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MRAM in 2004?
amberspry writes "As previously reported here and here. Wired has yet another update on MRAM here. They give hope by mid-2004 we will see devices with faster boot up times and using less power as a 'vastly accelerated timetable is being implemented.' Gotta love joint ventures."
MRAM @ whatis.techtarget.com
MRAM @ Webopedia
MRAM @ German Wikipedia
A little more indepth view of MRAM can be read here.
Does anyone know if MRAM will be sensative to external magnets? Aka if I bump my portable mp3/ogg player into a giant fridge mag will I lost my data?
Apple free since 1990!
I timed BeOS on my new machine. It gets from power on to fully usable desktop in just under 16 seconds. Too bad the only thing it's good for anymore is booting fast :-(
I don't know about anybody else, but for me waiting for windows to start up is not usually caused by the PC having been powered down.
I'm sure I would have to boot windows just as often with this technology as I do now.
Here's a better link for more info on MRAM. Pretty graphic of an MRAM cell.
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced. - Geek's corollary to Clarke's law
Well, the Plug and Play devices all need to re-initialized. That takes time...
Code poet, espresso fiend, starter upper.
I have two systems under my desk that run 24/7. The reason they are always on? So that I start working the instant that my butt hits the chair nothing more. I do not like to wait for the machine to boot. I also do not like to wait for several minutes while the machine shuts down and restarts because some process went into a Z or D state and is gumming up the works.
3:44pm up 42 days, 22:59, 6 users, load average: 0.13, 0.26, 0.31
With power supplies averaging, oh, 300 or so watts, that can mean decent savings when you figure it running 24x7.
Arggh.. Someone else who doesn't know how a switching power supply works. 300Watts means thats the maximum amount of power it can deliver before it melts down. It doesn't mean your computer is using 300watts constantly.
And DRAM's power usage is miniscule compared to CPU or disk drive motors. But then, since the CPU is mostly idle (unless you run seti@home or something like that) and drives spin down when not in use, most of juice is being used by the CRT.
I dont know exactly what they're trying to pitch here, except something else to compete with flashram.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
And why cant this be done with flashram?
Well, it can. You can have a CompactFlash IDE drive as your boot device.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
you make that choice.....
Lots of times you want to keep a machine up all the time, like in my case when it's serving up a webpage or two and acting as a print server. But I'm sure there are also plenty of people who leave their machines on all the time just to avoid the startup/shutdown time. I know I do it with my laptop just to avoid the un-hibernation.
you make the choice to leave it on and use that extra electricity for the luxury of not havingto turn it on/serve something/etc...
Most people, if they took the time to actually measure their power consumption on things that simply waste electricity would be suprised.
This is one of the reasons why many people cant afford Solar power, they are too big of power pigs to get affordable solar electricity generation installed.
turn your computer OFF. also, buy EFFICIENT computers not the crap that uses 400-500 watt power supplies and have a 200 watt 21 inch monitor.
flatscreen, mini-atx, SINGLE hard drive..
Also turning things off doesnt make it use no power, just a bit less. your TV when off uses 5 watts....
and how about buying actual efficient appliances??
you make the decision to spend your money on your electric bill for serving a couple of lame web pages that nobody cares about.
(spinning up the hard drive wears it down faster than anything).
wow nice piece of FUD.
spinning up a hard drive does NOT add extra wear to it. in fact leaving it spinning for 20 hours so you can use it for the other 4 hours is causing more damage than anything else can, let along causing it to heat up more (most harddrives are overheated anyways as they are crammed in a small case with no fans blowing on them.)
shut your computer down when you are not using it. make your computer live longer and save some real $$$ on electricity. 400 watts 24/7 makes a difference in your electric bill.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
'Unlike conventional high-speed memory devices, MRAM uses magnetism instead of electrical charges to store data -- making it, in a sense, a back-to-the-future technology based on the same laws of physics that enabled the creation of audio and videotape recorders as well as hard drives.''
To say nothing of drums and original core memory!
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
Well, you need a HECK of a B-Field to scramble these Rams. Their storage elements are placed in a sandwitch between the conductor grid and reference magnets, so they are shielded from both sides. They should survive everything your electronic device survives today. I guess you leave your pda outside when you go near the nmr, because iron isnt something you want near a 11.7T magnet :)
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
When it freezes up (as it does about four times per week), I "simply reach out and touch an on/off button" anyway.
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
Well, why do people always log in as AC if they want to post shit?
1) They will create MUCH less heat than common RAM. They dont need capacitors (which discharge creating head and have to be refreshed, costing power).
2) (smoking crack?) I dont even have the slightest idea why they should emit beta radiation, but even if they did, beta radiation isnt very good at penetrating anything. even if some electron could escape the plastic casing of the Ram package, is would surely stopped by your case.
3) Comparisons with flash memory are far more useful considering the proposed usage of MRAM. Also stacking would be potential way to increase packing density, because there is no need for capacitor trenches.
4) What part of "first generation" did you not understand?
I try to imagine how humanity would progress with your attitude:
Eddison: Why bother creating a lightbulb, it will only break after a short time nobody will need it.
von Braun: The thing could explode and even if it works, it just falls down again. Why should i create a rocket?
Einstein: Everthing seems relative... But i guess that we can never make use of it because we would need complicated machinery and mathematics. Lets paint some pictures instead...
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
I know it's a bit of a troll, but I'll bite.
Sure, the OS itself can boot up in 5 seconds. Check Linux, the kernel loads in about 2 seconds and it's ready.
The problem comes from loading all the drivers you need and configuration files... Drivers are especially bad.. It can take quite awhile to wake up a device... Generally you want to initialize all devices before user input is allowed. You want fast access to devices, right?
Really each thing individually is fast, but time adds up. The more you need to initialize, the longer it's gonna take.
SDRAM is power hungry during sleep mode ( a few mA) and has a slow sleep/wake-up sequence. This is not very nice for some devices like cellphones.
I think the most likely use we'll see for MRAM in the short term is having, say, 256kB of MRAM in a cellphone for running the cellphone engine and using SDRAM etc for the extended features.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
When you burn a cd does ambient light destroy the medium? No. Just like a strong enough light source (for example, the burning laser in your xDRW drive) could destroy or alter the data on it. There is not going to be a strong enough field to do this accidentally, the fields put off by electronics are too small to be of much concern. If there even was a problem, parity algorythms could be used the same way they are in larger magnetic media (RAID). It is certain that a stong enough magnetic field could depolarize the data but I doubt the field is that "loose". Furthermore a magnetic field is inversly proportional to the square of the distance to the source ( E~1/[R^2] ) which decays rather rapidly as the distance increases. Electronic devices may operate at a high frequency but the power (amplitude)is too low to low to generate the field that would be required. Electic/Magnetic Field Equations
I used to keep my computer on 24/7. Then I put it in my bedroom. Did I mention I have a big-ass server case with six fans? Nowadays, I'd rather wait the three minutes for boot-up and get a decent night's sleep; I'm funny like that.
--All your stolen base are belong to Rickey Henderson
Correct. The magnetic field as you know it is created entirely by the movement of charge. Whenever you have a current (stream of electrons = moving charge), you will have a magnetic field.
As an interesting side note, while you might think electricity and magnetism are different, they are actually one and the same. Magnetism can be shown to be a direct consequence of Charge invariance (an electron has the same "charge" in any simply moving reference frame) and special relativity.