[NEWZ] Mikersoft Proposes Augmenting Flash & Hard Drives

[Platform]

SEATTLE--Microsoft hopes to combine two popular storage media – flash memory and hard drives – in a bid to cut power in future laptops...

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,1585978,00.asp

 

[Mickey]

Ah, thank you for the link. Someone posted this on SR, but it was a link in French, so I could only guess at what it said.

And since I'm still in a silly mood, does MS propose to pay the estimated $6 per drive to add this, plus whatever it costs to rewrite firmware?

(I know, I know, that's just begging the question :mrgrn: Now returning to pulling hair out over how to design something 2 cents cheaper, while MS proposes adding $6/drive *sigh*)

 

[sechs]

I'll ask here:

Why not just got with an unduly large cache?

 

[Dïscfärm]

Why not just got with an unduly large cache?

Large cache is expensive S-RAM. Flash is cheap static memory and can be vastly larger for cheap.

My recommendation is to use, instead, to use Plastic Memory when it becomes available (a.k.a. -- polymer memory). It will be cheaper yet per MB than Flash and probably a bit faster, too.

 

[Dïscfärm]

Why not just got with an unduly large cache?

Large cache is expensive S-RAM. Flash is cheap static memory and can be vastly larger for cheap.

Oh, you were talking drive cache (I was thinking processor cache for some reason).

In the case of a 128 MB (or even 32 MB) hard drive buffer / cache, that would be more expensive and continuously draw more amperage than using a 128 MB Flash memory as a L2 cache.

 

[blakerwry]

howabout cache in D-RAM.. aka system memory.. much faster than a hard drive (or flash on an ATA bus).

 

[Howell]

howabout cache in D-RAM.. aka system memory.. much faster than a hard drive (or flash on an ATA bus).

One of MS stated concerns is with power loss during a write, particularly in laptops.

 

[sechs]

Considering the fairly finite life of current flash technology, shouldn't we be worried about storage failure?

The fact of the matter is the a laptop is less likely to suffer a sudden power loss because it has batteries. Desktops commonly don't, and are far more likely to lose information on a power failure.

 

[ddrueding]

I too think using system memory would be better. Considering they are requiring OS support, the OS could simply stop using the cache when the battery drops too low. Or have a small reserve battery to handle wrting the data back to the drive.

 

[Computer Generated Baby]

Well, almost exactly one year later...

IT LOOKS LIKE IT ACTUALLY HAPPENED:

• 
  SAMSUNG Teams with Microsoft to Develop First Hybrid HDD with NAND Flash Memory
  
  
  Seattle , WA – April 25, 2005 : Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., the world leader in advanced memory technology, today announced that its OneNAND™ Flash memory has been incorporated into the design of Microsoft Corp.'s prototype Hybrid Hard Disk Drive (HDD), the first fully functional disk drive to combine NAND-based Flash with rotating storage media. The hybrid drive, designed to work with the next version of the Windows operating system...
  
  The hybrid drive saves power by keeping the spindle motor in idle mode almost all the time, while the operating system writes to the OneNAND write buffer. Moreover, by using OneNAND Flash with hard disk drive technology, disk drive performance is not compromised relative to conventional disk drives...

More. A lot more:


http://www.samsung.com/Products/HardDiskDrive/news/harddiskdrive_20050425_0000117556.htm