What is Digg?41 Comments
- pumacub, on 10/12/2007, -2/+22So that's what you kids are calling it these days.
- Rabid_Llama, on 10/12/2007, -0/+16I'm sure they mean megabit. Did you not notice the word "prototype"? This is a totally new ram technology, I'm impressed they have 64 Megs already.
- jhnshft, on 10/12/2007, -3/+19This sounds great.
Does anyone remember having to zap the p-ram on their old macs? :( - Topher06, on 10/12/2007, -0/+15Um, usually when they talk about flash RAM they are talking about the individual memory components they are developing, and these are measures in bits. You combine many of these componenents to create a device with the desired amount of memory you want.
I.e. flash memory isn't made up of one monolithic chip with pre-set sizes of 512MB, 1GB, 4GB, etc. They contain atomic pieces so that if you want 1GB, you need 16 of these 512 megabit pieces to make a full 1GB of memory. If you want 512MB, you need 8 of these pieces. - Kbennett, on 10/12/2007, -2/+14Zapping my pram is a favorite pasttime of mine.
- jtjdt, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9I shall call it "Promise Ram" :-)
- merreborn, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8They've been a top-20 semiconductor manufacturer for almost two decades now.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_Electronics - Disjunto, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5well they say 32 gigabit later on, refering to the new 32gb chips, so i hope so :D
- doctornkul, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Did you even read the article? P-RAM is not trying to replace normal RAM, it's supposed to replace NAND and NOR flash memory, and like you said that is typically the bottleneck, so chances are it will be useful (as long as they can get the capacity up).
- Awesomedude, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5http://yhchang.com/SAMSUNG_MEANS_TO_COME.html
- Massif, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Not to mention the confusion it will cause in the UK!
- Rabid_Llama, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4The speed sounds great, though I wonder what the longevity of these chips will be like. Even normal flash ram is only good for a certain number of writes, though they've managed to get this number high enough that it's not important. Still, faster non-volatile storage is always nice.
- jknevitt, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Oh my dear god. I think I'm having a seizure.
- merreborn, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Faster and a longer lifetime. What's not to like?
A lot of NAND is way too slow. - dignation, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4I think they say 512 megabit to make people get more excited.
Kinda like how 1000 mm and 1 m are exactly the same, but at first glance the former seems larger. - weprin, on 10/12/2007, -4/+6"512-megabit prototype PRAM"
I sure hope they mean 512 megaBYTE prototype, because 512Mb is only 64MB...
They would also do well to call it something other than "P-RAM" because that acronym evokes a rather not-so-pleasant (albiet nostalgic) feeling among many long-time mac users. - RadiatedAnt, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2^^Didnt know samsung was in the porn industry
- merreborn, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3This is a competitor for Flash memory, not RAM.
PRAM keeps its state even while power is off, like flash. Your system ram doesn't do that. - Topher06, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4Flash isn't fast enough because I don't have solid state hard drives in my computer.
When they finally can make solid state hard drives that contain 1 terrabyte of capacity and are as fast as system RAM, then I will be happy. Actually I would be happy when hard drive storage can even reach even 1GB/s transfer rates.
The problem with the flash industry is that they have only focused on making memory chips for the cellphone, digital camera, MP3 player markets. Speed isn't an issue when saving a phone number, saving even an 8MP image on mose consumer level cameras, or playing back digital music.
The problem is, speed on these devices are measures at under 20t MB/s ratings typically, and when you have 4+GB of storage, that is dirt slow. As the size of flash increase, so needs the transfer rates.
Also, this isn't the same RAM used for system memory, which is quite a bit faster then flash memory. System RAM is measured in gigabytes per second, flash is megabytes per second. This isn't 30X FASTER system memory, only 30 times faster FLASH memory, meaning that the average 12MB/s USB dongle or SD card will run at 360MB/s with this new technology which is still considerably slower then System RAM. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Dang ! Samsung is like Sony USED TO be.
- phreel0aderr, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1So are they going to try and price fix this one like they did with nand as well?
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3I like the idea, but I thank that flash memory is plenty fast right now, although I know people that would find some great use of this- such as high speed photographers who are sometimes hindered by the speed of their memory card.
It's said to replace NAND flash chips. I would just like to see higher capacity, cheaper, mass produced NAND for now, and let PRAM be made for specialist purposes. When a widespread consumer base needs PRAM, start making it, but NAND is good for me now.
What do you guys think? - twollamalove, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I would hardly call Flash "Random Access Memory" as large segments must be erased at once.
- CentraSpike, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1@etnu
just goes to show what you know. ROM is often used with respect to Flash, it has only recently been referred to as Flash RAM which i'm not sure is even correct.
Check the entries on eeprom in this wikipedia entry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Read-only_memory#EPROM.2FEEPROM.2FEAROM_lifetime
I guess we're all idiots except you. - floppyparty, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Samsung came to the forefront of the electronics market like a bat out of hell in the past 10 years. Good for them, and more for us.
- DrNoDoze, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Will this be proprietary tech? If so what will the pricing be like?
- NeoCortex, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I'm just waiting for the sales people to complain about having to push the PRAM a lot once it is introduced.
- ajcates, on 01/20/2009, -2/+1i think PRAM is the next thing, image turning on your computer and having it boot up in about 3 seconds, you could just save the state of what ever your doing and then come back to it instanly, but that would only work if it is really as fast as system memory.
anthor cool thing that could be done with this is you could have like a 512mb section of pram on your mb, then when you press the power button, it will load start up files and stuff from the PRAM, you start up in 7 seconds, you could then ad in programs to the pram, for even faster launching of those programs, think of it like a chache for your hard drive. - digdug2020, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0It was not nand it was RAM. go google on it.
- etnu, on 10/12/2007, -4/+3ROM stands for "READ ONLY MEMORY". Anyone referring to flash as "ROM" is an idiot.
- steelmaverick, on 10/12/2007, -5/+3I Promise I will RAM you.
- HvitRavn, on 10/12/2007, -6/+3lol this thread rules
- WorldBuilder, on 10/12/2007, -7/+3This'll be wonderful, assuming the technology will eventually replace HDD's... Without that, it's just another toy, which while "neat" is not Earth-shattering.
- Bloodwine, on 10/12/2007, -9/+4I don't zap my P-RAM, but I always tweak it before reglazing my subroutines
- noodlez, on 10/12/2007, -6/+1its a neat thing, but won't have any impact on much of anything for a while.
RAM speed isn't the bottleneck right now, its disk speed.
30x faster RAM still has to wait just as long as the old 1x faster RAM, since they're both waiting on I/O to your hard drive. - ajcates, on 01/20/2009, -6/+1"PRAM keeps its state even while power is off, like flash. Your system ram doesn't do that."
why can't my system ram do that?? it should be able to do it, why do all my apps close when i power off my computer?? - noodlez, on 10/12/2007, -7/+1ok ok, i only read the first few paragraphs, which only mention flash once.
interesting that its being called RAM, instead of ROM (which is what flash and non-volatile chips have been referred to in the past), which is what threw me off. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -11/+1no P-RAM is fine now shh
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -15/+0no it wasnt
- seventoes, on 10/12/2007, -20/+2No, Im 15.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -36/+1no now stfu
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