No Intel Turbo Memory for Desktops Until Next Year

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."

Comments

Turbo button

[tknd]

So does this mean they found a new place for the turbo button?

Turbo Memory is...

[phantomcircuit]

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

Re:Turbo Memory is...

[Vellmont]

I wonder what makes it notable? Size? cost? speed?

High throughput, low latency. Don't know about cost.

It's basically the perfect hibernate cache that doesn't require power to maintain it's state, and will give near instant uptimes. You could also gain a bit from caching disk reads.

It seems a large enough main ram would invalidate this or even the mere presence of on chip cache.

RAM is volatile unless you constantly supply power. Because of this you can't rely on the information to still be their when you come back to a full power state.

Basically this little device would allow people to turn off their PC completely, and power it back up into a fully functional state. You can sort of do that now, but it means either maintaining a little power to the memory to maintain state, or spending an interminable time writing out to disk.

Of course, that means that driver writers need to actually support resuming from sleep, which many today don't properly support.

TheInquirer.org contradicts this..

[lippyjka]

What the hell?; The inquirer posted an article about how MSI is going to bundle MSI to bundle Intel Robson cards with motherboards: http://theinquirer.org/default.aspx?article=40178. Who to believe? Bit-tech.net or TheInquirer.org..... I'm personally going with the inquirer...

No need for more positive marketing

[eebra82]

There is no reason for Intel to make this move just yet. Now that they are completely dominating AMD in the desktop segment, why not hold it as a safe card against AMD next time they come with something new?

Intel would gain almost nothing on claiming another performance victory over AMD since it is widely known that their Core 2 Duo/Quad CPU series outperform AMD by a lot. So by releasing more technology that increases performance by a very small margin is like for AMD to announce the 1% speed bump with AM2 over 939.

From another view, I think it is interesting to see that the laptops receive cutting-edge technology ahead of the desktop market. Could this become a trend in the computer industry?

Re:No need for more positive marketing

[qwijibrumm]

Because AMD has the same thing being introduced (hyperflash is believe they are calling it). Intel is making a bit of noise, and it is a good thing, but it is not a unique thing.

Re:This has to be the most worthless story ever.

[eebra82]

A front page, full text synopsis about a product delay, and the summary doesn't even bother going a little further into depth what this mystical "turbo memory" is?

With the exception of a small fraction of Slashdot readers, most of us are in fact capable of gathering information without a problem.

You could spin this in either direction, but fact of the matter is that this news is very interesting to some readers and covers technology we have read much about already. So if you don't know much about this innovation, why complain? It's like covering a story on PHP updates: most people won't understand much about the news and the terminology used in that news item. Does that mean that the author is responsible for explaining every single shortcut to those who don't do PHP?

There will always be a lack of information in EVERY news item on EVERY piece of article you can read from ANY source, simply because it is news, not an encyclopedia.