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31 Comments
- TehDoctor, on 10/12/2007, -4/+19Flash can't take the amount of read/write that hard drives can without breaking down
- newtrip, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11Terabit sounds like a nice big amount, but to put it into perspective, that's about 128 Gigabytes. Why they couldn't just say 128 Gigabytes is beyond me. I guess Terabit sounds bigger.
Still, 128 Gig of flash memory is nothing to scoff at... - vertinox, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9@"Flash can't take the amount of read/write that hard drives can without breaking down"
No. Flash can't take the amount of writes that hard drives can without breaking down.
Once it has been written you have literally infinite reads compared to writes. Heck... If you fill up an flash drive and never erase files and write more info to it, it will outlast any hard drive out there.
If you had enough space on a flash drive that you never have to delete anything then that is the optimal solution for longevity of data.
Of course the problem with modern OS's is that you have cache and database files that require read/writes at a given level so you need some type of hard drive. Of course you could just create the computer with enough ram and design the OS to put the swap partition into that instead of a regular HDD and read files off the flash. - v4r4n, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9Speed isn't the problem. They just need to continue working on the long term durability of flash memory (to something near 5 years).
- Fejerro, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9"When compared to a hard disk drive, a further limitation is the fact that flash memory has a finite number of erase-write cycles (most commercially available flash products are guaranteed to withstand 1 million programming cycles)"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_memory - mitrovarr, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Only 5x the size of a regular iPod! Debuting at the low, low price of $5000!
Seriously, I wish Samsung would devote more funds to finding a superior successor to flash memory and less to making flash better. There are several promising technologies that are far better than flash. - aurifex, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8Sweet.
- BrokenDrum, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7It's already happening with hybrid drives etc.
Thing is the limit to the number of rewrites to flash memory. They get round this by making circular writes on the available space, instead of continually rewriting over the first sectors of the media. But still the expected lifetime on flash media is holding it back somewhat. Of course there's the hope of magnetic memory soon and other such technologies. - elnerdo, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6Magnetic.. memory.. soon?
Umm.. you do know that harddrives, cassette tapes and the like are all magnetic memory, right? - groceryheist, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Coming Soon! 100Gb ipod nano
Sweet! - danielwsmithee, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3vertinox is right however it is actually the number of erases that makes the difference not just the number of writes. Many devices you can erase a block then write to the block in smaller chunks. You can wear level inside each erase block. So if you had to write 1024 individual bytes to a block that is 1024 bytes large it only counts as one erase not 1024 writes. Many manufactures calculates write cycles based on their block size to give a larger number but when it comes down to it the erase is what matters.
- TehDoctor, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Perhaps because when manufacturers talk about solid state they're thinking about how many cells they can put on the chip, and each cell holds one, two or four bits?
- sicc, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3If the flash memory gets big enough, couldn't we just run computers off it? Or is that not possible?
- adragons, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"It's already happening with hybrid drives etc."
Not just hybrid ones, samsung made an all flash drive (32gb). It gets pretty damned fast boot up times for Windows XP. http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/09/20/conventional_hard_drive_obsoletism/ - rheaume, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2To fool morons like me into thinking they meant 1 teraBYTE...
Doh! - justintsmith, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1by the time this comes out it will be just big enough to usb boot the next generation of microsoft's OS
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3They already have flash drives in production that are used as primary storage devices. They are a bit pricey right now,
http://news.com.com/Bye-bye+hard+drive,+hello+flash/2100-1006_3-6005849.html
Old article but, you get the idea. - benitojuarez, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I hate how companies try and use bit and byte to confuse the average person
1Tb terabit = 128GB Gigabyte...... why dont they just ***** call it 128 gigabyte? - TehDoctor, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2@sicc
RAM is faster, but that's not the same as flash - jackmaninov, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I'll take a terabyte laptop with 8 small chips instead of a hard drive any day. Heck, even two 112Gb flash chips would provide more storage than most laptops on the market. Have three and you could use RAID5!
- wogfella, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0http://www.theage.com.au/news/TECHNOLOGY/Memory-chip-breakthrough-for-electronic-devices/2006/12/12/1165685625647.html
(probably already dugg if soo feel free to digg dooooown)
I don't know about the write/erase limitations but someone mentioned speed. Apparently speed wouldn't be an issue with this - 500 times faster than normal flash? Damn. - pigonthewing, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3Ooops, delete yourself.
- Doomhammer, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1I was under the impression that flash memory (i.e. RAM) had a *way* faster read/write speed than today's hard drives? Seems like I read about a 16GB solid-state RAM "hard drive" a while back that, while ridiculously expensive to build, was the ownage.
- TheSak, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0What's flash memory?
- firemillen2, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1That's a lot of portable porn !!! yeah baby!
- jgc7, on 10/12/2007, -6/+5Ooops, delete me.
- muhadeeb, on 10/12/2007, -3/+0Don't NASA space craft run on flash memory? apparently they're not fast , considering that back aways space capsules had ancient 8 or 16 bit processors with ( )KB ram.
- sicc, on 10/12/2007, -5/+0I thought flash was faster?
I dunno, I have never had much use for flash memory, so I really dont pay much attention to it... - evilTak, on 10/12/2007, -11/+4Flash memory is notoriously slow. That having been said, many devices *do* run entirely from flash memory. E.g. the Nokia 770 ( http://nokia.com/770 )
- Ramtech, on 10/12/2007, -8/+1Yeah ... very sweet... especially users of Windows Vista...
you'll get to have a 128GB of memory...
that sounds nice but only users of Windows Vista Enterprise... it can hold up to 120GB of memory.. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -11/+1terabit = 1/8 terabytes = 112.5 gb = nothing special
