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Intel's Braidwood Could Crush SSD Market
Lucas123 writes "Intel is planning to launch its native flash memory module, code named Braidwood, in the first or second quarter of 2010. The inexpensive NAND flash will reside directly on a computer's motherboard as cache for all I/O and it will offer performance increases and other benefits similar to that of adding a solid-state disk drive to the system. A new report states that by achieving SSD performance without the high cost, Braidwood will essentially erode the SSD market, which, ironically, includes Intel's two popular SSD models. 'Intel has got a very good [SSD] product. But, they view additional layers of NAND technology in PCs as inevitable. They don't think SSDs are likely to take over 100% of the PC market, but they do think Braidwood could find itself in 100% of PCs,' the report's author said."
Sooner or later, no moving parts beats moving parts. The magnetic disk makers have done an amazing job so far, but eventually they're going to lose out to solid-state.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Random I/O is essentially uncacheable.
I'm sure that would come as a great surprise to anyone who ever implemented a virtual memory system.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I can't take the flash to the next PC as i can do with the SSD.
Not really a big deal; if it becomes commonplace, most PCs will eventually have it (or something like it) as standard anyway and you won't be bothered about it.
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Whoever defined parent as troll must be weird.
That said - I'm more worrying about the consideration about exhausted flash on the motherboard. Have all avenues actually been considered here, or is that a built-in best before date that new motherboards will have?
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Random I/O is essentially uncacheable.
I'm sure that would come as a great surprise to anyone who ever implemented a virtual memory system.
-jcr
You're both right.
The problem here is that "random I/O" can have at least two subtly different meanings. In the very old days they talked about random I/O as opposed to sequential (ie, tape) I/O. In that sense, yes, random I/O is often extremely cacheable, as you say. That's why virtual memory works, as system files, drivers, commonly-used applications, and so forth are accessed much more often than other daa.
"Random I/O" can also refer to I/O that does not follow any real pattern - ie, a 50GB database in which all records are accessed about equally as often. This kind of I/O is not really cacheable, practically speaking. Unless you can cache the entire thing.
What's the correct terminology for the second kind of random I/O? Random I/O with very low locality?
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Didn't they already try this with their turbocache stuff? I seem to recall the general consensus being that it doesn't really offer any remarkable benefits. Regardless of how fast the cache is, eventually you run apps or open files that can't live on it 24x7 and you're going to revert to magnetic HD performance limits. This might improve some battery life and performance for some apps, but its not going to give you the across-the-board speed and battery life boosts that SSDs do. While this would certainly result in a better experience for the average computer user, I feel like its going to be relegated as a middle-ground between HDDs and SDDs, augmenting the low end, but by no means obsoleting the high-end.
Is this the latest FUD? That if a company brings out a successful product that's priced cheaply it'll "erode the market"?
How did the :"market" become so sacred that it must be preserved at all costs by keeping prices high? It's really funny the crap that'll come out of an MBA's mouth. He'll be all for "free markets" until someone comes along with a better product and then he'll start to squeal that the "market" is under siege.
Good for Intel.
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