Slashdot Mirror
Flash Memory And Its future
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?"
Next on Ask Slashdot: How small is your 'Library of Congress'? Wink Wink, Nudge Nudge.
Until all these companies find a standard that they can agree upon, we'll never see the supposed benefits of the advances in this technology. Just look at compact flash/memory stick/ MMC/SD/ whatever else is out there to plug into your camera/phone/palm. There's too many for any of them to have any real universal utility.
Nothing from nowhere I'm no one at all
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.
[
Billions of dollars ride on the challenge. Industry estimates forecast that flash revenue will hit $13 billion this year, up from $7.7 billion in 2002, according to Jim Handy, a memory services executive with Semico Research. By 2007, flash memory is expected to be a $43 billion industry.
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.
--------
Free your mind.
Definitely CompactFlash for me, ever since I accidentally put one in the washing machine on hot and it not only survived but didn't seem to be damaged in any way.
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.
Currently Flash memory in CompactFlash Form-Factor is available up to 4 GB. The article discusses the future of flash memory mainly in regards to Cell Phones. If we can easily fit 4 GB of flash RAM into a cell phone today, and can keep miniaturizing flash technology until at least 2005, then what is the problem? Cell phones will be limited to 12 GB of flash RAM? That's 3,000 4MB MP3s, or at least 24 full-length movies at a cell phone-ish resolution (say 320x240 pixels by 2005).
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
Better known as 318230.
"(Flash) shouldn't work," said Stefan Lai, a vice president in the technology and manufacturing group at Intel.
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.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Wow, you consider 15 hours from a portable the size of a deck of cards to be "not that great", you must be a youngun. When Sony first introduced the portable cd player you were lucky to get through 2 cd's on a set of 4 AA's. Also the good cameras already use the 1.8" HDD's look at any of the pro cameras to come out in the last year, chances are they support PC Card HDD's.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
So why not put some normal *fast* ram in a compact flash that acts as a cache? All the downsides of flash are then negated: reading & writing are really fast and there is no 1 million writes limitation. When the cf is removed from the machine, the data in the ram should be copied to the flash, using a small battery (that gets reloaded when in the machine). Simple. Fast. It'll cost only a bit more.
The problem is with form factor. How many different (incompatible) options --
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.
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.