Slashdot Mirror
Flash Memory to Rival Hard Drives
Skal Tura writes "Samsung will start producing 16 gigabit Nand Flash chips this year, nudging the memory technology towards use in notebook PCs and maybe even edging out hard drives in some products in the next few years."
There are linux distros that happily run on flash. Damn Small Linux comes first to mind. It's possible, in fact many people have done it, to build a computer with no hard drive; just flash.
The current problem is that you get only a limited number of writes to flash. TFA doesn't mention that. It is a problem but not an insurmountable one.
I, for one, welcome... oh never mind.
As flash drives become more and more popular, more dollars will pour into flash research and development. And applications will learn to accomodate the strengths and weaknesses of flash. I think we'll be seeing some really neat things over the next 10 years. Terabyte flash drive, anyone?
...just my 2 gil.
The difference between gigabit and gigabyte needs to be explained on Slashdot about as much as the difference between the Moon and the Sun needs to be explained to astronomers.
The problem as I see it is not really chip density, but cost. If you think of the size of each of these chips, you could easily fit 60 or so GB into a 2.5" drive shaped device, and 100's of gigs into a device the size of a 3.5" drive. The problem is that these devices would cost astronomical ammounts. If we could make 1GB flash chips that cost $5, then you could have $300 30GB flash drives.
in some applications this is actually not a factor.
i could even see myself replacing my OS disk with a flash based one, and have a secondary larger hard drive for the less-accessed files with gobs of ram. that would be a real blessing to my poor ears! give me a 4gb flash drive and i'll be all over it!
Much longer life span in principle, but if you get a lemon it might crash 2 weeks after you buy it... At least the flash memory will be able to warn you before it is close to expiry.
No moving parts = no noise.
No moving parts = tough.
No activity when quiescent - no heat.
I, for one, welcome our new NAND overlords
"Cats like plain crisps"
Remember your first Nintendo "Mario's"? Plug em in n out, not enough gold on the contacts, but the chips still play if you blow on the contacts.How many disk games have worn out since? How many Hard drives still work with the old games on em? Maybe optical storage or quantum computers will come along., but I can see what has lasted the longest so far.
MYSTERY
Well, NAND flash like this is good for 1,000,000 writes rather than the 100,000 of NOR flash; but yeah, even that doesn't sound like enough. I don't know though. How much is enough?
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
I beleive you are confusing flash memory with some form of read-only memory (EEPROM, EPROM, etc). Windows can be installed to a flash memory device, such as a CF memory card via a IDE adapter or a solid state hard disk for instance. It use to be that it wasn't recommended to use the flash card as your swap space as the constance reading/writing would eventually "wear out" the card, but apparently it's not as much of an issue as it use to be.
As much as I prefer flash for an MP3 player over a HDD I admit that funny stuff happens to it. I have had some camera CF cards do peculiar things. Especially if there is a power problem when they are writing. Remember the mars rover was hamstrung for awhile with a flash problem. They sorted it though.
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy
>Newegg, Maxtor 300 GIGABYTE sata $125. Available NOW.
>Vapordeals, Mysterymem, 16GB(?) $90. Available ???
No, it is 16Gb (2GB), not 16GB. That is an order of magnitude larger... making your argument even more correct. Flash memory will probably never (in the foreseeable future) overtake or even come close to what you can do with rotating magnetic media.
Someday there might just be a 20GB flash drive for $200, and at that point in time, there will probably be a 20TB hard drive that is 10 times faster for $200, or a 2TB hard drive that is 10 times smaller and uses 10 times less power than the 20TB for $200.
Still, seeing higher densities of flash is a wonderful thing, especially for portable/pocketable devices. I am AMAZED when I see how inexpensive a 1GB tiny SD card is! It would just blow my mind away 10 years ago... Bring it on!
Nice rant but you totally mised the point.
A 300 Gig IDE drive doesnt fit in a laptop.
A 300 Gig IDE drive uses loads of power.
A 300 Gig IDE drive has faster sustained transfer speed but much a longer access times than flash. Horses for courses.
Wear leveling algorithms can make the write limit of flash irrelevant.
That the interface (eg, ATA) for accessing storage media usually goes out of date before the media wears out is true for both disks and flash.
The real story here is that flash is trouncing disk in improvements in Megs per $ and will one day catch up to and overtake disk. And it will be sooner than mmost people expect.
I'd rather add that much RAM on my PC, since they are faster with a similar price.
You definitely should consider that RAM price is dropping as fast as flash memory price.
Sure the Flash memory are growing in size at some rate r per year, but at the same time the need for more and more disk space is also growing at some rate r'. ... I doubt it.
I can't say if r > r' so much that in the course of the next few years we'll see HD disapear
whoever modded parent up hasn't got a clue. Not trying to insult parent but its wrong. I've seen plenty of people on /. use GB and Gb interchangebly.