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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?"
Is flash memory the same stuff they'd use to allow you to save your games in old console cartridges such as Zelda for the NES or NBA Jam (TE) for Sega Gamegear etc in the same way the article mentions "memory cards for video game consoles"?
The flash mentioned here is NOR flash. The rising star in Flash is NAND flash which is cheaper (30c per MB), more dense (256MB in a single chip) and is faster for file system usage than NOR flash. NAND is used in SmartMedia etc storage devices and is supported in Linux by journaling file systems (JFFS2 and YAFFS).
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Well the article does seem to be slighly out of date since CF is now available in 4 GIG sizes.
Pretty amazing, and when i think about it probably the best contender to actually replacing the floppy standard.
Hard to belive that a few years ago the huge and easily destructible jaz disks were the alternative at 1 gig and slooooow speeds.
What the article didn't mention is the write times which are also improving, but cost slighly more. And lastly the newbigg cards require devices (ie cameras) that support a 32 bit file system, most consumer digi cams can't write on those cards (2 gig and up although one of lareger ones is still 16 bit)
Maciek
I don't spell check and i can't type
Why not use a small 20GB 1.8" hard-drive like the iPod does? I have a 3 Megapixel digital camera that uses a 64 MegaByte flash memory card. I'd much rather have a 20GB hard-drive in the the thing even if it did add 2 oz. of weight. Not an option for cell phones though obviously.
I would say that the application will dictate the size needed. For mp3s you will need larger sized flash memory (with this I went with a 20Gb Hard Drive mp3 play because all the flash memory ones were to small). With a PDA that is used only as an organizer, you can get away with a cheaper smaller one. (Here I have only 32Mb total storage on my pda, but I also use it for a bit more then just an organizer, I also have a map, ebooks on it[see below] and internet applications on it[web, email and aim] ). For an ebook reader you probably can get way with 8Mb (I use my palm pilot for my ebook reader, but still prefer a paper book much better then an ebook, The only books I have are books that I don't read as a book but are there for reference, and use only 5Mb) So I would say the function will dictate what size will be needed.
Agreed, I'm not able to keep track of things smaller than a 35mm slide, and CompactFlash is perfect. Pretty soon they'll be up to the 10s of gig and that would be great for a small computer's (swappable) main storage.
Plus the goddamn connectors are PROTECTED! What the fizzuck is up with all those formats with exposed metal pads??? Who was the genius that designed that? NO positive connection, you just put it in the slot and "hope it works!" CF cards are VERY durable (ever dropped one? washed one in your washing machine by mistake? it takes a lickin').
And I have yet to buy a SD card larger than 64MB that isn't riddled with errors. (Okay, so I've bought two bad ones so far. hint: Lexar media is pretty good. Sandisk is CRAP).
I happen to find Flash Memory handy to make backups - am I the only one here? They're better than floppies, CD-RWs, CD-Rs and zip disks. They're quick, convienient, reliable, and reuseable.
I write a lot of documents and I find using a flash key chain drive practical. I pop the drive in at school and upload the documents via USB to the keychain drive. I do the same at home to have mulitple backups. I'm paranoid - but - I also haven't lost anything.
I don't know about failure rates on these things but I have enough backups not to worry.
Well if you take a look at the current PDA market, you will realize that many PDA's have both Flash and SD slots, due to the fact that currently each provides different benefits.
There are already a couple of devices around right now that can read most memory card formats (like SD and CF) and copy them to a small HD.
I think a really great product would be at attachment for the iPod to transfer CF card contents onto the iPod - or better yet, let me hook up a camera with a firewire connection and transfer pictures over to the iPod HD just like iPhoto on a Mac would.
Even though the iPod life is not great, it would be fine for several dumps of a 512mb CF card...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Make it small enough to power a gameboy sized device and run GLQuake and then get back to me.
A proof of concept (2 fps) port of Quake has been ported to Game Park's GP32 handheld. The author claims that integerization of the arithmetic would bring it up to full frame rate.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I noticed in the article it mentioned:
"So why don't we just use Flash memory for everything? Because the cost per megabyte for a hard disk is drastically cheaper, and the capacity is substantially more. You can buy a 40-gigabyte (40,000-MB) hard drive for less than $200, while a 192-MB CompactFlash card will generally cost you more. "
Notice how they make no mention of long term use, which would seem to support that you can rewrite flash memory to your heart's content, but I've heard otherwise. I've been told that the FM card would only last so long, as it couldn't handle all the writing (like swapping for virtual memory)... anyone have any such experience to back this up? And if so, why would this happen? Do the gates or oxide layer simply wear out? Or is it 'this brand only' problem, such as maybe a problem with the CF micro-contoller?
Wow, I can remember watching a documentary about the world's first magnetic hard drive. It was 5MB in capacity, and was about the size of my bedroom...but don't try putting your favourite MP3 on it, because the data access speed was slower than a 300 baud modem!
.1% of the size and weight. One of these days, we'll have solid state flash cards small enough to fit up your nose that hold a terrabyte of full-quality movies and audio (RIAA willing). That'll be neat, yeah?
My first hard drive was a 25 megabyte hard drive for an IBM compatible. It was about 20 pounds, and at the time I thought "wow, I'll never fill this thing up!". All the text files I could ever want, and even a few images and 1-second WAVs! Suddenly, though, I realized it was ludicrously cramped when windows made its appearance.
Now today I was holding in my hand a 1 square inch piece of plastic that was holding 128MB of pictures. A barely postage stamp-sized object was holding more than 5 times what my first hard drive held, and at
Mmmmm, nose-media.
-- Bandit450...If-Else-Do-*TWITCH*!
1993 1GB HD. What I thought I would need
2003 40GB HD. What I need
2003 12GB Flash. What I think I will need
2013 12x40==480GB What I will need
Ah, but do you really think you'll need 12GB on a single piece of removable media? Considering that that'll hold the contents of 2.5 DVDs, I can't imagine what sort of things would need that. Maybe if we go for realtime navigatable 3d movies...
You might need more for backups or archives of some kind, but flash isn't really appropriate for that sort of thing anyway.
I remember when i got my first digital camera, an HP 215 and came with a 4mb CF card. It introduced me to flash memory from the get go as a "digital film" medium.
.10 cents per disk.
:)
I also write a fair amount documents myself. I used to put them in a folder on my hard drive because there's a lot of space there to begin with, and I don't really have a need to transport my docs anywhere other than at home. If you upgrade regularly or do a lot of "house cleaning" on your HDD, (as in remove junk stuff you don't need anymore), or if you move files around a lot on your computer, or partition..things start to disappear over time.
My biggest problem was moving files around trying to organize them, and saving documents in different locations on my hard drive. I wound up forgetting where i put certian docs. When i clean up my HDD and remove stuff i don't need anymore, I wound up deleting some documents I wish I still had.
This is where CompactFlash came in for me. I was never a fan of floppy disks to begin with because the data capacity is so small by today's standards. That, and their really horrible with holding data for a extended period of time. Bad sectors are a royal nightmare if you store anything of value on a floppy.
So i got myself a 64meg CF card, a PCMCIA card reader, and a USB card reader, and it's a true lifesaver and a great replacement for floppies. The pendrives are awesome for portability and transporting things from PC to PC, I plan to get one of those as well.
I was never a fan of zip disks etc, either. It's still the same basic idea of a floppy only more modernized. It's not solid-state, and aren't nearly as reliable as other mediums.
CD-Rs are still my main method of backing up data. Their capacity/cost/reliability ratio is great for things like mp3s and video files. However, documents aren't all that big to begin wtih unless you have hordes of them to backup. That and it's read only once you burn. So i find it wasteful to burn a CD-R for a few megs worth of documents, even if CD-Rs are under
CD-RWs are too cumbersome for me to really be worthwhile. If you want to store data at work, school, a friend's house, etc, they have to have a CD-RW burner as well. Not exactly an efficient way to store data on the go like flash is.
So Compactflash was the sweet-spot for me. Good storage compacty for what i want to use it for. Great reliablity, durable, reuseable, portable, and comes in a nice array of capacities from 8MB to 1GB.
The new XD flash cards are way too small for me. Something nearly as small as a dime isn't something i want to store my data on. Odds are I'd lose the card before I got my money's worth of use out of it. SD/SM/MMC cards are too thin and tend to break easy. Compact flash is big enough where you don't have to worry so much about it breaking or losing it, big enough to hold in your hand comfortabily, yet small enough for use in PDAs and cameras. Their great!
To answer your question about failure rates:
If kept in a dry and cool place, and if you take care of it (as in not dropping it on hard surfaces, etc) The average lifespan of a CF card is about *1 million* reads and writes. However, another thing to take into consideration is data retention. A lot of CF cards and pen drives specify data retention up to 10 years.
So they're pretty damn reliable for as small as they are.
***Figure source: http://www.memorywizards.com/pd_flash_usb_drv.cfm
A Penny for my thoughts? Here's my two cents. I got ripped off!