Slashdot Mirror
Flash Memory, Not Networks, Hamper Smartphones Most
Lucas123 writes "New research shows that far more than wireless network or CPUs, the NAND flash memory in cell phones, and in particular smartphones, affects the device's performance when it comes to loading apps, surfing the web and loading and reading documents. In tests with top-selling 16GB smartphones, NAND flash memory slowed mobile app performance from two to three times with one exception, Kingston's embedded memory card; that card slowed app performance 20X. At the bottom of the bottleneck is the fact that while network and CPUs speeds have kept pace with mobile app development, flash throughput hasn't. The researchers from Georgia Tech and NEC Corp. are working on methods to improve flash performance (PDF), including using a PRAM buffer to stage writes or be used as the final location for the SQLite databases."
While I sympathize with developers who have ambitious ideas, the bottom line is that you have to develop within the limitations of the hardware. If your software is too slow or otherwise suffers in performance, then your software is simply too slow.
Cue stories about how RAM chips were too slow to keep up with cutting-edge video controllers in the 90's.
RAM consumes a lot of power, far more than a NAND disk that can be powered down in between accesses.
Reliable, fast, energy efficient. Choose two.
Isn't this true with any computer system since the dawn of computers?
from plugging in jumper wires to transfer a program from paper to memory, to tape streamers, to magnetic disks, to flash the slowest thing for a computer is its mass storage, always has been, and will continue to be for a very long time