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Samsung Demos Future Memory Chips
Fletcher points to this story in CNET Asia, excerpting "The Korean electronics giant unveiled an 8-gigabit flash memory chip Monday based on the 60-nanometer process, as well as a 2-gigabit DDR DRAM chip based on the 80-nanometer process. Flash chips, which retain data after a host computer is turned off, are used in flash cards and cell phones, while DDR DRAM is used inside PCs."
How soon to get 8 gigabytes, so we can put the original DVD? Probably 3 years.
No I have not RTFA, but if the flash ram retains it's data when the PC is off, couldnt we use it as a hard drive substitute rather than a RAM substitute?
That would be pretty cool... Press button on. WHIZZ... Logon screen is there! Nice.. :)
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I think he means to say that when a measurement is given in ****bits, it's usually speed. There's no reason to give either storage or bandwidth in bits anymore, so why not make a convention between the two? OR at least stop using one. I don't care how many rods to the barrel my car gets.
I notice that DRAM prices, for the same technology, have stayed at their 2001 price level at $100 to $150 per gigabyte. During the same period flash memory has fallen from $300 per gigabyte to $80. I like to look for "odometer threshholds" when prices drop the next factor of ten (about every every five years). For example, hard disk fell below $1 / GB in 2003 and flash $100 / GB in 2004.
I did read recently there was some price fixing in the DRAM market.
The more story submitters start adding simple explanations like that to article submissions, the closer this site gets to being something I can guide people to, normal people that is.
Personally, I'm glad Fletcher wrote it that way.
-N
I've nothing to say here...
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Won't more ram eventually become unnecessary with all the bottlenecks computers have?
No... err... rather, something will fundamentally change.
Instead of having a hierarchy of memory (hard drive, ram, cache, etc), you'll see RAM and flash merge into a "universal memory". Everything will come on a single chip - processor and storage. RAM won't be required since the on board storage will be both quick and nonvolatile.
Currently, as much as 75 percent of a processor's area is used for cache memory. This is a number that is increasing, too. This is because RAM is too electrically "distant" from the main processor to be of any high-performance use. The near-term solution has been to pile on lots of cache memory in order to make up for it.
Recently, Ovonyx licensed their phase-change technology to Nanochip. Now, the phase-change technology is the same thing that is currently used in CD/DVD-RWs. With this implementation, they'll be programming and reading the material electronically instead of optically. Since they'll be doing it with MEMS and atomic probes, the density will reach levels of 1 terabit/square inch (125 gigabytes) and will do so very quickly. For more information, see HP's probe storage page. As a side note, HP and Nanochip are just a couple miles apart so it is rumored that Nanochip is hiding the HP plan at this point. Commercialization in 2006 isn't too far off. Also note that Microsoft is an investor in Nanochip as well. Bill Gates mentioned at Cebit that terabit chips will be here "very soon". Something to think about.
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
Spot on.
I think it'd be a real benefit for massive amounts of RAM to be commonplace, even for the home user. It'd free up system designers to do things a little differently.
(please don't flame me for using the following as an example -- it's simply one system with which I'm familiar, and works in a way that would benefit from 'excessive' RAM)
OS X's document-centric approach to applications means that you rarely need to close programs. The only on-screen overhead a running app has over a closed app is a small black triangle below/beside the app's Dock icon. After working like this for a while, you forget what 'application startup-time' is. Apps become just another widget to click - a service of the system rather than a mental context-switch (if you catch my drift).
So, with oodles of RAM, your common apps and data are always a nanosecond or two away.
(incidentally, this is why my puny 500MHz G3 iMac is still usable. It's stacked up with RAM to the point that my apps rarely get closed and are available with only a smige of lag. Certainly not as quick as new machines, but with a perceived speed that belies the machine's actual power).
What's the frequency, Kenneth?
Can someone explain why the FLASH memory is sooooo much larger than the DRAM chip? DRAM is just one cap and one transistor per bit, while the flash uses a MUCH more complicated structure for each bit. It involves at least two transistors per bit, one with a floating gate.
For the same size die, I would expect that the DRAM would hold a little more than the FLASH. Either the FLASH die is huge compared to the DRAM die in this case, or I am missing something.
Can anybody clue me in?
"-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
....in a more/bigger/faster and more throw away culture. I'm impressed! But it's also depressing! How is that? Well, tell ya, this is like the horsepower wars out of Detroit in the 60's, more cubes and higher revs with higher compression. Ok as far as it went, but........it meant throw away cars, too.
Tell ya whut I would be more impressed with technologically, if some RAM company wants to make a splash and show off some real branez. A smart and adaptive memory chip reader that you could stick in a ram slot like a daughtercard that you could then insert any mix or match multiple RAM sticks into and it would read and access and use them all.
We are awash in so called "obsolete" RAM that is still functional. It used to be just a coupla decades ago we threw away stuff when it was broken. Now we throw away perfectly fine stuff, things that aren't broken, they are just "obsolete" although they might only be a few years old.
Anyone see anything potentially wrong there? Same thing with CPUs. We have SMP mobos (and kernels), how about NON-SMP MO mobos, any braniacs got any examples of that, were you can mix and match older processors and keep using them? I know you can make a cluster whatsis with older boxes, I am talking a single machine that you could add tons of older oddball ram sticks to and plug in a variety of CPUs.
To me, RAM and CPUs should be treated like drives and other peripherals, you should be able to daisy chain them better (different kinds, sizes, functions, etc) on a single machine.
Last I checked, most memory technologies required at least 1-T per bit. I don't know if that's true for flash technology, but still. 8Gb would be 8+ billion transistors not including decode logic and amplifiers. Wouldn't this make these flash chips have the highest transistor counts on the planet?
Last I checked, the highest transistor counts we had were around 400-500 million. That's like 1/16 of what would be needed to do this. What am I missing?
I'm beginning to think I'd like to see machines where we have dual storage setups - use the hard disk for write-many-read-many data (general data files), and use the flash memory for write-limited-read-many data. For example, imagine installing your OS and programs to flash memory - booting times and program loading times would be nearly instantaneous. (/me drools) You'd just have the flash memory mounted like any other storage device, and maybe some "wlrm" flag available to applications so they could automatically prefer that storage for installations and steer away from it for write-many data files.
This is what personal devices like ipods, etc... usually do. The operating system is stored in flash ram (so it can be upgraded in case something goes wrong), and data (i.e. your music) is stored on the hard drive.
Actually, there are plenty of reasons to measure bandwidth in bits not bytes.
When I size/plan/order circuits, I need to know raw throughput in bits/sec, because I may be ordering that circuit for a dedicated purpose, which can have significantly different overhead and efficiency than a different purpose.
Whenever you see bandwidth measured in Bps (bytes per second) you are seeing, at best, an estimate. The reason is that people are concerned about *payload* when you mention bytes, not raw throughput.
As overheard increases or decreases per packet (which can be caused by fragmentation, poor application design, etc), then the amount of payload data per packet changes, while the raw throughput does not. Try this as an exercise. Open up an FTP sire via MSIE, and transfer a large file from a decent server near you. Note how long it takes, and the data rate MSIE tells you that it comes in at. Now, open up an MS command prompt, and ftp to that same site, get the same file, and note how long it takes, and the data rate it tells you.
Same site, same link, same file, same OS...two completely different download times/rates.
When I order any circuit...I want to know what the actual bit rate of the line is. I don't want some marketing mumbo-jumbo about 'bytes per second'...I may not even use an 8 bit byte, or, they may use a different interpretation of 'kilo' and 'mega' when quoting data rates. Bit-rate is pure...because a bit is a bit is a bit, and a second is a second is a second.
Mmmm... instant on computers maybe?
People seem to keep forgetting that flash memory is SLOW, even on just read, writes are often slower yet. I just bought a "4x" CF card, which apparently they want to rate it in terms of CD-R speed. 4x is 600 KB/s. Unless something changes, you will not like the results. To test it out, get Knoppix, put it on a CD and run it on a computer with a 4x read CD rom drive, assuming you can get one that old that can read CD-Rs.
Also, flash is lucky to survive a million writes, hard drives can survive orders of magnitude more writes.
It may not be as significant as you think. Many chip designs make use of redundancy (think RAID but for memory chips, especially in the case of ECC RAM). I wouldn't count on picking up a 16GB or larger CF or SD flash cards anytime soon. However, this development does create that opportunity.