need.
I am curious about their 'random read and write' claims - NAND flash does not do random reads or writes: it reads or writes in pages, and so an entire buffer has to be filled before one can write anything. NOR flash is what has the random read and write: one erases in sectors/blocks and programs in bits/bytes/words. Samsung happens to make both, last I checked, so it's not inconceivable that they've combined the 2, and are offering the combination in a single package. But I'd like to know whether that's the case here.
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Small correction: NAND can read randomly. Often the controller only supports block level reads, but the memory itself does not mandate it. SD cards support byte level addressing, for example, at least up to 2GB.
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Re:"The chips will provide for..." (Score:5, Insightful)
It won't provide for faster anything I do on my computer, because I already have faster chips in my desktop.
I'm pretty sure that you do not have faster flash chips in your desktop.
What you have is a faster array of flash chips, a combination that only exceeds the performance here when they operate in parallel.
Now imagine these 10nm chips in an array....
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How an SSD could speed up 3D rendering (Score:5, Interesting)
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This is about pro 3D modelling and rendering it to video.
And, actually, one of the design considerations in developing the REYES algorithm for Pixar PRMan was storage coherence. In fact, the whole thing was designed around the need for data access coherence.
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Re:How an SSD could speed up 3D rendering (Score:5, Interesting)
Even better: put enough RAM in your PC so all the files get loaded into the OS' disk cache. This won't help the initial load time but once everything is loaded into disk cache, applications and games hardly ever have to touch the HDD/SSD again until you reboot your PC or load some other big game or application.
When gaming sites do computer reviews and evaluate the impact of extra RAM on games, they should benchmark the initial load time separately from reloading times. I bet more RAM would have nice performance benefits even on SSDs in such a scenario.
SSDs may be faster but not as fast as having enough RAM that you can bypass SSD accesses altogether.
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== != >. Filter error - explanation - == does not mean greater than.
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Or forgo the 32GB SSD and have 32GB RAM instead.
I have 32GB RAM in my current PC - I always end up maxing out RAM on my PCs so I decided to bite the bullet while DDR3 was still near its all-time low.
I paid $500 to put 512MB in my P3 13 years ago - $300 for the first 256MB, $200 for the next 256MB a year later.
I paid $400 to put 3GB RAM in my P4 9 years ago - $250 for the first 1GB, $150 for the next 2GB two years later.
I paid $325 to put 8GB RAM in my C2D 5 years ago - $200 for the first 4GB, $125 for the n
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I can think of a situation where an SSD might help with faster 3D rendering.
Yep, an SSD on my i5 makes WoT play at "highest detail" just as good as it does on my i7 using a conventional HDD, they both have the same video card and ram but without the SSD the i5 is practically unplayable (especially if you want all the eye-candy). It also loads the O/S and game faster than the i7. However durability is a bit of a concern, my first SSD shit itself without warning after 3 months, it was replaced under warranty and has been running for about a year now without problems. "Windoze" gets a
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Should it be reworded like "The chips will provide for better anything that requires the ability to read or write persistent data at any point in the process"?
That would be more accurate.
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Or another one looking at the seek time and fragmentation:
The HDD is a car with acceptable top speed, but is slow taking turns. An SSD is a car with much higher top speed and can also make instantaneous sharp turns.
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and "based on 10nm class NAND flash technology" is at best highly misleading. It's 19nm technology.
Parity News might better be tagged Parity Spin, as might this summary.
What Samsung is doing with NAND is actually reasonably impressive -- 19nm is very good, and their TLC stuff in the 840 looked pretty good, and the performance/reliability/value of the 840 EVO looks to be extremely good for a non-enthusiast consumer drive. Sad they feel they need ridiculous spin on top of some very respectable achievements.
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Yay slashvertisement (Score:5, Insightful)
And how many write cycles? HOW MANY CYCLES?
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At least 1?
With new pre-loaded Premium Content from our Exclusive Content Partners, tedious "writing" is a thing of the past!
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Yes, that would be Useful Information.
And also, what's the erase time?
The main problem I have with modern NAND is the worst case latency, when a sector has to be erased - a 1 second hiccup isn't good, even if it only happens rarely.
In short, I don't care about best times or average times, but want the worst time to go down, not up.
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Erase times are always bad in flash - ranging in the order of seconds. Even in NOR flash it's bad. The only exceptions I've seen are Atmel's Di-NOR based flash - where they use 2 transistors per cell, which obviously reduces the capacity of the memory in the same lithography, and SST's SuperFlash, which is now a part of Microchip, and its original founders now running a company called Greenliant. But none of these products are NAND flash.
The reason the worst times go up is die shrinks - in order to avo
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Citation needed. What spinning HDD uses wear leveling? Unless you mean sector sparing, but that's something different.
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HDDs do not use wear leveling. At least not "wear leveling" as applies to SSDs and Flash drives.
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Knowing the number of re-write cycles alone isn't useful. You need to know how much spare capacity is available too, and if the controller does things like compression and caching.
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hmm (Score:2, Redundant)
A better translation could be to give me some information about what the current marketplace looks like. If it's the "fastest embedded memory", is that because it's 20% faster than the existing parts? 2% faster?
Re:hmm (Score:5, Funny)
Re:hmm (Score:5, Informative)
It is about 0% faster for reads than just-released products, while about -50% faster for writes and -70% faster for IOPS.
That doesnt seem to be true. Those produces use many chips to attain their (essentially they are a RAID-0 of many flash chips) , while this is a single chip.
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A single chip ... containing 8 flash die + controller.
Multimedia Experience (Score:2)
Will they also provide a richer multimedia experience, more vibrant colors, and increased productivity? I hate these dumbed-down explanations of the benefits of some new computer technology.
Re: Multimedia Experience (Score:2)
Everything you do will be faster and more fun.
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Just be sure to contact your doctor if you have an erection lasting more than four hours.
Another Slasdot paid ad (Score:1)
QUOTE "The chips will provide for better multitasking, HD video recording, gaming and browsing"
Would anyone like to make an attempt to justify any of the above claims?
-Multitasking? On a modern machine, this will be a RAM and CPU issue.
-HD video recording? Yes, if you are Peter Jackson working on the next 'Hobbit' movie. For every ordinary users of HD video cameras, the camera pre-compresses the data stream to a level well below the memory bandwidth of existing high-end flash cards.
-Gaming? SSD certainly do
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I agree with your general sentiment, that the marketing puff piece is a marketing puff piece, and larded with nonsense; but it is worth noting that this is an eMMC part, not a chip destined to do the behind-the-scenes work in a SATA or PCIe SSD (though Samsung presumably has a design that exploits the same flash cells with a different interface either available or in the pipeline); which very strongly suggests that it's aimed at mobile devices.
Compared to proper computers, even the latest mobiles tend to be
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This will eventually bleed over into PCIe solutions, but its hard to imagine extensive assembly lines for the purpose.
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This will eventually bleed over into PCIe solutions, but its hard to imagine extensive assembly lines for the purpose.
Do we have server boards with flash slots alongside the RAM slots yet? That has to be coming - I keep hanging SSD's, which are mostly packaging, off of SATA cables for caching purposes and it seems silly.
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I don't think that anybody has defined a special, application-specific, 'flash slot'; but pretty much all the non SATA/SAS drives (that you'd see in a server, things like this eMMC chip not so much) are just PCIe cards, and those are common enough, and often not otherwise occupied.
It is true, though, that servers specifically built around the mechanical requirements of shoving a bunch of PCIe cards in are markedly less common than ones build around the mechanical requirements of shoving a bunch of HDDs in (
Flash slots? (Score:2)
Honestly, why do we need a separate flash slot? It sounds like when Intel introduced the AGP slot, which is no longer there on motherboards today. The data transfer rates of PCIe is adequate for getting that data to the flash, which will in any case need some buffer chips in b/w, since there is no way NAND flash can such up data at PCIe rates. There have been, from what I understand, market research done into whether NOR flash should have a DDR like interface as DRAM does, but that's for applications lik
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since there is no way NAND flash can such up data at PCIe rates
That's the right metric - I was under the impression that some of the fancier NAND arrays (FusionIO and the like) were already limited by PCIe performance and could use faster access to the bridge for DMA purposes.
It could be that I heard that story about PCIe2.0 though.
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but pretty much all the non SATA/SAS drives (that you'd see in a server, things like this eMMC chip not so much) are just PCIe cards
Right, and if you look at a 1U machine they have one or two of them on a riser card, if any. The same machine might have 8 2.5" bays in the front of it.
the notion of using miniPCIe SSDs; that would be brutally expensive; but those things are only about the size of a DIMM, so even a 1U could accommodate pretty alarming capacity without using a proprietary form factor or socket
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I imagine that the comparatively strict board size limit forces you to use the densest NAND packages to achieve reasonable capacities, and also limits the number of independent NAND chips you can have running in parallel behind your controller chip, so you may have to use faster NAND than some of the physically larger drives.
Aside from that, and maybe a couple of extra PCB layers, I think that it's mostly a question of volume.
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To be fair SATA was developed at a time when faster speeds and smaller cables were required, but backwards compatibility and low cost were also primary considerations. PCI-e is a fundamentally different technology, designed mostly for throughput over short distances in an electrically controlled environment.
In SATA's case simply increasing the bandwidth available is only half the problem. There is overhead and lots of signalling, with asynchronous operation of commands and the need for data integrity checks
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As was PCIe - it was designed in an environment where PCI was limiting - most PCI implementations were stuck with 32-bit 33MHz, despite enhancements to 100MHz (33/66/100), 64-bit, and other things. The p
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The "SATA consortium" was far-sighted enough to know that pushing beyond SATA-3 speeds would simply be duplication of effort. The desktop market is not suffering from single pipes limited by 6Gb speeds and the eventual successor will be PCIe-based. The future of desktop storage is not obligated to be SATA and they know that. Apparently you don't.
SAS is doing a 12Gb PHY, so if SATA turns out to want it, which they won't, it will be there to take. SATA3 will be fine for hard drives, SSD is better off on E
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Multitasking: Swap. Notice that most applications on smartphones cease to execute when not actually on screen? The OS puts them onto flash to free up precious RAM. Not much RAM in a phone.
HD Video recording: But now it doesn't need to compress it so much. Quality can improve.
Gaming: Er, not so much. Faster level load times, but that's about it.
Browsing: Now they are mostly making things up. I suppose it could speed up cache access, but that's hardly a bottleneck.
Re : So what? Tell us something pathbreaking. (Score:1)