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."

Comments

Flash is a complementary technology, not a rival

[BadAnalogyGuy]

Hard disks may be physically larger and slower for random access, but they are faster than Flash for large sequential reads, much in the same way that the hare is faster than the turtle in that old fable.

We'll most likely see Flash storage grow in cell phones and PDAs, not in notebook computers. If you were a pilot, you wouldn't just have the mechanic swap out the propeller for a Rolls Royce jet engine. You'd want the whole plane overhauled to handle the increased stress on it. Better to have a system designed from the ground up that could handle the new engine rather than try to bolt it onto an older, proven design.

Re:Gb or GB?

[Firehed]

Doesn't stop the article from using the wrong one, though. I always question something that seems a bit out there. So they will indeed be 16 gigabyte flash drives? My uncle keeps going on and on about his "80 Gigabit" hard drive. Boy could I nail him on ebay reselling 4Tb hard drives. And eight gigabits of ram on one module. And... oh, why not... the 11.5 megabit floppy disk.