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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."
Why aren't they using conventional storage standards, RAM, and disk space are all in megabytes (1024 vs 1000 debating aside) saying something is *bit (giga,mega,kilo) implies a rate connectivity doesn't it?
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People tend to get excited about new products like these; in a separate but equally relevant phenomenon, they tend not to RTFA.
From the article:
Both chips, however, are prototypes. Companies just began this year to make chips on the 90-nanometer process. (The nanometer measurement refers to average feature sizes on the chips). Eighty-nanometer chips may not come for at least another year, and 65-nanometer chips won't debut until at least the end of 2005.
In other words, 16GB flash MP3 players will not be available in time for Xmas.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
"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."
This being Slashdot and all, one wouldn't think that needed to be said. =)
That 16GBs of memory translates into storage of up to 16 hours of DVD-quality video or 4,000 MP3 audio files (at 5 minutes per song).
Can someone explain to me how 1GB/hr equates to DVD quality? Most DVD films I know of run at 2-4GB/hr...
Sure, low-bitrate DVD is 1GB/hr or less, but is that true "DVD Quality?"
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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Few things - first of all the ram chip is GigaBITs. 8 bits = one byte, so that ram chip is actually 0.25 GB of space.
As well this is a ram chip, NOT a ram Stick. So you can have a number of this ram chip on one stick to make different sizes of ram sticks.
8 gigabits = 1 gigabyte
2 gigabits = 256 megabytes
And this was quoted from the article, which isn't talking about speed, which would be gigabits-per-second (sometimes abbreviated gigabits), this is size, as in (quote) Both chips hold far more data than current chips in their respective markets and are smaller, which should make them cheaper and more powerful than existing chips.
Smaller, mabey. Higher capacity? No.
Technological neophyte journalists.
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RTFA...they're talking about using the chips to fit 16 gigabytes on one DIMM.
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Many people probably have more RAM than they need. However, certain operating systems tend to expand their needs to meet or exceed typical RAM configurations. Additionally, many of us in research really benefit from increased RAM, although you do need a 64-bit architecture before you can access more than 4 Gibibytes of it. For example, if you're doing large simulations, you benefit greatly from being able to keep everything in memory and not having to read/write to the hard drive.
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Actually, increasing the RAM reduces the significance of other bottlenecks in a PC.
For example, you can buffer transfers that would otherwise go to or from the hard drive, so you spend less time waiting on I/O.
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He didn't mention 16 gigabytes anywhere. He said "2GB is a lot on one stick of ram."
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.
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How about a system that runs the OS off a flash chip, but not just like a handheld. Embed that little flash chip on a Mother Board for the OS and use that to boot the system and keep the system state even after power off.
Mmmm... instant on computers maybe?
"Don't sweat the petty stuff and don't pet the sweaty stuff." -- by an Unknown Wise man.
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.
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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?
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Because your CF card has more than one chip inside?
)9TSS
....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.
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