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No Intel Turbo Memory for Desktops Until Next Year

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the buy-our-laptops dept.

Might E Mouse writes "While Intel's 3-series chipsets support Robson/Turbo Memory, the general consensus amongst motherboard manufacturers at Computex is that we're not going to see the technology on the desktop until next year at the earliest. Working modules are on display at the show, but they're not going to be available to buy for a while."

5 of 75 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Turbo Memory is... by king-manic · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Intel Turbo Memory lets your notebook actually learn your habits to provide better system response. That's because it stores frequently used information near the processor, where it's more quickly available. Better CPUs run better with Intel Turbo Memory.

    This entirely new system innovation for Windows Vista PCs is based on Performance Intel® NAND Flash Memory (like the memory in an iPod* or USB 'thumb' drive), together with supporting software. It works alongside your system's RAM to increase the efficiency of data movement between the processor and hard disk.

    http://www.intel.com/design/flash/nand/turbomemory /index.htm">Intel® Turbo Memory


    Sounds like slow off chip cache, a la certain L3 Cache made of flash memory. I wonder what makes it notable? Size? cost? speed? Does it really help anything? It seems a large enough main ram would invalidate this or even the mere presence of on chip cache.

    --
    "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
  2. Vista does not support Turbo Memory yet by superglaze · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Despite what MS says... http://news.zdnet.co.uk/hardware/0,1000000091,3928 7431,00.htm

  3. Re:No, probably Vista only by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I've been trying to understand why caching to a USB flash drive - instead of a hard drive - is a performance win. USB's max transfer rate is 60 MB/s; in practice it's more like 30-40 MB/s. If I have a moderately-non-sucky HD, it has a minimum transfer rate of 30 MB/s. A good SATA drive can do 60-90 MB/s: (according to StorageReview).

    I suppose the USB drive does eliminate seek time and rotational latency, but it's not obvious to me that this is a performance win. Has anyone seen benchmarks?

    And yes, TurboMemory is on PCIe, so it's different. But the parent brought up Vista's caching to USB...

  4. Re:Mmm, so what? by Ant+P. · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Linux already has a patch to support a "prefetch partition", all it'd take to support this is making it show up as a mountable device.

  5. Re:Turbo Memory is... by Nikker · · Score: 2, Interesting
    The benefits of using the same technology off of a removable device are much better aren't they?

    1. I can use it with my existing system
    2. The USB port is fairly well documented and addopted by current OS's
    3. Your point does seem valid about slowing down real time activity but good for suspends on laptops, so using this with a removable device would add security to your setup
    4. Portable reads & writes have more potential as people use different machines
    --
    A loop, by its nature, continues. If that didn't make sense, start reading this sentence again.