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Intel Set To Demo PRAM

Posted by kdawson on from the flashier dept.

xavatarx writes "Intel's chief technology officer Justin Rattner is set to give the first public demonstration of the company's PRAM (phase-change RAM) technology at this week's Intel Developer Forum conference. 'Intel and other companies are counting on PRAM to replace both NOR and NAND flash memory to generate the demand required to produce the new memory chips in volume, and drive down costs,' the article says."

83 comments

  1. Quite the demo by stratjakt · · Score: 5, Funny

    The guy is going to look like a real froot-loop.

    --
    I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
    1. Re:Quite the demo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ZOMG 67.181.58.24 1s t3h uh4(k4b13!!!11!11!

    2. Re:Quite the demo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yup. Looks like open telnet, open ftp, open http. Lots more. Need -T1 on nmap to get past the IDS and -P0 cause they block ICMP. Bind looks open too, and it looks like someone hasn't been keeping their patches up-to-date. Someone with m4d sk!llz could h4x0r t3h b0x EZ.

  2. AMD set to reply by bad_fx · · Score: 3, Funny

    AMD have announced they will shortly demo "BABYCARRIAGE" in response.

    1. Re:AMD set to reply by Hal_Porter · · Score: 1

      http://www.googlebattle.com/index.php?domain=amd64 &domain2=emt64&submit=Go!

      'Nuff said.

      --
      echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
    2. Re:AMD set to reply by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      WTF?

      Learn to spell...

      http://www.googlebattle.com/index.php?domain=adm64 &domain2=em64t&submit=Go!

    3. Re:AMD set to reply by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      lol n00b

      http://www.googlebattle.com/index.php?domain=amd64 &domain2=em64t&submit=Go

  3. PRAM is new? by Xenex · · Score: 4, Funny

    Apple have been putting it in Macs for years!

    1. Re:PRAM is new? by holle2 · · Score: 5, Informative

      Well:

      Apple PRAM == Parameter RAM
      Intel PRAM == Phase-change RAM

      While:
      Parameter RAM == Any kind of conventional (probably non volatile) RAM
      Phase-change RAM == New kind of non volatile RAM using a new phase change technology

      Thus:
      Apple PRAM != Phase-change RAM

      QUED.

    2. Re:PRAM is new? by jrumney · · Score: 4, Funny

      PRAM is so last year. I'm into PUSHCHAIR already, and looking forward to move to TRICYCLE real soon now.

    3. Re:PRAM is new? by Hal_Porter · · Score: 4, Funny

      I believe Xenex was pretending to confuse two acronyms for humourous effect.

      I suggest you add him to a list of humans that use humour, and ensure your emotion emulator is powered up before replying to posts by humans on that list in future. It is very important that the humans here do not realise that we are not like them.

      --
      echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
    4. Re:PRAM is new? by carpe_noctem · · Score: 2, Informative

      Not to nitpick your post, but I thought you'd like to know that it's QED, not QUED... it's short for "quod erat demonstrandum", from Latin. :)

      --
      "Quoting famous computer scientists out of context is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming." - K
    5. Re:PRAM is new? by Ant+P. · · Score: 4, Funny

      Apple *does* have phase-changing RAM... it changes from solid to smoke, you'll only see it in certain laptops with sony batteries though

    6. Re:PRAM is new? by tepples · · Score: 1

      I suggest you add him to a list of humans that use humour, and ensure your emotion emulator is powered up before replying to posts by humans on that list in future. Do you have any links to descriptions of the appropriate behavior of an emotion chip? Some of us with Asperger syndrome would benefit from learning about emotion engines other than the one in the PlayStation 2 console.
    7. Re:PRAM is new? by noidentity · · Score: 1

      I bet parties are a blast when you're around!

    8. Re:PRAM is new? by Logic+and+Reason · · Score: 1

      QED = Quod erat demonstrandum.
      QUED = ?

    9. Re:PRAM is new? by YourMotherCalled · · Score: 0

      Now I get the joke.

    10. Re:PRAM is new? by tirefire · · Score: 1

      You can't honestly have not heard air being displaced somewhere over your head during that post, could you?

    11. Re:PRAM is new? by Hal_Porter · · Score: 1

      Humour can't be expressed as an algorithm. I have a wonderful proof of this, but this post is too small to contain it.

      --
      echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
  4. Hope it is better than Intel's other memory push by EmbeddedJanitor · · Score: 2, Insightful

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubble_memory

    --
    Engineering is the art of compromise.
  5. Question on how PRAM works and is manufactured by asliarun · · Score: 4, Interesting

    A lay question, and I had asked this question in the previous /. thread about PRAM, but did not get an answer..

    How are Intel and others managing this chalcogenide glass manufacturing in their usual silicon DRAM process? Is this glass fused/bonded to silicon or something? Or is it an alloy.. and if so, is it a non-silicon alloy (silicon is a non-metal)?

    I tried the wikipedia entry on this subject (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase-change_memory) , but couldn't completely understand:-
    a. How it really works in an electronic circuit and in a microprocessor (how do you control the heating/cooling at the chip level so that phase change occurs)?
    b. How it is supposed to be volume manufactured? Would they require a new fab entirely to manufacture PRAM (if they do decide to commercialize this technology), or can an existing fab be retro-fitted to support this manufacturing process?

    Appreciate any insights on this subject. At a high level, this does sound like a very exciting new technology.

    1. Re:Question on how PRAM works and is manufactured by Hal_Porter · · Score: 5, Informative

      I found this paper.

      http://www.ovonyx.com/tech_html.html

      It sounds like the chalcogenide is deposited as a thin film. Mind you they talk about transistors, so it must be an extra processing stage on a normal chip.

      This seems to confirm it
      http://www.eetimes.com/in_focus/silicon_engineerin g/OEG20030919S0044
      Chalcogenide RAM is nonvolatile, boasts access speed comparable to that of DRAM and possesses advantages in scalability, high sensing margin, low energy consumption and endurance to cycling. The structure and processing of chalcogenide memory are much simpler than in other next-generation memories such as MRAM and ferroelectric RAM. In a chalcogenide memory cell, the data is stored in a flat chalcogenide layer that can be deposited near the end of the CMOS interconnect process. Therefore, disturbance of the CMOS process is minimal, making it ideal for systems-on-chip.

      So I guess they add an extra step to the end of the process and deposit a layer of chalcogenide glass.

      These things sound really cool BTW, they're writable at a byte granularity in tens of nanoseconds just like a regular SDRAM, but they are non volatile. It looks like they can flip bits individually either way too.

      Whereas flash memory is much slower - tens of microseconds per byte, and you need to erase 16K-128Kbyte block at a time. And PRAM is supposed to be denser and allow unlimited erase cycles.

      Plus Intel is backing it so it's not like it will fail because the vendor can't afford to scale the production process to make chips with a high capacity.

      --
      echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
    2. Re:Question on how PRAM works and is manufactured by LaughingCoder · · Score: 5, Funny

      How are Intel and others managing this chalcogenide glass manufacturing in their usual silicon DRAM process? Is this glass fused/bonded to silicon or something?
      If that is your idea of a lay question, I'd hate to be hit with one of your "expert" questions.
      --
      The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
    3. Re:Question on how PRAM works and is manufactured by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Plus Intel is backing it so it's not like it will fail because the vendor can't afford to scale the production process to make chips with a high capacity.

      (cough) Bubble memory (cough)

    4. Re:Question on how PRAM works and is manufactured by Khyber · · Score: 4, Informative

      It's not unlimited in writing. It's got an expected life of 10^8 writes/reads. I've been watching this for years, now, and I'm surprised nobody even bothered to check some of my previous posts that mentioned this technology beforehand. I'm already using an Ovonix-made test drive in this machine - Windows loads up within 4 seconds. On my 5400 RPM 80 gig HDD, it takes about 14 seconds. VAST improvement, and yet another breaking of the bottleneck in hard drives. I couldn't be happier.

      --
      Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
    5. Re:Question on how PRAM works and is manufactured by Mystic+Pixel · · Score: 2, Informative

      The structure of the silicon wafer is, in certain respects, similar to glass. The main difference is that "glass" (in the everyday sense) is an amorphous solid -- the atoms are basically jumbled together -- whereas the atoms in wafer silicon form a regular crystal lattice. The upshot of this is that, with a little cleverness, it's easy to deposit a wide variety of different substances in a layer on top of an exposed wafer surface, and have them stick fairly well. And, depending on the characteristics of said substance, selectively removing it (via chemical etching or a more advanced process) isn't difficult, either. There are a number of technical concerns that must be addressed in order to integrate this into an existing fabrication process, but it's far from impossible (in fact, it's not even too difficult, it's just kind of expensive. But production volume makes up for that.)

    6. Re:Question on how PRAM works and is manufactured by Hal_Porter · · Score: 1

      It's not unlimited in writing. It's got an expected life of 10^8 writes/reads.

      It's still better than 10^5 writes for flash. And even that is more than enough if you wear level over a large array, as I pointed out here -

      http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=183698&cid=151 80090
      "If you could wear level over 32GB, it would be 744 years, assuming you write a 100K/sec sustained"

      I've been watching this for years, now, and I'm surprised nobody even bothered to check some of my previous posts that mentioned this technology beforehand. I'm already using an Ovonix-made test drive in this machine - Windows loads up within 4 seconds. On my 5400 RPM 80 gig HDD, it takes about 14 seconds. VAST improvement, and yet another breaking of the bottleneck in hard drives. I couldn't be happier.

      What capacity is the Ovonix test drive? Do you know what the capacity per chip is and so on? What about cost? I didn't know they'd made any test drives big enough to install Windows on.

      --
      echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
    7. Re:Question on how PRAM works and is manufactured by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'd be happy to see solid evidence of how wear levelling actually works: some meaty pseudo code, or algorithms if you will, how blocks are tagged with # of rewrites, how blocks are remapped, swapped (if at all), is spare space used, etc. I seriously doubt flash drive lifetime is as easily hand-wavy as size*rewrites*0.7 FS overhead divided by bytes written per day.

      Because I wouldn't mind getting a flash drive. I'm just a bit skeptical.

    8. Re:Question on how PRAM works and is manufactured by frank_adrian314159 · · Score: 4, Funny
      If that is your idea of a lay question, I'd hate to be hit with one of your "expert" questions...

      What!? Don't tell me you're scared of fringe effects on leakage current, non-linear C-V models, and photo mask correction factors! Sheesh! Nerds these days...

      --
      That is all.
    9. Re:Question on how PRAM works and is manufactured by Surt · · Score: 1

      Unfortunately, the quote you made is quite right, except that you want to write at a rate 10k greater in order to beat out hard disks, so that 0.744 years instead of 744, which doesn't look so hot (or 7 years if you're willing to accept a drive that is almost as fast as a conventional drive, which is almost acceptable). You also assume that wear levelling means getting the statistical average number of writes out of every cell, which it doesn't. Realistically, that factor chops off roughly half of your write capacity.

      On the other hand, 10^8 writes with pram will be plenty.

      --
      "Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
    10. Re:Question on how PRAM works and is manufactured by Hal_Porter · · Score: 1

      Unfortunately, the quote you made is quite right, except that you want to write at a rate 10k greater in order to beat out hard disks, so that 0.744 years instead of 744, which doesn't look so hot (or 7 years if you're willing to accept a drive that is almost as fast as a conventional drive, which is almost acceptable).

      I measured the write rate on my desktop machine, which was building software at least half the time. It's the average write rate, not the peak one. Even though a modern hard disk can write at 30MB/sec or whatever, the average write rate is much, much lower. And it's the average write rate that you should use in that equation. As I point out, on my laptop where I do web browsing and email, the average write rate is lower still.

      You also assume that wear levelling means getting the statistical average number of writes out of every cell, which it doesn't. Realistically, that factor chops off roughly half of your write capacity.

      The 100K writes is what the manufacturer guarantees. Since they don't want to get sued, they hopefully understate things a bit. From what I've heard, most flash erase units can do much more than this. In fact, most of the EU will be ok for more than 100K writes, you just need to swap out sectors that go totally bad from a replacement pool. Some of them will just get a few stuck bits but you can do ECC so 1 bit / sector errors are correctable, only ones with more than one bit stuck need to be swapped. Finally, you have to bear in mind that modern hard disks are not that reliable. I've had several desktop ones fail after around 18 months. Old laptop drives seem to have head crashes too, pretty much at random no matter how carefully you avoid walking around with them running. And the life is proportional to disk size, you can double the life by doubling the size of the disk. That last part should solve the problem on its own, given Moore's law.

      If you had a wear levelled flash disk, the failure would be 100% predictable - the SMART data could give you a predicted fail date based on when the replacement block pool will be exhausted. I think this is better than the unpredictable failure you get from hard disks, which seem to go from 100% ok to dead without any warning from SMART.

      On the other hand, 10^8 writes with pram will be plenty.

      Yeah, I agree. Actually, I read some other article where an Intel guy said that the phase transitions don't inherently wear the cell like writing or erasing flash does - in fact he more or less implied that PRAM didn't wear out. But other places quote 10^8 or "trillions of writes" which sounds like more than 10^12. Maybe more recent PRAM has an longer life than 10^8 writes, or future PRAM will.

      The only problem I can see is that it's possible to buy NAND flash now for $7 per GB. I haven't seen any quotes for PRAM. If it starts off being expensive and lags NAND chip capacity, it might not catch on.

      --
      echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
    11. Re:Question on how PRAM works and is manufactured by Hal_Porter · · Score: 2, Informative

      Read the paper

      http://www.st.com/stonline/products/literature/an/ 10122.pdf

      and this one

      http://newslab.csie.ntu.edu.tw/~johnson/public_fil es/R-FLO436_Chang.pdf

      Because I wouldn't mind getting a flash drive. I'm just a bit skeptical.

      Well it wouldn't surprise me if some flash disks get this disasterously wrong to be honest. Some of the lifetimes on page 6 of the Chang paper look a bit low for comfort - around 4 years for NFTL.

      --
      echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
    12. Re:Question on how PRAM works and is manufactured by owlstead · · Score: 1

      "Unfortunately, the quote you made is quite right, except that you want to write at a rate 10k greater in order to beat out hard disks, so that 0.744 years instead of 744"

      Eh? We just want to beat out hard disks because they are mechanical, slow spinning up, slow reading, slow seeking, noisy, energy hogging, big, untrustworthy SOB's. Most of us couldn't care less on the number of write cycles, as long as the filesystem and OS portions of it can be written over many times within the life time of the equipment. Flash drives can already do that it seems, so what is the problem? I'll be doing *a lot* more reading than writing and I would certainly not constantly write to my flash drive at maximum speed. Why the heck would I?

    13. Re:Question on how PRAM works and is manufactured by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Thanks, I appreciate the links.

    14. Re:Question on how PRAM works and is manufactured by v4vijayakumar · · Score: 1

      It's not unlimited in writing. It's got an expected life of 10^8 writes/reads. 10^8 writes/reads?! Do _reads_ also count?!
  6. Maclaren by jlebrech · · Score: 0

    Will give Maclaren a run for their money.

  7. Obligatory Monty Python... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    I have to push the pram-a-lot.

    On second thought, let's not go to Camelot. (It is a silly place.)

    1. Re:Obligatory Monty Python... by AP31R0N · · Score: 1

      When fark had this article yesterday the FIRST post was "I have to push the PRAM-a-lot. Why the buggery bullocks did it take so long on /.?

      --
      Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
  8. Again? by maxwell+demon · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Well, we've already seen MRAM and FeRAM, both already in production. None of them seem to have replaced Flash or even DRAM yet. So what is it about PRAM that one should expect it to be different?

    BTW, is there anywhere a concise table comparing the characteristics of different RAM technologies?

    --
    The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
    1. Re:Again? by SnowZero · · Score: 4, Informative

      Well it looks like PRAM is already winning on the practicality front. Two companies have PRAM chips at 128Mb or larger, and claim good density numbers. MRAM has only reached ~16Mb last I knew (although smaller ones can be bought right now). FeRAM, at least from Wikipedia, seems to suffer from density problems, as it can only be built on 350nm generation fabs (i.e. very old).

      The only thing not mentioned is cost, but if it scales (Intel thinks it does), and the special glass just adds only one step to manufacturing (which the original developer claims), it doesn't look like there are too many roadblocks to success. Now, claiming it will replace DRAM may be a little premature, however there's a good hope they can replace flash at least.

    2. Re:Again? by Khyber · · Score: 3, Informative

      You're not replacing DRAM with this stuff. DRAM is meant for far more read/write cycles than what this can do. This is a replacement for storage, not random access memory, due to the limited 10^8 read-write cycles (which any idling computer would eat up just running processes within a few days, or could go thru just running one game given sufficient complexity) As an upside, I'm playing with a test drive made by Ovonyx right now - Things load so fast you'd think "When did Windows become so damned efficient and speedy?" Four second boot time? Oh hell yes!

      --
      Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
    3. Re:Again? by edxwelch · · Score: 1

      > Two companies have PRAM chips at 128Mb
      Well, if they are competing against current NOR flash, then they have a bit to go. Currently NOR flash is available at 1GB.
      Another thing they don't mention is if it's available in low power (ie. 1.8V), that's important if they want to target the mobile phone market.
      It does have the avantage of being faster and more reliable.
      I presume it will remain a niche product for a number of years until they can scale it up.

  9. Well, why not. by ladybugfi · · Score: 1

    Yeah, we already have a McLaren buggy (http://www.ciao.co.uk/McLaren_Techno_Buggy__52819 92) amd a Porsche pushchair (http://shop3.porsche.com/international/kids/babyc arriage/wap04050016/), why not an Intel pram.

    Oh, wait...

    1. Re:Well, why not. by SnowZero · · Score: 1

      Furthermore, will Intel make a "dual-core" model for those with twins?... or will they just make an "HT" model just 15% wider that they claim is for twins?

  10. Re:You mean... by nowhere.elysium · · Score: 1

    back to camelot with you.

    --
    http://xkcd.com/313/
  11. Clarification by Xiroth · · Score: 4, Informative

    Just to clarify (I'm an insta-buff on the subject from the wikipedia article), despite having RAM in its name this is more a storage solution than a memory solution.

    I'm generally more a software person than hardware, but there's a lot to be excited about with this. It's apparently got a r/w time only 2-3 times the time of DRAM, and holds a lot of potential for things like paging files and storing frequently used software since there doesn't seem to be a limitation on the number of writes that can be applied. Once things develop, the technology might even be a ludicrous-speed replacement for hard-drives, as the storage mechanism is quite stable (more so than flash). I can definitely see this taking off in the future, if it delivers what it promises (and nothing else supercedes it in the meantime).

    1. Re:Clarification by Junta · · Score: 1

      Once things develop, the technology might even be a ludicrous-speed replacement for hard-drives Will it glow plaid?
      --
      XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
    2. Re:Clarification by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ...and its performance improves as it scales (and it does so easily)...

  12. Of course they have a demo... by absolut_kurant · · Score: 2

    ...cause they have to push the PRAM a lot...

    --
    Yes.
    1. Re:Of course they have a demo... by frenchbedroom · · Score: 1

      I got modded Redundant for the same joke (although I posted before you) but your wording is actually better than mine.

      Mod parent up.

  13. Here's the issue by Bozdune · · Score: 4, Insightful

    There have been lots of proposals to use "slow RAM" throughout the years, and there's even been real hardware that tried to take advantage of it in various ways.

    A interesting example is the IBM 2301 drum memory device. Originally used as main memory, 2301's were later converted to paging devices. They had great transfer rates, but they became obsolete as soon as RAM sizes increased enough to cache a reasonable number of pages.

    The reason is that even though "slow RAM" like drum memory seems intuitively useful as a "third stage" paging device, if you do the math versus the two-stage combination of very fast RAM and very much slower disk, you find that the RAM/disk combo performs almost as well. The conclusion therefore has been that it makes little sense to throw away your money on medium-speed RAM, because you'd have gotten more bang for the buck by spending it either on (a) more fast main memory, or (b) bigger/better disks.

    Finally, if you look at history, the rotating storage industry continues to confound all of these "fast RAM" technologies by increasing performance and dropping $/bit at an amazing rate. Nothing is more primitive, to my mind, than spinning a disk platter in 2007 -- but there's still nothing better, and the technology shows no sign of dying.

    1. Re:Here's the issue by hackstraw · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Nothing is more primitive, to my mind, than spinning a disk platter in 2007 -- but there's still nothing better, and the technology shows no sign of dying.

      In working with large numbers of computers over the years, here are my informal statistics for failure. 1) hard drives 2) power supplies 3) other, almost at the noise level

      And look at what the industry adds redundancy for in computers. 1) hard drives and 2) power supplies.

      Sure, anyone that thinks about it will agree that spinning disk platters in 2007 is primative, but these things currently solve the magical equasion involving the variables of price, performance, longevity, and capacity. In 2007, simply nothing comes close to matching spinning platters with respect to these variables. Whats even funnier, is that in 2007 if you want more storage than a spinning platter can provide, then the thing for you is even more primative. A series of magnetic tapes with a robot to fetch them for you! And with those, you lose a number of things like random access within a file, large latency to retrieving a certain file, and all that.

      Personally, I don't see a paradigm shift in storage for 50 years or so. The thing is that tapes and spinning platters keep improving, and people's data storage requirments keep increasing. And in turn, there is a need for faster processors and networks to process and move all this data around.

      Once an inexpensive, relatively fast, persistant storage technology hits the market at about 18-64 gigs of space, then servers will snatch that up to be used for paging and for the OS image. There really is a market for that today. But then we are still stuck with spinning platters and magnetic tapes for "data" until something else comes along.

    2. Re:Here's the issue by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      0) Fans. These break a LOT.

    3. Re:Here's the issue by imsabbel · · Score: 1

      While i generally agree with your post, you are REALLY wrong with your "50 years" estimation.

      Seriously.
      Maybe 20 years, but not much more.

      --
      HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
    4. Re:Here's the issue by jhfry · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I used to maintain an IBM Pi2 Mini Computer that had drum storage up until the late 90's. I really like the idea, a read/write head per track eliminated all seeking and made for very predictable response times for our real time processing requirements.
      I would love to see the hard drive industry start incorporating more read heads in to drives.

      Imagine a single drive with two armatures, servo's and read/write heads. You could effectively double the throughput, reduce seek times, and improve latency. It would be like having RAID 1 read speeds, and write speeds faster than a single conventional disk.

      If they could change the form factor and make the enclosure square, they could shove 4 read/write mechinisms in a single drive increasing it to 4x throughput.

      The only reason I can imagine for why this hasn't been done is that there are alignment issues with multiple heads on the same surface, or it's prohibitively more expensive than a good raid controller and multiple drives (which I doubt).

      --
      Sometimes the best solution is to stop wasting time looking for an easy solution.
    5. Re:Here's the issue by hackstraw · · Score: 1

      While i generally agree with your post, you are REALLY wrong with your "50 years" estimation.

      Seriously.
      Maybe 20 years, but not much more.

      Sure, I could be wrong, but there is no technology beyond tapes/disks that can store massive amounts of data _without power_.

      Personal computers are now typically in the hundreds of gigabytes today. "Enterprise" computing is commonly in the terabyte range. Research/scientific computing is commonly in the petabyte and beyond.

      It was only recently that tapes and disks replaced paper. To replace tapes and disks, there needs to be a radical change in storage technology. Nanotechnology? Ferroelectrics/Piezoelectrics? I don't know. Nobody does.

    6. Re:Here's the issue by mandolin · · Score: 1
      Hmmm ... I think your argument ignores boot times. If all you have is volatile RAM and slow disk, your boot times go into the crapper. (This ignores the recently-announced flash-hybrid HDDs, but ummm isn't the flash part a "3rd-stage paging device"?)

      Besides the reliability improvement another poster mentioned, PRAM also should have lower power draw, and less heat, than an equivalent HDD or hybrid setup. Also, HDDs aren't ramping up their performance like they once were (but if PRAM gave them an incentive to ramp up faster, that would be nice.)

      Lastly, if I can get enough PRAM for a reasonable price, it doesn't matter if I can get 20x the capacity with an HDD (or even hybrid), simply because I don't need the extra capacity.

    7. Re:Here's the issue by Bozdune · · Score: 1

      I'd argue that slow boot is a software problem, not a hardware problem. The transfer rates from hard drives are plenty fast enough to provide near-instant boot, if anyone cared enough to engineer it. Two things stand in the way: (1) booting is actually a fairly hard problem, and (2) the incentive for improving its speed is basically zero in the current desktop OS monopoly environment.

      As far as capacity is concerned, enough is never enough, and folks who've made statements like that have lived to regret them (Gates being one). I'd actually agree with you, except I know I'd regret it later.

      The reliability argument should be valid; except it might be a little premature given that we have, let's see, 50+ years of data on rotating magnetic storage failure modes/rates, and how many years of data on PRAM? Anyway, if two hard drives (RAID 1) are cheaper than PRAM, disk wins, PRAM loses as far as I'm concerned. Gimme the capacity, I'll live with the speed deficit.

    8. Re:Here's the issue by mandolin · · Score: 1
      -- Slow boot: It would be nice if OSes (including Linux) would take more responsibility (I'm aware of upstart and initng). It is a difficult enough problem that the hardware solution may arrive more quickly.


      -- Capacity: In the long term, I agree enough is never enough. For a particular system, I don't think it applies: even an 8GB hard drive connected to an original 8088 IBM PC is wasted (if you could make it work at all). *If* PRAM can scale well enough to stay ahead of "the curve", it will work out. Otherwise, you are correct. I could also see a PRAM main drive + auxiliary HDDs to hold your extensive (insert favorite pastime here) collection.


      -- Reliability, heat, power draw, speed, capacity, price: My priorities differ, but I understand your position.

    9. Re:Here's the issue by Pikoro · · Score: 1

      The idea I had about 10 years ago was to keep the spinning platters, but have a single bar across the span of the platter. that bar would have pickups (heads) along the side facing the platter, hence, the only moving part would be the spinning platter itself.

      Basically, if you took a slice of the disc where the bar was, it would be similar to this (when looking from the top:

      (======o======)

      The bar would contain thousands of heads (1 per track) on each side of the hub. you could place these bars on the top and bottom of a platter. 0ms seek times and multiple read/writes could take place at the same time (perhaps only on opposite sides of the hub to cut down on inductance noise.

      Oh to have enough money for a patent... :(

      --
      "Freedom in the USA is not the ability to do what you want. It is the ability to stop others from doing what THEY want"
    10. Re:Here's the issue by jhfry · · Score: 1

      The problem with this is that the cost of the heads would probably be prohibitively expensive. You are talking about a shitload of heads to cover every track, on both sides of ever platter.

      This is essentially what a drum storage unit did... it had a cylinder that rotated very quickly it's outer surface was coated with magnetic material that was manipulated by a bar of read/write heads. The only reason these are not still in use today is that the number of tracks have become so high that a head/track is far more expensive than just purchasing a solid state drive... and the solid state drive is more reliable.

      The drum unit I maintained was a 4MB unit that had a drum about 6 inches in diameter and 16 inches long. The entire unit was about the size of a large 2 drawer file cabinet.

      On a related note, our jets (the system I maintained was on an USAF surveillance plane) were upgraded to bubble memory while I was in the service... still not efficient, but we could replace the large drum cabinet with a series of cards that fit in the computer rack (a 6 foot by 6 foot by 1.5 foot cabinet). Thank god they had ditched the core memory before I started... that would have just been an nightmare.

      I miss that system... it was all of 12MHz, but it was hardened against EMP, had enough power to do some absolutely amazing stuff.

      --
      Sometimes the best solution is to stop wasting time looking for an easy solution.
  14. How? Intel is a supermassive chip company w/FABS. by burnttoy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Only real men have fabs yadda yadda and Intel probably reckon that for every x86 chip they sell they can sell a couple of gig (or more) of PRAM as well. Intel need stuff for their fabs to manufacture or they cost a lot of money.

    There are 2 ways they can win assuming they have the capacity for massive scale manufacturing, which they seem to.

    1 - They can undercut the cost of NOR/NAND chips in the market place.
    2 - they can sell at price parity with NOR/NAND but solve the serious technical problems with both designs. TBH neither is terribly nice to interface to and both are very slow compared to DRAM. Beating the technical problems are explained to PHB's as Instant Boot (suspend to RAM - except its PRAM, not battery backed DRAM). Quietness. The G shocks required to actually damage the stuff as compared to a spinning HD. etc etc...

    Actually there's a lot of reasons to go for it. Not least of all that HD sizes on consumer products (cheapo laptops etc) seem to be stuck at 80 gig. It's cheap and most (not all - I've a terabyte+ of storage and still run out) users will never fill it anyway. Instant boot is a real serious seller - 2 minutes of boot time feels a lot longer as you can't do anything for 2 minutes.

    But, personally, I think Intel's massive production capability and their endless search to find something to do with all those billions of transistors is where they'll "win".

    --
    Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
  15. Power consumption info by RepCentral · · Score: 2, Informative

    Power consumption specs for programming PRAM are not stated in many places but
    I was able to find a reference here:
    http://www.hitachi.com/New/cnews/051213.html

    And for comparison to flash memory, here is the 512Mb 1.8v part from ST Micro:
    http://www.st.com/stonline/products/literature/ds/ 10058/nand512r3a.pdf

    The specs do not line up exactly.
    PRAM: 100uA at 1.5V for programming each bit cell
    FLASH: 8ma at 1.8V for programing one page (256 bytes), internally rebuffered in SRAM

  16. Heat affecting? by MicklePickle · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    After reading the wikipedia entry one thing stuck out like a sore thumb:
    PRAM uses the unique behavior of chalcogenide glass, which can be "switched" between two states, crystalline and amorphous, with the application of heat
    Riiiight! So when the next summer heat wave happens, everything will be wiped, and I assume that will be the case whether the device is powered on or not. This will definitely be the Achilles' heel of PRAM.

    --
    -- main(s){printf(s="main(s){printf(s=%c%s%c,34,s,34) ;}",34,s,34);} $p='$p=%c%s%
    1. Re:Heat affecting? by Mystic+Pixel · · Score: 1

      You mean, just like the summer heat wave erases all the data on your CD/DVD-Rs? If you'd read more than the first paragraph, you might have seen this sentence: "Chalcogenide is the same material utilized in re-writable optical media (such as CD-RW and DVD-RW)." ...and a few lines down, this one: "It is heated to a high temperature (over 600C), at which point the chalcogenide becomes a liquid." If 600 degrees C is your definition of a typical summer heat wave, then I think this would be the least of your worries.

  17. Re:Question on how to pronounce that word by mnemotronic · · Score: 2
    chalcogenide

    chal-ko-gen'-ide ?
    chal-cog'-en-ide ?
    sh-alko'-gen-ide ?
    fawstuh-grhants-dhaling ?

    --
    The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
  18. Re:How? Intel is a supermassive chip company w/FAB by networkBoy · · Score: 1

    Not to burst your bubble, but PRAM and processors are incompatible at a FAB level.
    AFAIK Intel has spun their flash FABs off under their memory devision, and only produce flash at these FABs, presumably they will do PRAM there as well.
    -nB

    --
    whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
  19. Re:How? Intel is a supermassive chip company w/FAB by burnttoy · · Score: 1

    They don't have to be fab process compatible. If the customer wants a CPU and Intel says - "Hey! We've got cheap and lovely NVRAM! Wnat a bucket full?" then the customer will buy both products from the one shop.

    --
    Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
  20. PRAM? as in Zap the PRAM? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Didn't we learn this lesson in the mid to late 90's? Once again apple was all over this 10 years ago. We had to zap our PRAM.
    Althought I am sure this is different. Maybe this is unzappable PRAM.

  21. Re:PRAM? as in Zap the PRAM? by revlayle · · Score: 1

    Wrong PRAM Apple's PRAM = Parameter RAM Today's PRAM (the one being demoed by Intel) = Phase-Change RAM They are not the same technologies

  22. Re:Question on how to pronounce that word by jazman · · Score: 1

    My guess would be chal from challenge, cog from cogitate, gen from generic, ide from chloride, with the stress on the cog.

  23. Should be Purchasable RAM by Mike+Zilva · · Score: 2, Funny

    this was it should be available since it was first invented...

  24. Re:Question on how to pronounce that word by Chris+Mattern · · Score: 3, Funny

    There's this new thing called a "dictionary". They even have them online for free nowadays. According to www.dictionary.com (which pulled its entry from the Random House Unabridged) it's KAL-_kuh_-_juh_-nayhd as the preferred pronounciation, but you can also say kal-KOJ-_uh_-nayhd.

    Chris Mattern

  25. You don't even wanna know... by Mister+Liberty · · Score: 1


    what pram means in Dutch:
    see http://lookwayup.com/lwu.exe/lwu/d?s=d&w=udder&pos =n&Syn_ID=1871391
    and guess what it is used for in everyday slang...

    Yours,

    bjd



  26. And the nominee for "most obscure joke" is.... by StressGuy · · Score: 1


    Will this be part of the new Camelot architecture?....thought by some to be the "Holy Grail" of computing?

    --
    A goal is a dream with a deadline
  27. What about volume changes? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Does the volume of the glass change depending upon its phase? If so, how do they contain it, to make sure the stuff doesn't ooze around the chip? Is this technology sensitive to physical shock (drop the chip and it doesn't work)?

  28. Re:How? Intel is a supermassive chip company w/FAB by networkBoy · · Score: 1

    Intel need stuff for their fabs to manufacture or they cost a lot of money. I was responding to that statement, thus that they are FAB incompatible is contradictory to your initial post, at least as far as using it as a FAB filler.
    -nB
    --
    whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
  29. Phase Change? by MS-06FZ · · Score: 1

    You mean like Gundam Seed? It all changes colors and becomes invincible?

    --
    ---GEC
    I'm but the humble pupil, seeking to snatch the scratchbuilt pebble from the master's fully articulated hand
  30. Re:Hope it is better than Intel's other memory pus by kbradford · · Score: 1
    Intel started as a memory company, inventing the DRAM, SRAM, PROM, EPROM, and FLASH memories. Note the Bubble Memory is not on the list. Intel is still in the NOR Flash business, and is partnered with Micron (as IMFT) in the NAND Flash business. The PRAM or Phase Change Memory is in development at the same Santa Clara fab (D2) that develops NOR Flash.

    The problem with FLASH (NOR and NAND) is it is not expected to scale much further, as it consists of floating (isolated) gates that hold an increasingly smaller number of electrons that can leak away, making the memory forget. Eventually, there won't be room for the number needed to stay charged. PCM is expected to scale way beyond FLASH and is expected to replace it.

    BH - Not an Intel Spokesperson