What is Digg?74 Comments
- BarrettAnderson, on 02/05/2008, -8/+46"shortening flash's lifespan before it's even really taken off."
flash didn't take off? what? pot? - ConanTL, on 02/05/2008, -1/+31Too bad they aren't available for the consumer market yet... I was looking forward to the $53,999 option on the MacBook Air.
- BarrettAnderson, on 02/05/2008, -5/+34Why is my comment being buried? Anyone who doesn't think flash has taken off yet obviously doesn't know very much about computers or technology. How many digital cameras are sold that don't use flash to store pictures and video?
If they mean "flash as a primary hard drive" then they should say so. Flash took off years ago. - daveisfera, on 02/05/2008, -0/+20I couldn't agree more. It's probably the most commonly used storage format by your average person, so how can that not be considered "taken off"?
- frazier428, on 02/05/2008, -5/+24Intel has done research into alien technology?
waah? - Sporky023, on 02/05/2008, -1/+10The trouble with black hole memory is it's a one-way street. Massive storage capacity, but the access times are terrible (read: eternity). And the amount of information - photos, movies, love letters, etc - you can store in them only goes up proportionally to the square of the radius - wtf? Anyway, that's the whole reason you won't see black hole memory used in anything other than a few specialized cases like transdimensional bootstrapping simulators (go Spot, it's your birthday)
- Sikarian, on 02/05/2008, -0/+8I'm so glad the future is full of awesome sounding words. Phase changing memory, solid state arrays, "The Empire".
- RyeBrye, on 02/05/2008, -0/+7Moores law originally had to do with transistor density, and since this has nothing to do with transistors.... the answer is "no"
- ripter, on 02/05/2008, -3/+10Flash hasn't taken off yet? I'd bet more people know what a pen drive is than know what a floppy disk is anymore. Most computers don't even have floppy drives anymore. Maybe it'll replace flash eventually, but first it's has to be cheaper and larger than it's flash counterparts. Why did flash kill the floppy? Flash is smaller and cheaper per byte.
- UtopiaInTheSky, on 02/05/2008, -0/+7No, this has nothing to do with Moore's Law.
- zephyrprime, on 02/05/2008, -1/+6Actually, the floppy died before flash took off. What killed the floppy was it's pathetically low capacity. It was just so useless to use a floppy in the ere of gigabyte hard drives. It's too bad that flash didn't come around sooner though because there were a few years there where we didn't have a good substitute for the deceased floppy disk.
- daridave, on 02/05/2008, -0/+5the funny thing is the end of the article reads:
"Don't worry, though. Phase-change memory won't be hitting consumer devices for another few years, so your expensive flash-equipped devices won't be going obsolete… yet."
If we're to be concerned, doesn't that just mean that indeed, Flash memory did take off already? - JQP123, on 02/05/2008, -0/+5The 4 states are an implemetation detail that doesn't change the logical nature of the data being stored. So "bit" is still appropriate and accurate with each individual cell having the ability to store the equivalent of 2 "bits" of data like so: 00 | 01 | 10 | 11
- Vazel, on 02/05/2008, -0/+5I'd say flash has already taken off. And just because a technology is better doesn't mean it's going to win in the marketplace. *cough*betamax*cough*
- yeti22, on 02/05/2008, -1/+5Actually they did: "When phase-change becomes standard, it would be all that was necessary rather than a DRAM or SRAM module that reads and writes data quickly while the flash memory is just there to store data when the power is off." They didn't say it very well though; I had to read it a couple times before I figured out what they were saying.
- geminitojanus, on 02/05/2008, -0/+4More or less. The crystal is placed between two tiny "coils" (really, they're just really small wires), the top line is connected to ground, the bottom is connected to a transistor which has a specific threshold set to flip the transistor when an amount of voltage is applied to it. When you "set" the chalcogenide, you're really just resistance heating it, throwing a lot of current through it all at once, and letting it set into its crystal state. When you "read" it, you're passing just enough current through it to see what resistance it has; if it's above the threshold voltage for the read transistor, the bit flips. With 4-state PCM, it's the same, only you now have four states, and need three transistors to read out the state (think of it like a tiny 2-bit ADC; you don't really need 3 transistors, you can do it with 1 and some diode trickery, but 3T is the typical implementation).
If you arrange your PC cells correctly, you can share a lot of these "read" transistors with each other, so you can effectively reduce the amount of transistors per bit below 1 (which is a huge deal for high speed devices). With 2s-PCMs you can effectively get 0.66 transistors/bit, with 4s-PCM you can take it even further down, with 0.5 in the typical layout). Also it's natively low power as you're only sensing the resistance of the cell (and not actively recharging it like DRAM, or resetting the oscillation/latching state with SRAMs).
This stuff is absolutely amazing technology, but it's slow work to make it anything more than labware. - thugok, on 02/05/2008, -0/+4"Why did the computer I bought in 1999 have a floppy drive installed?"
Because 1.44MB was a reasonable file size then and the media was dirt cheap. - BarrettAnderson, on 02/05/2008, -0/+4Well, there were zip disks... they stored a lot more than floppies but they weren't common enough to be a reliable way to move data around between computers.
- BigBallistix, on 02/05/2008, -0/+3Dude, this is revolutionary as far as disk capacity goes. Think about it, computer research into these fields, ESPECIALLY capacity and speed, is one of the most highly funded fields of research in the world. Probably the most actually, even the militaries of the world fun these things. Cancer might be a rival though. But they're STILL having trouble getting these marketable due to its own advancement. The sheer amount of science behind it is amazing.
- stormist, on 02/05/2008, -0/+3http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase-change_memory
- Asphyxia8489, on 02/05/2008, -0/+3Yeah, it'd be nice to remove the need for system memory and just have one of these to store your entire operating system whist using it as system memory. That plus a SATA3 bus sounds like a nice combination to me. If it's truly as fast as they say then having PCs with 100GB of RAM could be something we see soon, hell, we might even stop measuring it as a separate unit, every application has a dedicated amount of memory to use (like a per application pagefile). Nice thought, just an idea
- geminitojanus, on 02/05/2008, -0/+3Intel's already sampling 512Mb versions (read: 64MB), which is incredibly density for these devices, though they are the binary PCM version. This would effectively double the space (1Gb/128MB), storing the data across all four PCM crystal states.
- inactive, on 02/05/2008, -2/+5Intel is really hitting it big today. Two big discoveries; time to buy some stock :]
- dsmx, on 02/05/2008, -0/+3Don't forget your $3,999 ipod with the new memory.
- BarrettAnderson, on 02/05/2008, -0/+3take your music collection to any of my university's computer labs. Unless you bring your own zip drive you will be out of luck.
- jhnewt, on 02/05/2008, -0/+3I propose 2 bits. Or a half nibble if you prefer.
- yeti22, on 02/05/2008, -2/+4Articles like this neglect the fact that while research drives technology, economics ultimately drives adoption. How long has flash memory been around? 25 years? Why did the computer I bought in 1999 have a floppy drive installed? Because floppies were dirt cheap, and flash was still expensive.
Flash still has a long life ahead of it because it's the dominant *affordable* technology. While it's great to see this sort of progress being made, it's blatant sensationalism to pretend that this in any way threatens flash in the short term.
It'll be 3-5 years before the first phase-change memory device hits the market, and it'll be ridiculously expensive. People that need the extra capabilities, and that have the money, will buy it, and eventually the price will come down. It'll probably be more than 10 years before people have this sort of memory in the thumb drive or camera in their pocket. So there's no need to short-sell your Corsair stock yet (are they even publicly traded?). Everyone needs to take a deep breath and remember that we've seen this all before. It's called the research and development cycle. - vibrokatana, on 02/05/2008, -0/+2Some people have attempted to make systems with various voltages representing different 'bits' but they usually never get very far. My guess is that they will use a controller to interpret the data storage to be used by binary systems.
- andreasblixt, on 02/05/2008, -1/+3I guess they'll have to come up with a new name for capacity 'cause "bit" wouldn't be appropriate for something that can have four states. I propose... "quat." And "quatyte" for the byte equivalent, of course. I can't wait for 500 gigaquatytes (1 terabyte) solid state drives. Not to mention quaternary code.
- dsmx, on 02/05/2008, -0/+2It would you could just use 2 states for each bit.
- lolipop99, on 02/05/2008, -0/+2I believe the article meant that flash has not taken off as the main HDD in computers, yes we all use it for portable media, but this technology would be suited for replacing SATA, before Flash ever did!??!
- Asphyxia8489, on 02/05/2008, -0/+2Not bad, not bad at all, if this tech moves as fast as flash memory did we'll have 80GB drives soon enough :)
- techlyc, on 02/05/2008, -0/+2By amorphous, they mean electrically opaque. Similar to the window technology that when you flip a switch on, your windows in your house go clear and light can pass through. Flip the switch off, the electricity no longer causes the molecules to line up, and they are back to cloudy (disorganized).
- SuperSloth, on 02/05/2008, -0/+2No, it means each cell holds two bits:
00
01
10
11 - yoda17, on 02/05/2008, -1/+3Not taken off? I've been working with FLASH for about 15 years. Even have some of the earliest data sheets from when this tech was brand new on the market
- freshyill, on 02/05/2008, -1/+2Yeah, flash memory definitely hasn't taken off.
- dawgma, on 02/05/2008, -1/+2You don't know half the ***** your talking about, man... ramble on...
- tinko, on 02/05/2008, -0/+1It's mainstream by then. Think of it as an airplane taking off vs. that same airplane flying smoothly at 30K ft
- rjett, on 02/05/2008, -0/+1quack quack
- PhantomZmoove, on 02/05/2008, -0/+1Don't forget about the (almost) equally bad LS-120 drives. 120 meg at regular floppy drive access times. Talk about a slow ride, shesh.
- BigBallistix, on 02/05/2008, -0/+1Haven't been paying attention to the bluray affairs? Honestly, nerds these days...
- FortyCaliber, on 02/05/2008, -0/+1Email is what sort of held the bridge for the lost floppy gap. Email was perfect for sending sub 1 MB files.
- AgmLauncher, on 02/06/2008, -0/+1And yet somehow when converted to a HDD, all of the theoretical speed will be lost and we'll be left with a drive that's not even as good as an old school 15k RPM fiber channel scsi drive.
I'll be impressed when HDD transfer rates are reported in the Gb/s (where they should be). RAM can put data through at those speeds, so why are solid state drives not even 1/5th of the way to the gb/s mark? - yeti22, on 02/11/2008, -0/+1Bluray actually proves my point. From what I can tell after a quick scan of Wikipedia, research into blue-laser optical disks was going on in earnest in the early 90s, and became a real possibility after Shuji Nakamura came up with a practical way to make blue LEDs in 1993. It's now 2008, and I would wager more homes still have a DVD player than either of the HD formats. So where exactly was I wrong?
The research in this article is like Nakamura's discovery. Yes, it makes the next step possible, but no one in their right mind is going to hold off buying flash memory in anticipation of phase-change memory. Saying this threatens flash before it's even gotten a chance to take off is like saying DVDs never really took off. - tschetter5, on 02/05/2008, -0/+1Technology is great isn't it. Just as everybody buys and accepts something thats out there. Some company makes something new. And then we start all over again.
- jun2san, on 02/05/2008, -1/+2buried for whining about him whining about his own post.
- yeti22, on 02/11/2008, -0/+1Except for Multi-Level Cell flash.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_memory#Principl ... "Some newer flash memory, known as multi-level cell (MLC) devices, can store more than one bit per cell by choosing between multiple levels of electrical charge to apply to the floating gates of its cells." - BarrettAnderson, on 02/06/2008, -0/+1If the "it" in the fragment I quoted was referring to the phase-change memory, why did it use the word "really" if it hasn't taken off AT ALL?
- leerayIG88, on 02/05/2008, -0/+1gobble gobble
- RyeBrye, on 02/05/2008, -0/+1"Now, Intel has discovered that there are two more distinct states between amorphous and crystalline that can be used to store information, doubling the capacity of the memory."
How are the 4-states used in application? Do they store things in base 4 then, and have some adapter read it out in binary to pass to a computer? -
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