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Intel-Micron Joint Venture Develops 25nm NAND

Ninjakicks writes "IM Flash Technologies is a joint venture between Intel and Micron that is targeted for producing NAND flash memory. With a focus on R&D, IMFT has doubled NAND density approximately every 18 months. Tomorrow IMFT will announce the launch of their 25 nanometer NAND technology — a major advancement in the semiconductor industry. Intel and Micron can now lay claim to the smallest production ready-semiconductor process technology in the world. IMFT took members of the press on a tour of the new 25nm fab and it's an interesting view into this bleeding-edge manufacturing process."

121 comments

  1. Great News by DJRumpy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    This is sorely needed to bring down costs for SSD's. The price and capacities available are coming down at a disappointingly slow pace.

    1. Re:Great News by rm999 · · Score: 4, Informative

      I think more troubling in the SSD market has been poor design at the low end (see http://www.anandtech.com/printarticle.aspx?i=3531 for more detail). 150 dollars for a 64 GB SSD is fine, but when random write speed is an order of magnitude slower than a standard hard drive that costs an order of magnitude less, something is severely wrong.

      Early adopters such as myself got pretty screwed over. Until consumers can trust the technology, I don't think price matters. Manufacturers need to put effort into building a high quality product first - they need to design good controllers and firmware.

    2. Re:Great News by BikeHelmet · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Those JMicron drives were absolutely horrible - 4KiB of SRAM cache, later doubled to 8KiB? Even Intel's lowest end SSDs have 256KiB, plus another 32MiB of RAM for caching the locations of free spots to write files.

      Oh, btw - the cache has to be SRAM so that if the power goes out, it can write the files when it comes back on. SSDs absolutely must have a RAM cache so that they can efficiently locate places to write files, or they will stall while the controller tries to locate one. That's why the low end controllers perform so horribly in random write.

      But now even the worst controllers aren't too bad. If I remember right JMicron's newest low-end controller has 128KiB of cache, and there are cheap Intel knockoff SSDs coming out that perform decently. (same controller, but less RAM cache and less space) If what you want is blazing fast loadtimes in games, they aren't bad options, but they're still slower than a fast HDD and have way less space.

    3. Re:Great News by BikeHelmet · · Score: 1

      http://ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=49278&vpn=OCZSSD2-2SLD30G&manufacture=OCZ%20Technology&promoid=1210

      30GB OCZ Indilinx drive for a little over $100 CAD. Not a bad option, but not much space.

    4. Re:Great News by DJRumpy · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I think in that case, the hardware vendors simply released a product that wasn't ready for prime time. Possibly to try to recoup R&D costs. I can't imagine that they weren't aware of the performance issue with invalid page data.

      Larger capacities made possible by this 25nm technology should help to alleviate the issue somewhat, or at least extend the time before it becomes noticeable. That plus support for the TRIM command should go a long way towards deflecting the issue.

    5. Re:Great News by haruchai · · Score: 1

      As I found out when running Windows 7 on a Patriot Warp v2, 30GB is not enough. Unless you spend some time stripping
      the OS down to barebones, you'll quickly run out of space. And forget about hibernate if you have lots of RAM.
      Even with fast SSD booting, there are times when you'll want to save your programs state rather then start it up all over again.

      --
      Pain is merely failure leaving the body
    6. Re:Great News by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Fighting for peace is like fucking for chastity

      This has always bothered me. Do you know of another way to produce more virgins?

    7. Re:Great News by BikeHelmet · · Score: 1

      Don't run your OS off it then. Install three or four games that you play quite a bit.

      It is an option. You just have to factor the lack of space in.

    8. Re:Great News by haruchai · · Score: 3, Informative

      It would help if Windows would allow you to put the hiberfil.sys file on a different drive but you can't even move it to a different partition on the same drive.

      --
      Pain is merely failure leaving the body
    9. Re:Great News by Kjella · · Score: 1

      That part is mostly fixed, I got a OCZ Vertex (Indilinx controller) and I don't notice any problems. Neither do those with Intel SSDs, as far as I know. The biggest issue is that I checked, and right now it costs more for the Vertex than I paid in April last year. If they could say halve the price, then 30-40GB SSDs would be in the "normal" price range for laptop HDDs, only being much smaller. Then you could talk to people about big vs fast, because it wouldn't add such a huge premium to the cost which is a huge turn-off. Right now you have to be willing to pay quite a lot to make your computer a little faster.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    10. Re:Great News by Alex+Belits · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      Oh, btw - the cache has to be SRAM so that if the power goes out, it can write the files when it comes back on. SSDs absolutely must have a RAM cache so that they can efficiently locate places to write files, or they will stall while the controller tries to locate one. That's why the low end controllers perform so horribly in random write.

      lol wut.

      --
      Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
    11. Re:Great News by gad_zuki! · · Score: 1

      Things have really changed since that article was published 10 months ago.

      Im pretty happy with my OCZ Vertex 60gig on win7. It doesnt have the problems the jmircon based drives have and the prices on them are pretty good. I just saw the 60gig model go for $179 after rebate. Write/read speeds on Win7 are excellent even after you fill up the drive because win7 and the 1.4 firmware support TRIM natively. Now there's a vertex turbo model that gives a 10-20% performance increase.

      Its funny how the market is playing itself out. OCZ for the low-end and Intel for the enterprise end. Without TRIM these things are pretty useless.

    12. Re:Great News by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It won't "bring down costs"; it will increase them. Over a period of YEARS some genuine mass production might amortize all the expense, but consumers will never get to realize the benefit of that because "next year's model" will come along and cut it short (and add more expense all over again). The social benefit of mass production is never fully realized.

    13. Re:Great News by Courageous · · Score: 1

      What's happened is that demand has been higher than expected.

    14. Re:Great News by Courageous · · Score: 1

      Well. I'm sorry if this is a not-nice comment, but it was pretty obvious as the market developed that the early versions just weren't ready, and what the probable pit falls of the technology were likely to be. I.e., I don't think it took hind sight to know that early adoption was risky.

    15. Re:Great News by Yvan256 · · Score: 2, Informative

      Oh, btw - the cache has to be SRAM so that if the power goes out, it can write the files when it comes back on.

      SRAM. I do not think it means what you think it means.

    16. Re:Great News by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      History mocks you for that comment.

    17. Re:Great News by riT-k0MA · · Score: 1

      3 or 4 games?
      Obviously you have never installed Crysis...

    18. Re:Great News by Waccoon · · Score: 1

      Near constant studders and stalling? Yeah, I'm sure they weren't aware. My dad bought me an OCZ Apex and it was worse than useless with XP. I have an SSD with a Samsung controller, now. It rocks.

      All those USB key drives that fail after a few weeks of usage? ATI drivers with crappy installers? DRM that refuses to work after you use msconifig? Obviously the technology just needs to mature before they get the kinks out.

    19. Re:Great News by BikeHelmet · · Score: 1

      Poor wording on my part.

      Before I got a UPS, I had my power cut out or surge from time to time. On two separate occasions files were being written when my computer shut off, and got stuck in a strange not-a-file not-a-dir state. The files and their parent folders could not be deleted, but I could format the partition to clear them. One happened to be in my temp folder, which is how I first discovered the issue.

      As long as power is restored shortly, SSDs are supposed to complete the write... or is that only server grade ones? Either way, SRAM holds data longer than DRAM, so if the controller is programmed to, there's a chance it'll work.

    20. Re:Great News by BikeHelmet · · Score: 1

      No, I only play fun games. :P

      I figured, one 12GB game, two 6-8GB games, and a 2-4GB one. But I suppose depending on what you play, it could be 2 to 150 games.

    21. Re:Great News by Eunuchswear · · Score: 1

      Given that Intels SSD's don't seem to exist at the moment (the X25-E has been unavailable from major European distributors since 10/2009) I'd just like them to make some.

      --
      Watch this Heartland Institute video
    22. Re:Great News by OzBeserk · · Score: 1

      http://www.mydellmini.com/forum/windows-7/2441-windows-7-ultimate-solid-state-drive-speed-tweaks.html has a list of tweaks for windows on a SSD. Amongst them is disabling hibernate on the assumption that you're start up time is good enough.

      Disclaimer: I've came across this researching SSD's before I buy & haven't tried it yet. Thought it might help you.

    23. Re:Great News by jez9999 · · Score: 1

      Hopefully it's getting better. I bought a couple of these, 128GB model, and so far I've not been disappointed with read or write speed (in fact it's been snappier than the Seagate I had before). Granted, I'm not running a busy server. As for it not supporting TRIM, oh well, it's half-to-a-third the price of a Corsair, and WinXP which is the OS I put on one of them doesn't even support TRIM.

    24. Re:Great News by Cyberax · · Score: 1

      SRAM is not persistent, it doesn't survive power outages.

      It's called 'static' because it doesn't need to be refreshed.

    25. Re:Great News by TheRaven64 · · Score: 1

      Server-grade disks are intended for use in RAID configurations, so they need the cache to be battery-backed because otherwise they suffer from the write hole problem (write to one disk, power goes out, stripe is inconsistent). Often, the server grade disks will have no cache at all (which makes them a terrible choice for home users), because the server grade RAID controller will have a big, battery-backed, cache.

      All drives, mechanical and SSD, exhibit the problem you are describing. This is why we've had journaling filesystems for the past decade or so.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    26. Re:Great News by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 1

      150 dollars for a 64 GB SSD is fine

      For me the problem isn't the $150 but the 64GB. I'd probably be willing to spend up to $200 for a reasonable SSD for my netbook (which has a hard drive) but I probably won't buy one until it's closer to a dollar a gig, so I can get the space I need to actually do stuff. Performance is nice, but if it's 2-3x faster (real-world), it's worth 2-3x more, not 10x more (current laptop drive to SSD price ratio @160GB @Newegg). That's speaking as someone for whom speed is nice and useful, but not critical.

      That's OK, though, that's only a couple more cycles, 2-3 years out, and by then the firmware should be pretty solid too.

      --
      My God, it's Full of Source!
      OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
    27. Re:Great News by Thing+1 · · Score: 1

      Performance is nice, but if it's 2-3x faster (real-world), it's worth 2-3x more, not 10x more

      Nice sentiment, but wrong. A car example: high-end sports cars are about 2-3x faster than a Tata, and cost well over 10x more.

      From a business perspective, it can sometimes be worth spending a large amount of money in order to gain a very slight performance advantage.

      --
      I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
    28. Re:Great News by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I just disable it. Regular sleep mode is enough for me, or I just shutdown windows. With good SSDs, it boots up fast enough anyway =)

    29. Re:Great News by haruchai · · Score: 1

      Thanks but I've done all of these before as these were all things tried to alleviate the stuttering problem with the notorious JMicron controllers - among other things.

      My point was that, regardless of SSD speed, there are times when hibernation is very useful.
      In the course of a browsing weekend, I may have up to 100 tabs/windows open as well as other programs.
      True, I can easily save the session and/or restart the programs but with trying to reload so many tabs and restoring the state of a half-dozen or more other programs manually is tedious - especially since my Internet connection is relatively slow and is throttled upstream by my ISP's ISP.

      --
      Pain is merely failure leaving the body
    30. Re:Great News by fast+turtle · · Score: 1
      1. You've got at least 2 additional full images (anytime upgrades) if you installed Home Premium - Pro and Ultimate - taking up at least 2GB of space
      2. Hibernate is useful but you have to tell windows not to use the SSD - you do have a spinning disk don't you?
      3. WinUpdates quickly eat up lots of space in the Windows Folder - you can safely delete them but wont be able to roll back updates gone bad afterwards
      4. You did create a seperate Admin Account didn't you? If so, you can move all but that and the Public Folders from the SSD (relocate /home to another drive or partition)
      5. Finally, turn off System Restore if you aint bothered by having to reinstall when something pukes/blows up on you (gives you lots of space back right away)
      --
      Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
    31. Re:Great News by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It would help if Windows would allow you to put the hiberfil.sys file on a different drive but you can't even move it to a different partition on the same drive.

      Symbolic link it....

    32. Re:Great News by haruchai · · Score: 1

      1. Hmmm, will look into that - I'm using Ultimate on that machine.
      2. This is a notebook, with spare battery. Only space for 1 disk.
      3. Once I'm sure an update didn't break something, I delete the backup folders.
      4. I'd done that when I tried the Win7/SSD combo on a desktop,which was ok. But, I really wanted this for the laptops.
      5. Yah, I learned years ago about System Restore invisibly consuming space. I usually turn it off or reduce it to 1 or 2%.

      Good suggestions overall but my real wish was/is to have my laptops running SSDs. Unfortunately, the JMicron bug bit me hard and the various tweaks, such as EasyCO MFT / Flashfire, etc either don't work consistently or have considerable liabilities.
      And, I'm hoping for another significant price drop before the summer.

      --
      Pain is merely failure leaving the body
    33. Re:Great News by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Decent SSDs have a supercapacitor that has enough power to complete any write if the power goes out.

    34. Re:Great News by BikeHelmet · · Score: 1

      Well that explains it. Cheers.

    35. Re:Great News by BikeHelmet · · Score: 1

      All drives, mechanical and SSD, exhibit the problem you are describing. This is why we've had journaling filesystems for the past decade or so.

      Doesn't seem to have helped my NTFS partitions. ;)

  2. Only 25nm? by BronsCon · · Score: 4, Funny

    If it's only 25nm, how do you use your hand?

    Oh! NAND. Gotcha.

    --
    APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
  3. Cheap SSDs in my lifetime? by LibertineR · · Score: 1
    Maybe?

    I want a cool, quiet 300G for 200 dollars. Imagine....a computer needing to cool only the CPU/Chipset.......I can only dream.

    1. Re:Cheap SSDs in my lifetime? by BitZtream · · Score: 2, Interesting

      SSD's aren't going to be cheap soon, they have enough advantages over rust that they'll be an overpriced alternative until we stop using rust completely, which is still some time off.

      You'll probably never buy a new 300G SSD for 200. You might buy one of a much larger size for $200 because by the time it happens we'll be using MUCH larger drives.

      --
      Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
    2. Re:Cheap SSDs in my lifetime? by value_added · · Score: 1

      I want a cool, quiet 300G for 200 dollars.

      For anyone unfamiliar with SSD drives, they are indeed completely silent, but they're definitely not cool. Perhaps best described as moderately warm to the touch. For many, that could translate as "your notebook will still feel too hot".

    3. Re:Cheap SSDs in my lifetime? by maxume · · Score: 4, Informative

      Integration and hardware costs keep the cheapest hard drives somewhere around $40 (for new stuff). Someone will be tempted to play in that space with a $20 SSD, at which point people will get out their fingers and determine the per GB cost of the $20 drive and be very unhappy with larger drives that cost much more than that.

      Also, in 2007, they were ~$7.50 per GB:

      http://www.engadget.com/2007/04/25/ssd-prices-in-freefall-wont-overtake-hard-disks-anytime-soon/

      Vs less than $3 today (just google it). So the prices haven't come down quite as much as the article predicts, but there are 11 months left in the year, and I made that calculation using an intel drive (which probably carries a slight premium to the market).

      --
      Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
    4. Re:Cheap SSDs in my lifetime? by haruchai · · Score: 1

      What SSDs are you running? I've a Patriot Warp v2 32GB, an OCZ Solid 60GB and a Kingston V-series 128GB - all run very cool.
      If anyone using one of those in a notebook feel that is too hot, they must be from the planet Hoth.

      --
      Pain is merely failure leaving the body
    5. Re:Cheap SSDs in my lifetime? by TheRaven64 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      To add another data point to that, I paid £30 for a 128KB flash SSD back around 1994. I'm not sure what the exchange rate was back then, but I'd imagine it was around $50, so that makes it $409,600/GB. That means that the price per GB for flash halved just under 16 times between 1994 and 2007. They've been doubling in capacity per $ more or roughly annually for the as long as they've existed.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    6. Re:Cheap SSDs in my lifetime? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Completely silent? What I wouldn't give for that. I hear a high pitched tone coming from my SSD always, and it varies by what kind of activity the drive is performing.

    7. Re:Cheap SSDs in my lifetime? by Skal+Tura · · Score: 2, Informative

      "No one will ever need more than 640kb."

      Your assumptions are just as correct.

      SSD has one significant advantage: Moore's law, so every 18months (roughly) the size doubles or price halves.
      That means, there will be soon 300Gb SSD for 200$.

      There won't be a premium on SSDs, they are REALLY expensive to produce, that's why the cost so much, not due to a premium. You could call recouping R&D as a premium how much you like, but it's not a premium, they do not need to cover that cost as well, otherwise no R&D can be done.

      There won't be a mystical drop in price skipping 300Gb at 200$ range, that's just not how the market works, not how science works (in incremental enhancements of end products).

      Currently 300Gb would cost probably somewhere around 900$ today, so in about 3-3½years you should be able to get your 300Gb at 200$.

    8. Re:Cheap SSDs in my lifetime? by Agripa · · Score: 1

      SSD has one significant advantage: Moore's law, so every 18months (roughly) the size doubles or price halves.
      That means, there will be soon 300Gb SSD for 200$.

      Kryder's Law applies to hard drives but the real advantage of SSDs is access time and throughput relative to capacity. Hard drives suffer from a worsening density to throughput ratio because the later only scales to the square root of areal density. SSDs have not reached that point yet but they will. As chip capacity goes up, it will take fewer chips for a given capacity and less interface parallelism will slow performance. They will always be faster than hard drives but I would not count on them gaining a greater capacity for a given price. Of course, SSDs only have to be large enough.

  4. No sir, I don't like it. by BadAnalogyGuy · · Score: 0

    While this may have impressive consequences for the NAND market and for end-user storage solutions, there is a much larger problem which everyone is skirting around. It isn't about how NAND can only be used for storage and not for executable ROM like NOR Flash. It isn't about how stuffing more memory into a smaller space will allow for insanely huge SSD drives in devices ranging from cellphones to television sets.

    It's about how Intel is going to leverage their CPU monopoly to take over the Flash memory market. They have not been able to make any headway with their StrataFlash due to their lukewarm support and eventual divestiture of the StrongARM CPU series. So by building this new super-efficient NAND solution, they are positioning their Atom CPU as *the* architecture for embedded systems.

    If I were ARM and ARM CPU vendors, I'd be very wary and worried.

    1. Re:No sir, I don't like it. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      Don't worry, as we speak Rambus is quietly patenting the shit out of everything in this space. A few years from now their patents will pop-up and bring Intel to its knees.

    2. Re:No sir, I don't like it. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      While this may have impressive consequences for the NAND market and for end-user storage solutions, there is a much larger problem which everyone is skirting around. It isn't about how NAND can only be used for storage and not for executable ROM like NOR Flash. It isn't about how stuffing more memory into a smaller space will allow for insanely huge SSD drives in devices ranging from cellphones to television sets.

      It's about how Intel is going to leverage their CPU monopoly to take over the Flash memory market. They have not been able to make any headway with their StrataFlash due to their lukewarm support and eventual divestiture of the StrongARM CPU series. So by building this new super-efficient NAND solution, they are positioning their Atom CPU as *the* architecture for embedded systems.

      If I were ARM and ARM CPU vendors, I'd be very wary and worried.

      That sounds rather paranoid.

      Given that Intel happily sells flash devices to all comers, I don't see how their manufacturing a better flash chip means that they are setting up a monopoly for their Atom CPUs.

      Have you taken your medication today?

    3. Re:No sir, I don't like it. by bb84 · · Score: 1

      This is why other companies need to get on this faster. Isn't that the whole purpose of markets, business and competition--to make something better than competitors first? If the ARM manufacturers don't like it, then get up and make something better! Stop bitching about Intel's monopoly and give me another option.

    4. Re:No sir, I don't like it. by Artraze · · Score: 1

      I strongly doubt that... x86 has so much cruft associated with it, it will never be able to hedge ARM out of the market, esp since the later is so entrenched at this point. Do you think cell phone designers want to work with the PCI bus? Chipsets? And what software is available for a non PC-compatible x86 setup?

      Anyways, this is all moot anyway: the demand for high density flash is almost entirely in the memory card market. No embedded system realistically needs more than 1GB internal memory (and generally 256M is plenty). For bulk storage, an SD card is not just a good idea, but actually desirable for consumers. There's just no market for some huge flash somehow tightly coupled to a CPU.

    5. Re:No sir, I don't like it. by Artraze · · Score: 1

      It occurred to me just after posting that there would be a decent sized chunk of market in DRMed devices that couldn't allow the use of memory cards, e.g. the iPods. However, there devices are far from being the entirety of the ARM based mobile computers and their switching wouldn't mean anything significant for the market.

    6. Re:No sir, I don't like it. by TheRaven64 · · Score: 4, Informative

      This has nothing to do with Intel's CPU monopoly (which is only really a monopoly in a fairly narrow segment of the CPU market), it has to do with Intel putting a lot of money into process technology. Even when their designs were inferior to AMD's, they remained competitive because they could fab them on a better process and so get higher yields, higher clocks, and lower power consumption for the same chip than AMD.

      Intel's SSD products work with anything with a SATA controller, be it ARM, x86, PowerPC, SPARC, or some custom architecture you just wrote to an FPGA. They are not tied to CPUs in any way. NOR flash often is. You quite often get some NOR flash attached to ARM chips for execute-in-place programs, such as the Symbian kernel and apps, freeing up some of main memory.

      NAND flash can only be accessed as a block device, so you can't tie it to a CPU at all easily; it has to go through some kind of controller so the OS can pretend that it's a disk. I suppose you could slap a load of DRAM and a separate MMU and DMA controller on it and have something that would look like a big blob of RAM, but the performance characteristics would be horrible to work with.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    7. Re:No sir, I don't like it. by socceroos · · Score: 1, Funny

      No embedded system realistically needs more than 640K internal memory

      There, fixed that for ya.

    8. Re:No sir, I don't like it. by mirix · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Even when their designs were inferior to AMD's, they remained competitive because they could afford to paid off dell, HP, et al.

      Fixed.

      --
      Sent from my PDP-11
    9. Re:No sir, I don't like it. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Dude, at least nobody will ever accuse you of thinking "inside the box".

      I thought my brain goes off in whack direction, but yours, as consistently indicated by your posts, just goes in the direction, let's just say, less travelled.

    10. Re:No sir, I don't like it. by mako1138 · · Score: 1

      The only time Intel has had an inferior CPU design was the P4 era. And the P4 had _high_ power consumption, in part because the new 90nm process had high leakage currents. They got themselves around that problem by making bigger heatsinks.

    11. Re:No sir, I don't like it. by Courageous · · Score: 1

      Was NetBurst P4? Anyway, whether or not it was or wasn't, NetBurst was inferior. If Core hadn't come out of the Israeli lab, Intel was within 18 months of wholesale defection of HP, Dell, and IBM to AMD. Would have happened sooner if AMD had trustable manufacturing capacity.

      C//

    12. Re:No sir, I don't like it. by mirix · · Score: 1

      s/paid/pay/

      --
      Sent from my PDP-11
    13. Re:No sir, I don't like it. by KillShill · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Wintel duopoly mean anything to you?

      Inte£ was an abusive monopolist long before most people think. Starting back in the late 80's.

      They are always treated with kid gloves but M$oft gets no quarter....

      It always makes me chuckle when some Linux noob quotes "M$" but running on an Inte£ cpu/video.

      --
      Science : Proprietary , Knowledge : Open Source
    14. Re:No sir, I don't like it. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The DRM is on the individual files, not the memory, so it's not really because of that. I can think of two main reasons:

      1) So you can pay $100 more for extra memory. If you decide to upgrade later, you have to buy a whole new iPod or iPhone.

      2) To reduce the number of moving parts. The iPhone/iPod doesn't have a removable battery, either.

    15. Re:No sir, I don't like it. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think you should come up with a few more awesome symbols to put in your stuff...something that really sticks it to the man. Maybe it will take a little longer to type stuff out that way and we won't have to read so much of your shit.

    16. Re:No sir, I don't like it. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, it was. Netburst taught Intel a big lesson about diminishing returns to pipeline depth.

    17. Re:No sir, I don't like it. by Walter+White · · Score: 1

      No embedded system realistically needs more than 1GB internal memory (and generally 256M is plenty). ... There's just no market for some huge flash somehow tightly coupled to a CPU.

      Don't you think that 640K should be enough for anyone?

    18. Re:No sir, I don't like it. by Agripa · · Score: 1

      NAND flash can only be accessed as a block device, so you can't tie it to a CPU at all easily; it has to go through some kind of controller so the OS can pretend that it's a disk. I suppose you could slap a load of DRAM and a separate MMU and DMA controller on it and have something that would look like a big blob of RAM, but the performance characteristics would be horrible to work with.

      There are a couple of execute in place NAND memories available now from Samsung and at least one other company that escapes me. The do about what you describe internally by caching the Flash pages in SRAM for random access through a NOR type interface. They are good for saving space in compact designs.

  5. Re:Rall's Law intervenes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Thats not the case if you use a high-fraternity flux capacitor. I've heard the prazatonic implementation of intergalactical space bizanium will allow you to propate the quadraceptic meld process down to 0.2nm.

  6. Re:Rall's Law intervenes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Actually, it is the case. You just have to reverse the polarity of the neutron flow.

  7. Something other than NAND? by MichaelSmith · · Score: 1

    Could this process be used to build, say, CPUs?

    1. Re:Something other than NAND? by alvinrod · · Score: 1

      I'm not certain, but I know that Intel plans on using a 22 nm process as the next step after the current 32 nm process that is being used for their newest chips. They've estimated that the first chips using a 22 nm process would be released in the second half of 2011. There may be a technical reason not to use a 25 nm process for CPUs, but if they already have a 22 nm process being developed for CPU usage, there's no point in using a 25 nm process.

    2. Re:Something other than NAND? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      Fair warning, I didn't read through the whole article, but in general:

      No, this won't be directly applicable to CPUs. Microprocessors and memory are two vastly different beasts, on the manufacturing side. Memories are arrays of of the same thing, over and over - neatly organized, same size devices, requiring the same power supply and same operating characteristics. Microprocessors have many different structures, different size transistors for different things, different power supplies, different signaling levels to turn on some transistors and not others. The relative simplicity - really, the relative uniformity - makes memories easier, because you don't have to worry (as much) about balancing the effects of the shrink and the method to shrink across several elements. What's good for some might be bad for others, so the fewer elements you have, the more leeway you have.

      That's not to say that this won't have anything to do with CPU development, it's all very inter-related But you can't just start making microprocessors of this dimension because you have working memory.

    3. Re:Something other than NAND? by cyfer2000 · · Score: 1

      A simple answer is no. A longer number is not so simple.

      --
      There is a spark in every single flame bait point.
    4. Re:Something other than NAND? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      Much more to the point, NAND can tolerate a very high defect rate in the individual cells, whereas a CPU can tolerate almost none (with some defects you can disable a core or some of the cache and still salvage the part). Further, NAND gates operate much much slower than CPU transistors and their operational results are checked against error correcting data. A CPU transistor doesn't have that luxury.

    5. Re:Something other than NAND? by movercast · · Score: 1

      Defects and resolution are two separate issues. Yes, NAND is much more tolerable to defects because its full of backups and whatnot. But, what does that have to do w/ printing @ 22nm?

    6. Re:Something other than NAND? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      New process -> high defect rate?

    7. Re:Something other than NAND? by cyfer2000 · · Score: 1

      But usually SRAM has the same process of CPU. So when Intel or some other companies said they made SRAM with some techniques, you could predict what will they do next.

      --
      There is a spark in every single flame bait point.
  8. Re:Rall's Law intervenes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I hate to correct you here, but equilibrium is dependent upon factors of e, therefore the propation must be the 4th Fibonacci value derivation of the meld process. This means that we are looking at a biceptic meld process not a quadraceptic meld process. On the other hand, alternative perflutenials provide for seventh and tenth derivations as well, meaning that Octoceptic and Triacontakaitetraceptic meld processes are potentially mastenkrotic (though quite unlikely!)

  9. Re:Rall's Law intervenes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    YMMV depending on use of bunny ears.

  10. 32GB MicroSDHC by Mr.Radar · · Score: 1

    Does this mean we'll finally get 32 gigabyte MicroSDHC cards?

    --
    What if this signature were clever?
    1. Re:32GB MicroSDHC by LBArrettAnderson · · Score: 1

      I don't feel like finding a source, but it was my understanding that we'd get 32GB microSDHC cards with the previous (current) technology (35 nm?). I have no idea what the holdup is, though.

    2. Re:32GB MicroSDHC by Asadullah+Ahmad · · Score: 0

      I would certainly hope so. But at the very least it will take a year to get these 25nm ones in the market.

    3. Re:32GB MicroSDHC by Yvan256 · · Score: 2, Informative

      Probably soon enough. But if I recall correctly, 2GB was the maximum for SD, and 32GB is the maximum for SDHC cards. After that you need SDXC.

    4. Re:32GB MicroSDHC by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      4GB is maximum for SD, and there was a short time when you could buy 4GB SD or 4GB SDHC, but now 4GB SD are hard to get.

    5. Re:32GB MicroSDHC by Agripa · · Score: 1

      4GB is maximum for SD, and there was a short time when you could buy 4GB SD or 4GB SDHC, but now 4GB SD are hard to get.

      A lot of SD only devices choke on 4GB SD cards. Was the interface specification vague?

      It seems incredible to me that the original SD card specification did not look far enough forward. Twice. Does every generation have to learn this lesson?

    6. Re:32GB MicroSDHC by Yvan256 · · Score: 1

      The way I'd do it is as follow: ask the SD card what capacity it has. The SD card returns a string of 0's followed by a 1 to end the string. The number of zeroes equals to the number of bits for addressing. Same goes for sector size (one zero = 256 bytes), etc. That way there's no lower or upper limit, and all SD devices (if programmed correctly) would be able to read all SD cards, even a reader from 2005 would be able to read an SD card from 2050.

  11. Re:Rall's Law intervenes by Cryacin · · Score: 2, Funny

    The trouble is you have to keep the computer travelling at faster than 88 miles per hour.

    --
    Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
  12. Re:Rall's Law intervenes by argent · · Score: 1

    Generating polarized neutron beams in a standard hard disk form factor is probably not practical.

  13. Please, by The+Wild+Norseman · · Score: 1

    Allow me to be the first to give them a NAND-ing ovation.

    --
    "A government is a body of people usually -- notably -- ungoverned." -Shepherd Book
  14. Double patterning has limits. by viking80 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    in the olden days, xx nm really meant feature size. With Intel and other fabs pressing mfg to half the size every 2 years, it seems mfg has gotten quite creative in their definition of feature size. Latest feature size is a fraction of the wavelength of the light used for patterning, and to achieve it, double and sometimes triple patterning is used. That is basically multiple exposures with slight offsets. The result migh be called 25nm but might really be 50nm, and edge sharpness when you are at 1/4lambda is so suspect that you really have to add some margins here and there, and some features dont really lend themselves to double and triple patterning, so you really have a mix including 50nm process for these.

    Kind of like a marketing gimmic, just here it is engineering selling it as 25nm to their own marketing departmens.

    --
    don't cut it off www.mgmbill.org
    1. Re:Double patterning has limits. by afidel · · Score: 4, Informative

      Double patterning is really the only solution unless someone comes up with a radically new process since the max aperture in water (1.35) has already been reached. Holographic lithography, electron beam, and other techniques have been proposed but none has been commercialized because of the incredible costs that will be incurred developing the entire ecosystem of machinery and software to use them. Intel's already announced that they will be using multi-patterning down to 15nm since EUV won't be ready in time.

      --
      There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
    2. Re:Double patterning has limits. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      The practice of optically shrinking an existing die without redesign/relayout is known as half-node stepping. If you read the analysis of these 25 nm parts over at Anandtech you will see that this is clearly not a half-node step. These parts are running charge trap memory cells whereas the previous generation used floating gate cells. Personally, I'll take the increased storage density any way I can get it.

    3. Re:Double patterning has limits. by movercast · · Score: 1

      xx nm is still feature size. The method you utilize to get there may be very complicated, but at the end of the process you still have a feature that measures xx nm. Why does that not count?

    4. Re:Double patterning has limits. by movercast · · Score: 1

      k1, lambda, NA. Choose wisely.

    5. Re:Double patterning has limits. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The primary driver for process shrink is cost savings and for some applications power savings. Nobody wins or would be willing to work with added design complexity if real benefits were not being realized on a new process. Judging by actual transistor count vs die size significant progress continues to be made.

      Yes design rules and sizing keep getting more and more "interesting" but when you look at transister vs die size on completed projects in a given technology reality seems to still be in rough agreement with "marketing".

    6. Re:Double patterning has limits. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      I think he's saying that if your part has 10% 25nm features, 30% 32mn, and 60% 45nm; that's not really a true "25nm" part :)

      (ie because some of the structures you need to etch have concave or oblique geometry so that a multi-exposure of part of the structure would ruin adjacent parts (capacitors and stuff, I guess)).

  15. Re:Rall's Law intervenes by frieko · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Duh... shrink ray!

  16. Micron? Seriously? by LoudMusic · · Score: 1

    I hadn't heard anything about them in perhaps a decade. I can't believe they're still around! Didn't they used to have a desktop line too? Or am I thinking of someone else altogether?

    --
    No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
    1. Re:Micron? Seriously? by ihavnoid · · Score: 2, Informative

      Wikipedia to the rescue:

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

      They split their PC manufacturing business into a spearate company, which declared bankruptcy in 2008. Now, they focus on manufacturing memory.

      To most of the people, Micron is known as their consumer brand Crucial Tehnology and Lexar Media.

    2. Re:Micron? Seriously? by Trepidity · · Score: 1

      They had a PC subsidiary, yeah: Micron Computers, from 1995 to 2001. They spun it off in 2001, and it continued under the name MPC until it went out of business in 2008.

      It was never a huge part of their business, though. Micron's a large semiconductor company, and been a dominant player in memory chips for decades. The other stuff they've dabbled in --- consumer PCs, motherboards, briefly video cards, etc. --- seems never to have taken off.

  17. Re:Rall's Law intervenes by binarylarry · · Score: 1

    Yes, but you have to be careful and *not* cross the streams.

    --
    Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
  18. Re:Rall's Law intervenes by Nefarious+Wheel · · Score: 4, Funny

    I hate to correct you here, but equilibrium is dependent upon factors of e, therefore the propation must be the 4th Fibonacci value derivation of the meld process.

    You're joking, right? I thought everybody knew that Fibonacci values were bilaterally stochiocentric and corrupted the Van der Waals stress index at the third integral. How are you going to poststratify the gnomon clatch that way? Gods you're such a n00b.

    --
    Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
  19. 8GB per chip by physburn · · Score: 2, Interesting
    That not bad storage per chip. Now they need to be able to pack 16 of them into a standard flash stick, for 128GB flash sticks. I'll bet they top out at 64GB per stick though. Flash memory is obeying Moore's law and doubling every 1.5 years, Hard Disks aren't growing as quickly any more, so Flash is catching up, all the same, it will probably be 2020 before Flash drives match hard drives for cost.

    ---

    Storage Feed @ Feed Distiller

    1. Re:8GB per chip by Kjella · · Score: 1

      That not bad storage per chip. Now they need to be able to pack 16 of them into a standard flash stick, for 128GB flash sticks. I'll bet they top out at 64GB per stick though.

      If you're willing to pay, there's already a 256GB memory stick, I see it in stock for about 800$ + VAT here, so I guess this makes it possible to go to 512 GB. Not that I really see the sense in this product given the access speed, but I guess it's good for bragging rights.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    2. Re:8GB per chip by Courageous · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Withstanding recently trends in the flash market pointing to a slow down of the very fast price drops that have been happening, flash will beat 15K drives on price within 2 years or so. SATA is 6+ years. That may as well be an eternity in technology time. All bets are off. By then, one of the platter manufacturers could pull a density rabbit out of the hat.

    3. Re:8GB per chip by grumbel · · Score: 1

      All bets are off. By then, one of the platter manufacturers could pull a density rabbit out of the hat.

      But would that even matter? For daily use 200GB have been more then plenty enough for me and that for quite some years. Sure I might have an additional 1TB drive for a video collection, but the core drive in the PC where OS data is stored doesn't really need to be super huge, 256GB at a good price should be enough for almost everyone and if the software would improve to allow caching/swap of frequently used HDD data on the SDD it could even be much less.

      At this point I think raw price of the device is more important then the actual storage you get. A fast SSD drive in the $50-$100 range that HDDs currently have should be enough for mass market adoption of SSD, even when the SSD has only a fraction of the storage.

    4. Re:8GB per chip by Courageous · · Score: 1

      You're question "would that really matter" is a good one. You are right, in the consumer market things are judged on "price per," but rather "just price". In the enterprise mass storage market, however, yes, it will matter quite a lot.

      This is not to say that there might not be an inflection point sooner than raw $$/GB. Savvy operators may have TCO models that switch them over sooner.

      Joe.

    5. Re:8GB per chip by Agripa · · Score: 1

      Hard Disks aren't growing as quickly any more, so Flash is catching up, all the same, it will probably be 2020 before Flash drives match hard drives for cost.

      I have not seen any slow down in hard drive capacity increase since GMR heads were introduced. Track density might have been a problem going forward but dual stage actuators are being introduced.

  20. 1 TB USB Flash drive! by jameskojiro · · Score: 0

    I really would like a 1TB USB flash drive so i can carry around my pr0n collection everywhere and use my new iPad to view it all when I am on vacation!

    --
    Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
  21. Re:Rall's Law intervenes by BradleyUffner · · Score: 4, Funny

    How are you going to poststratify the gnomon clatch that way?

    I use a hammer for that.

  22. Re:Rall's Law intervenes by MobileTatsu-NJG · · Score: 1

    Thats not the case if you use a high-fraternity flux capacitor. I've heard the prazatonic implementation of intergalactical space bizanium will allow you to propate the quadraceptic meld process down to 0.2nm.

    Just like over-inflating a balloon....

    --

    "I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)

  23. Re:Rall's Law intervenes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Excellent troll. I actually tried to understand this word salad for a few minutes.

  24. Re:Rall's Law intervenes by Yvan256 · · Score: 2, Funny

    Especially Realplayer streams.

  25. Re:Rall's Law intervenes by Yvan256 · · Score: 1

    42.

  26. Micron? by dangitman · · Score: 1

    Bah, I'll be much more impressed when we see an Intel-Voltron joint venture.

    --
    ... and then they built the supercollider.
  27. Re:Rall's Law intervenes by argent · · Score: 1

    No good, if you shrink the neutrons they turn into neutrinos and leak out all over the place.

  28. Re:Rall's Law intervenes by Gilmoure · · Score: 1

    Whitworth Hammer?

    --
    I drank what? -- Socrates
  29. And by the way... by Guppy · · Score: 1

    I use a hammer for that.

    The Hammer is my Penis.

  30. Re: SRAM caches by butlerm · · Score: 1

    Oh, btw - the cache has to be SRAM so that if the power goes out, it can write the files when it comes back on.

    That requires a battery or supercapacitor on the drive itself, and while some (expensive) SSDs have the latter, the feature is still relatively rare.

    Of course any serious ("enterprise") application should have a UPS, but uninterruptible power supplies (or the power distribution networks) can and do fail from time to time, for a variety of reasons, so adding a supercapacitor to protect the (block level) integrity of writes that are in progress is an excellent idea.

    Even better, persistent caches allow a storage device to confirm synchronous writes much faster than otherwise, which is a big deal in certain applications, notably databases and email servers. Of course if you are so unfortunate as to be using RAID 5 with these devices, you will need a battery backed RAID controller anyway, in order to close the infamous RAID 5 "write hole".

    Lastly, unless you are using a transactional filesystem, battery backed storage caches will not prevent partially written files from being corrupted if the system loses power, because they are block oriented, not file oriented devices, and are much too small to hold new copies of non-trivial files in any case. A well designed program can work around that limitation though (e.g. write temporary file, fsync, rename) as long as the filesystem itself is journalled.

  31. Re:Rall's Law intervenes by IndigoDarkwolf · · Score: 1

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2v6rXs5J9M

    Bounce a graviton particle beam
    off the main deflector dish
    that's the way we do things lad
    we're making shit up as we wish.

    The Klingons and the Romulans
    pose no threat to us
    'cause if we find we're in bind
    we just make some shit up.