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IBM's Optical Storage Is 50 Times Faster Than Flash, And Also Cheaper (prnewswire.com)
Flash storage is not as fast as the main memory (RAM); but RAM can't be used to store your regular files because of its volatile nature (and also because it's expensive). It appears we may soon have the perfect middle ground of the two. Scientists at IBM have demonstrated reliably storing 3 bits of data per cell using a relatively new memory technology known as phase-change memory (PCM). Engadget reports: To store PCM data on a Blu-ray disk, you apply a high current to amorphous (non-crystalline) glass materials, transforming them into a more conductive crystal form. To read it back, you apply a lower voltage to measure conductivity -- when it's high, the state is "1," and when it's low, it's "0." By heating up the materials, more states can be stored, but the problem is that the crystals can "drift" depending on the ambient temperature. IBM's team figured out how to track and encode those variations, allowing them to reliably read 3-bits of data per cell long after it was written. That suddenly makes PCM a lot more interesting -- its speed is currently much better than flash, but the costs are as high as RAM thanks to the low density.
in the sense that it costs more?
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
That must make it, like, 500 times faster than Silverlight.
If it's cheaper and faster than flash, there is no middle ground. There's RAM and optical storage.
Title says is cheaper than flash.. but if you read the article, it says it is more expensive.
Which one is it ?!
"amorphous (non-crystalline) glass"
So a glass, glass-glass then?
In addition, phase change memory is not "optical". Cr@ppy summary, even for /.
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
Finally! Ternary Digits, now I won't be twiddling bits all day.
Compare next gen tech to next gen. What I want to know if if it's going to make a dent price/size/performance wise versus 3D XPoint.
How much parity does it need? Track and encode variations? Sounds dubious... what if the tracking fails or misses a beat? What about random local heating?
Might be a neat technology for certain applications but I can't imagine relying on it to store data any more than RAM... even if it's irrational I'm pretty sure that's how the market would see it too... So unless they can make it cheaper than RAM, they probably won't ever sell it.
This has been researched since the 1960s, but it just was never viable for commercial production. Yes, this is a mojor breakthrough, but it's facing heavy competition. Intel/Micron's new memory tech will be out and it has already been demonstrated to be 1000 times faster than flash.
How does it compare to f-ram?
Despite the use of the term "optical" there is nothing optical or "blue-ray disk" about this. Calcogenide glass is the PCM material. It is written and read with the application of voltage. There is no spinning disk involved.
The most obvious omission is a comparison to the Micron/Intel 3D Cross Point memory announced last summer and scheduled for commercial introduction in 2017. 3DXP is 1000 times faster than flash (not just 50 times faster). There would also seem to be a number of patent issues since 3DXP also uses calcogenide crystals as the storage medium.
It is journalistic malpractice to write an article like the two linked here without comparing the IBM research to the previously announced work by Micron and Intel.
"He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
The 3d xpoint resistive memory being developed has higher density than flash, should be manufacturable with modest changes to exising fab methods, has no write life limitations, is way faster than flash, does not need to be updated in large blocks like flash, does not use exotic materials, and should be cheaper than flash once mature.
Why are we considering physical phase change materials that have potential write life issues from crystal grain migration/unexpected crystal growth over the cell domans, when we have functioning prototypes of a vastly superior technology, just looking for backers?
This may be useful for new optical discs, but xpoint will make that obsolete too.
Agreed, I'm really confused how blu-rays come into this discussion. Yes, Blu-Rays, DVDs, CDs, they read and write data based on the phase of medium, but it really has nothing to do with PCM. Blu-Ray is an optical disk, PCM is an electrical system...
strange.. very stragen..
Website about the research(note, there is a list of papers too... this "news" is actually from 2015) https://www.research.ibm.com/l... Youtube video: https://youtu.be/q3dIw3uAyE8 And yes... they only have a prototype. There are still lots of possibly, maybe, somedays in this announcment.
PCM is not limited to re-writable Blu-Ray, it is actually used in memory chips.
Micron used to manufacture PCM memory chips and dropped them in 2014. There are also some debate regarding whether IMFT's 3D XPoint is also PCM or not.
The real innovation in IBM's work is turning PCM into a TLC, and that is really impressive.
You can find much better info at just about any tech blog. Slashdot is an OK place to have some laughs watching anti-government nuts derp at each other, but it's terrible for technology news. I recommend getting your news from a tech blog, getting your anti-government derp from a Breitbart propaganda site (or Glen Beck if you like the hard stuff), and skipping Slashdot completely.
I am not sure what tier this storage goes in, as for price/capacity, where CPU registers are the most precious and tape, cloud, or big, slow DASDs are on the other scale of speed/price.
Does it go under flash, but "above" spinning rust? The BD example made it seem that IBM is wanting to make another CD-PD, which was a storage format that lasted a few years until CD-R and CD-RW became mainstream, where a drive could read CDs, as well as use a specific optical cartridge.
Personally, I would love a high density, cheap optical storage medium. Optical disks are easier to manipulate than tapes (wasn't that long ago when everyone had 400 CD autochangers), and because of the size, can be stored with more units in a given space than tapes. If the optical medium is cheap and WORM, that would provide excellent protection against ransomware, as well as the ability to store media offline.
If it goes between flash and spinning disks, that isn't really a useful market niche, as flash is getting cheaper all the time.
Oh wait that's still 10 years away too!
It sounds cool, but how does it incorporate lasers and virtual reality while traveling at warp speed?
What is the "optical" part of TLC PCM is?
One of the few techs to actually hit market within about 10 years of being proven feasible.
It's good stuff, but this stuff is slow in comparison to Intel/Micron's stuff.
If IBM partnered with AMD on making a 3D stacked version of this, they could easily catch up or even be faster, with higher bandwidth to boot.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
"thanks to the low density"...
No, I think you mean "BECAUSE of the low density", idiots. You make it sound like the costs being as high as RAM is a good thing, when you use the word "thanks". Fucking American cretins. Is there no end to the way you can butcher the English language, because of your inability to remember words correctly? Can't remember the correct word? Just put another one in its place! Don't bother finding out what the correct word is, just spread the stupidity so that others start copying it too!
Like "more that" and "more then" instead of "more than". Fucking idiots.
Look at the bright side you can power it with a fusion reactor.
"To store PCM data on a Blu-ray disk, you apply a high current to amorphous (non-crystalline) glass materials, transforming them into a more conductive crystal form. To read it back, you apply a lower voltage to measure conductivity -- when it's high, the state is "1," and when it's low, it's "0.""
1. We do not write to blue ray disc by applying a voltage, we shine lasers at it.
2. The summary seems to have confused the fact that Chalcogenide is used in both RW Optical media, and phase-change memory.
3. The summary thinks that IBM has invented a new optical memory, when they are clearly talking about phase-change memory.
4. The summary has confused two acronyms of PCM - Phase Change Memory and Pulse Coded Modulation.
This whole summary is utterly cringe-inducing and complete garbage. Sorry.
Like to have non battry backed ram temp disk that does not need to even have all matched speeds.
That can make good use of all older ram that people have laying around.
The laser control on a BD-R Blu-Ray writer uses PWM. Change the W to a C and it's PCM. Then somehow it becomes this new thing.
So uh, in summary... Slashdot is good for nothing. Even if you did not terrible advertisements and worthless commentary, you're better off with reddit, or god forbid... some conde-naste "tech news" site. I heard they completely destroyed Arstechnica(RIP)
HP's memresistor project "The machine" is going to so thrash this technology to hell and back. They are talking about petabytes of data as fast as ram. You won't need to have a separation between ram and disk anymore. They already have prototype and they should show up in a few years.
http://fortune.com/2016/03/02/...
Good job, IBM. Take Warren Buffet down with you. And keep offshoring everything.
Does anybody remember all the hype they unleashed over bubble memory? How about the much more recent hype about atomic memory, complete with pics and animations of the atomic scale caterpillar moving atoms? There are other examples in between those two and even more recent, those two were just the really interesting "breakthroughs".
It seems the once mighty R&D giant is sinking and some of their people are just occasionally trying to preserve the illusion that their divisions are of value and should be preserved in the next round of M&A or sell-offs rather than be shut down. When IBM sold off their hard drives division, I thought that was a sneaky sign that they were ready to roll-out one of their amazing new storage technologies, that hard drives were about to be very obsolete, and that the buyers of the HD division were about to be exposed as suckers. No such thing, it seems. The hard drive sell-off was just another in a long series of dying gasps.
These occasional bits of hype about an amazing new leap in tech seem to be like Moller and his flying cars; occasional bursts of PR for an entirely different set of business reasons and not in any way linked to an actual product that will ever be mass produced and sold. Sort of like Nuclear fusion: always "just 20 years away"...
Wake me up when something they have hyped hits the Amazon.com warehouse.
Talk is cheap and so is IBM...bunch of cheap whores