Samsung HDD Merges Flash, Conventional Storage

geekboxjockey points "This is a link to a story about a hybrid hard-drive technology from Samsung that involves the use of flash memory and conventional storage. A very interesting idea that could provide noticeable energy useage/speed improvements for HDD-based portable devices."

Comments

Actually this story isn't entirely accurate

[gru3hunt3r]

There have been several vendors of Flash Based hard disks for a while. This is the first hybrid flash+magnetic drive -- and even this isn't all that different of an idea than say a Compaq smart array controller with battery backed write cache which used NVRAM to store data. It's innovative and i'd definitely buy a laptop that had it.

I think many slashdotters will miss the big picture. This is mostly a power saving utility -- and it could offer performance gains assuming the files you use are available on the flash and the drive doesn't need to be spun up. (Of course when the drive DOES need to get spun up, plan on having a *really* long access time so I think this will be negligble). Buy basically it means you can leave auto-save on Microsoft Word enabled and not drain your battery.

BUT since we're on the subject i'm a huge fan of flash only drives, they have several special applications because of their access times (in nanoseconds instead of milliseconds), extremely reliable (no moving parts, read/write cycles in the billions + ECC checking) and high bandwith they are NOT ideal for situations such as swap (JUST BUY MORE RAM IT'S CHEAPER AND FASTER!!) but instead they are perfect for situations were you need persistent storage of highly accessible files e.g. binlogs on a database.

You can easily bump up the performance of MySQL or Oracle using one of these drives for A LOT less

There is a company called BitMicro http://www.bitmicro.com/ which produces ATA and SCSI, and Fibre Channel flash only hard disks.
Using a flash only drive you will get a dramatic performance bump in any transaction database by storing the transaction files on the database.

Flash and harddrives

[karvind]

CeBIT 2005 had demonstration of flash only hard drives. Since flash memory is considerably more expensive than magnetic mass storage - a hybrid approach is a better compromise.

Also from WinHEC, samsung is not the only player. The disk will be manufactured initially by Samsung, Hitachi and Seagate, and other manufacturers will be announced later.

More details on Samsung's OneNAND hybrid technology:

OneNAND Flash memory has been incorporated into the design of Microsoft Corp.'s prototype Hybrid Hard Drive (HHD), the first fully functional disk drive to combine NAND-based Flash with rotating storage media.

The hybrid hard drive prototype uses 1 Gigabit OneNAND(TM) Flash as both the write buffer and boot buffer. In the hybrid write mode, the mechanical drive is spun down for the majority of the time, while data is written to the Flash write buffer. When the write buffer is filled, the rotating drive spins and the data from the write buffer is written to the hard drive.

The hybrid drive saves power by keeping the spindle motor in idle mode almost all the time, while the operating system writes to the OneNAND write buffer. Moreover, by using OneNAND Flash with hard disk drive technology, disk drive performance is not compromised relative to conventional disk drives. This is due, in large part, to OneNAND's ultra-fast read speeds, which can be fully leveraged during the flushing of the contents of OneNAND's write buffer to the rotating drive. In addition, since the Samsung hybrid disk drive operates at a lower temperature than traditional rotating media, it greatly reduces the possibility of shock and impact damage, improving the overall reliability of the disk subsystem.

While the cost of hybrid disk drives may slightly increase with the addition of OneNAND, any increase will be mitigated by several factors, including lower maintenance costs, 95 percent power savings when the disk is not spinning, faster boot time and substantially increased reliability. All of these changes are crucial to the ever increasing needs of today's mobile customer, making it likely that hybrid hard drive technology will enjoy rapid market adoption.

Re:Swap File

[Janitor]

Thats where the 10GB of primary memory comes it, so you won't need to swap. They thought of everything.

Re:A gimmick

[Cruithne]

So what happens when trying to detect when the flash memory has been written to too many times?

Actually, in most newer flash-based storage devices, this is already accounted for. Basically, the data is verified by attempting to read back the data - if it reads, you know you're fine, as the "space" in memory will only become "worn out" on a write.

If a "space" fails verification, it is added to a list of known bad sectors - exactly how IDE drives have functioned for the past decade or so.

Re:A gimmick

[mp3phish]

YOu don't understand the fundamental difference between this and a "cache"

This is NOT a cache. It is a permanent storage area on the hard drive which does not require the hard drive to spin up. I know one thing, in windows XP, my laptop hard drive spins up every 10 minutes because XP likes to do tons of shit even when i'm not using it. All it does is write 1 or 2K onto the disk, and for that it spins the damn drive up... every time. Witht his embedded flash memory it can write to it, and only after a long period of time, when those 1K writes add up to 128MB.. then the drive will spin up and copy all that flash ram into the hard drive... and the cycle starts over..

You see, most people who are using their drive to browse the web, work on a word file, IM chat, webcam chat, do email, etc etc... they aren't using their hard drive more than 128MB.. probably at most they are reading/writing to and from the drive in less than 64mb in a few hours time (provided you already have the applications loaded and you don't waste disk space on web cache) You save yoru word file every 5 minutes, but why spin up the disk and keep it running that whole time when all you are doing is writing out a few K every once in a while? You send and recieve a few emails, but why spin up your disk just to use it to send an email?

The point here is that battery life will significantly improve (probably by about double), and hard drive MTBF will significantly improve (probably more than double) in a laptop if you use this small flash PERMANENT (not cache) storage while your disk is spun down...

(notice that the flash memory is never used while the disk is spun up.. it is only used while the disk is spun down and it wants to try not to wake it up).

Re:A gimmick

[ModMeFlamebait]

It is just a matter of time before this is implemented on the OS level (in linux, macOS, and longhorn)

yeah, /proc/sys/vm/laptop_mode and associated acpi scripts are sure a long way into the future. not. it has been present in 2.4 linux kernels for quite a time. when longhorn comes out, it'll be *years* behind schedule

Re:Hardvaporware ?

[evilviper]

Apple was the first mainstream manufacturer in the industry to implement USB into their systems (iMac, May/August 1998).

No, you're COMPLETELY wrong there. USB had been installed in PCs for a LONG time before Apple's iMac. I've personally got a DEC PentiumPro system with USB ports, from 1995 IIRC. What Apple actually did, was popularize them, by forcing their customers to use only USB peripherals. I'm still using it as my firewall, loaded up with 192MB of old SIMMs I don't have any other use for...

The ironic thing about Apple pushing USB was, it undermined their attempts to popularize their own firewire standard. They pushed USB for slow devices, and firewire for fast devices, and instead, USB took over for almost all devices, fast and slow.