Samsung Demos Future Memory Chips 177
Fletcher points to this story in CNET Asia, excerpting "The Korean electronics giant unveiled an 8-gigabit flash memory chip Monday based on the 60-nanometer process, as well as a 2-gigabit DDR DRAM chip based on the 80-nanometer process. Flash chips, which retain data after a host computer is turned off, are used in flash cards and cell phones, while DDR DRAM is used inside PCs."
Gigabit? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Gigabit? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Gigabit? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Gigabit? (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Gigabit? (Score:2)
Re:Gigabit? (Score:2, Informative)
Plus as someone pointed out, claiming 256MB is not good marketing. The 'general public' is going to sa
Re:Gigabit? (Score:2)
So anyw
Re:Gigabit? (Score:4, Informative)
On a chip you can address every bit individually, or chunks of 4 or 8 bits, depending on your fetch and cash strategy.
However on a DIM/SIM you fetch from all chips one bit each, and those get combined to a byte, or a word or a long word, depending on your architechture and the architectue of the chip/DIM.
The logic on the DIM/SIM is responsible for combining bits from different chips to the words, the processor wants.
Depending on usage of he chip, I mean planned usage, the ship might be organized in arbitrary word sizes. A common word size on a chip can e.g. be 128 bit for video ram.
All the above is "principle" only. Today I guess it is far more complicated.
angel'o'sphere
Re:Gigabit? (Score:5, Interesting)
When I size/plan/order circuits, I need to know raw throughput in bits/sec, because I may be ordering that circuit for a dedicated purpose, which can have significantly different overhead and efficiency than a different purpose.
Whenever you see bandwidth measured in Bps (bytes per second) you are seeing, at best, an estimate. The reason is that people are concerned about *payload* when you mention bytes, not raw throughput.
As overheard increases or decreases per packet (which can be caused by fragmentation, poor application design, etc), then the amount of payload data per packet changes, while the raw throughput does not. Try this as an exercise. Open up an FTP sire via MSIE, and transfer a large file from a decent server near you. Note how long it takes, and the data rate MSIE tells you that it comes in at. Now, open up an MS command prompt, and ftp to that same site, get the same file, and note how long it takes, and the data rate it tells you.
Same site, same link, same file, same OS...two completely different download times/rates.
When I order any circuit...I want to know what the actual bit rate of the line is. I don't want some marketing mumbo-jumbo about 'bytes per second'...I may not even use an 8 bit byte, or, they may use a different interpretation of 'kilo' and 'mega' when quoting data rates. Bit-rate is pure...because a bit is a bit is a bit, and a second is a second is a second.
Re:Gigabit? (Score:2)
Typical reaction: Wow! That's almost 45%
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Gigabit? (Score:2)
"32 megabits! Cool!"
Re:Gigabit? (Score:2, Insightful)
Oh, wow, a 1 GB (not even really) storage card. Whoopdy doo shit. I hope the submitter is the one that is wrong, otherwise sheesh.
Re:Gigabit? (Score:5, Informative)
What is new and interesting (for chip process nerds) about this is the 60nm process. Current chips are generally produced in a 130nm process. There are also 90nm chips in general production, and they're pretty much the shitnitz at the moment.
I don't need this (Score:3, Funny)
QuakeIII is for... is for... oh who am I kidding, I need this like Bush needs credibility.
Re:Gigabit? (Score:5, Informative)
So the the terminology inclined, it is a significant advancement.
A good summary of memory technology is here [arstechnica.com].
Re:Gigabit? (Score:4, Informative)
256megabit doesn't mean a rate, but the fact that it has 256 million bit cells.
Re:Gigabit? (Score:5, Informative)
They are using conventional storage standards. Memory chips have been measured in (multiples of) bits for decades. When I started paying attention, around 1980 or so, the state of the art was something like 4k or 16k bits for DRAM and those chips were 1-bit wide. Even 8-bit wide chips were, and still are, quoted with storage capacity in bits. Again from the early days, an EEPROM with 2048 words of 8-bits each was described as a 16k device.
Further down in the article it is stated that "The flash chip is designed to let consumer electronics designers put up to 16 gigabytes of data on a single memory card". Note that they use the conventional units, bytes, for memory cards.
Remember, different conventions in different fields. You may think its silly, but that's life and you'd better get used to it.
And, since you ask: no, bits doesn't necessarily imply a rate connectivity. Raw connections are usually rated in bits per second but high level data streams, such as ftp download speeds, are often quoted in bytes per second. I do not know whether there is a parallel here between comms and storage in the different conventions used to specify what the raw technology gives you and what is built out of that technology. I would be interested to learn whether it is more than coincidence.
Paul
Memory Bits (Score:2)
As others have mentioned, memory parts are alomst always described in terms of bits, and always have been. I believe there are a few reasons for this.
Not all computers use (or used) eight bit bytes. The PDP-10 (?) and a few IBM machines used nine bit bytes organized as 36 byte words. I also think there were a few machines with sub-eight bit bytes, but I can't think of any right now.
I seem to recall memory some memory parts being available with data bus widths other than eight. Caffine hasn't kicke
Re:Gigabit? (Score:2, Informative)
RAM modules are usually "measured" in bytes. However, RAM chips are, and have always been, measured in bits. Mainly because it used to be common configuration in RAM modules to have 8 chips, and the module's total capacity in bytes would be the same as the chip's capacity in bits.
RAM chips used to be referenced as something like "1x8x1M", which would be eight memory chips, each with one megabit, and accessing one bit of data at once.
A 512MB RAM module usually is 8x8x512M.
I'm su
Re:Gigabit? (Score:2)
This is one thing that drives me nuts in the "IT" world. People get so lazy. When speaking, people (myself included I admit) will mention "100 megabit connections," but in order to talk about a rate, time must be involved. It is assumed that the rate is the given quantity per second. When reading an
Re:Gigabit? (Score:2, Informative)
Putting the word "Byte" on it implies some layout. A memory chip is just a big array of bits and denotes mostly how big/small the chip has gotten. For example, if they say we've made a breakthrough and now are producing 1Tb memory chips using 60nm. This means that they have figured out a way to make a chip using 60nm that has 1Tb as a single unit. Later on, some company using the 1Tb chips can arrange them and design circuits with them to crea
Re:Gigabit? (Score:2)
Good stuff, but currently they are prototypes (Score:5, Insightful)
People tend to get excited about new products like these; in a separate but equally relevant phenomenon, they tend not to RTFA.
From the article:
Both chips, however, are prototypes. Companies just began this year to make chips on the 90-nanometer process. (The nanometer measurement refers to average feature sizes on the chips). Eighty-nanometer chips may not come for at least another year, and 65-nanometer chips won't debut until at least the end of 2005.
In other words, 16GB flash MP3 players will not be available in time for Xmas.
Re:Good stuff, but currently they are prototypes (Score:2)
Yep, that pretty much describes me.
e-had - a purely electronic holy war; i-had - much like an e-had, but it's portable
You forgot bin-had - people who get excited without rtfa.
You know... (Score:3, Funny)
This being Slashdot and all, one wouldn't think that needed to be said. =)
Re:You know... (Score:2)
Re:You know... (Score:2)
Re:You know... (Score:5, Interesting)
Personally, I'm glad Fletcher wrote it that way.
-N
Re:You know... (Score:2)
I want it a high tech and obscure as possible..sometihg 16 year old trolls can't understand.
Re:You know... (Score:2)
So long as tech news is only presented to the people who make it, the bulk of people out there will remain ignorant to the more important issues at play in the tech world. And if you don't think the knowledge presented in the tech world is at least marginally important to many people, then I think those 16-year old troll sites are probably just for you.
-N
Re:You know... (Score:2, Funny)
Thank you for the clarification.
I was convinced that DDR was related to the Dance Dance Revolution phenomenom, and couldn't quite make out what the hell the article was about
DVD Quality? (Score:2, Informative)
Can someone explain to me how 1GB/hr equates to DVD quality? Most DVD films I know of run at 2-4GB/hr...
Sure, low-bitrate DVD is 1GB/hr or less, but is that true "DVD Quality?"
Re:DVD Quality? (Score:2)
Re:DVD Quality? (Score:2)
SVCD on a chip (Score:5, Interesting)
How soon to get 8 gigabytes, so we can put the original DVD? Probably 3 years.
Re:SVCD on a chip (Score:2)
Re:SVCD on a chip (Score:2, Informative)
Hello?! That's 2 gigabit per chip
Those chips are small and your Compact-Flash/DDR modules are usually made of many such chips.
Re:SVCD on a chip (Score:2)
Re:SVCD on a chip (Score:2)
Re:SVCD on a chip (Score:2)
Hey google, what's 8 gigabits in gigabytes [google.com]? Hmm, google says "8 gigabits = 1 gigabytes". Not only did you only pay attention to the 2Gb flash and get it wrong when you said 128MB, since it's actually 256MB, but the comment you replied to specifically talks about "an 8-gigabit flash memory chip" which is 1GB.
Re:SVCD on a chip (Score:2)
I'm just waiting for the day that I can just bring in my keychain into a movie rental store or heck a self serve kiosk at the local convenience store, download the movie onto my keychain and plug it directly into my TV to watch.
Ya, I know, soon we'll be able to download the movies instead of going to the video store but this would be a nice feature for those who don't have broadband or need the movie to be portable.
Re:SVCD on a chip (Score:2)
Usage as Hard Drives? (Score:2, Interesting)
No I have not RTFA, but if the flash ram retains it's data when the PC is off, couldnt we use it as a hard drive substitute rather than a RAM substitute?
That would be pretty cool... Press button on. WHIZZ... Logon screen is there! Nice.. :)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Usage as Hard Drives? (Score:2)
The difficulty is that flash RAM currently isn't as fast as generic RAM and costs more, so it's not a cure-all.
Re:Usage as Hard Drives? (Score:3, Interesting)
You mean like this [gumph.org] ?
Re:Usage as Hard Drives? (Score:5, Insightful)
Dual storage machine? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Dual storage machine? (Score:3, Interesting)
Keep in mind though that when folks hook up a flash drive to their computer that they are not mapping it directly into RAM, rather they are layering on top a file system, so it's not going to be instant
Re:Dual storage machine? (Score:2)
However, if you look at a typical Linux system booting up it actually spends most of its time serially running init scripts, many of which are I/O bound in some way.
The biggest bang for the buck I've heard of is running init through "make" and creating a makefile with correct dependencies for the init scripts so that they can be run in parallel. T
Re:Usage as Hard Drives? (Score:2, Informative)
This is already fairly commonplace (Score:2)
One can already buy Compact Flash to ATA adapters to use CF cards as hard drives. There are two primary drawbacks to this approach at the moment:
CF cards tend to 'wear out' after a certain number of write cycles. Most estimates of lifespan range from 100K to 500K write cycles. (Working from memory - could be off a bit.)
CF cards cost more per MB than traditional magnetic/rotating media drives. The cost means that the largest currently available cards may not be practical for most applications. Howev
Re:This is already fairly commonplace (Score:2)
Serious industrial and aerospace users design for more like 10k cycles max, and even then don't use them in critical applications. One particular CF card manufacturer's claims, which I think you may have seen, are known to have no basis in fact whatsoeve
obligatory: (Score:2, Informative)
2 gigabits = 256 megabytes
And this was quoted from the article, which isn't talking about speed, which would be gigabits-per-second (sometimes abbreviated gigabits), this is size, as in (quote) Both chips hold far more data than current chips in their respective markets and are smaller, which should make them cheaper and more powerful than existing chips.
Smaller, mabey. Higher capacity? No.
Technological neophyte journalists.
~Wx
Re:obligatory: (Score:2)
I use a PDP-9, you insensitive clod!
Seriously, there is a fair amount of non-8-bit hardware out there... That's why we have MIME types that speak of 'octets' rather than 'bytes'.
Re:obligatory: (Score:2)
Re:obligatory: (Score:4, Informative)
Ditto for the flash memory chips. Can't seem to find any 1GB flash chips (again not the drive, just the chip).
Re:obligatory: (Score:4, Funny)
Now if only I could remember where I saw that article...
why is DRAM price not falling like flash? (Score:4, Interesting)
I did read [computerweekly.com] recently there was some price fixing in the DRAM market.
Re:why is DRAM price not falling like flash? (Score:3, Insightful)
In the flash memory market, capacity has more of an impact than speed, since the speeds are effectively fixed by the technology you're using the flash memory with. In the DRAM market, however, speed is much more of an issue. I might not need more capacity a year from now, but maybe I'd like to increase the speed of my memory instead.
I tried finding some data to support this, but to no avail. I do remember buying DDR333 RAM a couple of years ago and hav
Re:why is DRAM price not falling like flash? (Score:3, Informative)
This means that the supply of DRAM remains fairly tight, and that prevents further price reductions. Meanwhile, a glut of flash ram is now developing, and the resulting oversupply is driving flash memory prices into the floor.
Re:why is DRAM price not falling like flash? (Score:2)
Wait till we get a large OS revision from MS that makes half a gig of RAM the starter point and you'll see a shift.
Not just MP3's anymore (Score:2, Insightful)
Mmmm... instant on computers maybe?
Re:Not just MP3's anymore (Score:3, Interesting)
People seem to keep forgetting that flash memory is SLOW, even on just read, writes are often slower yet. I just bought a "4x" CF card, which apparently they want to rate it in terms of CD-R speed. 4x is 600 KB/s. Unless something changes, you will not like the results. To test it out, get Knoppix, put it on a CD and run it on a computer with a 4x read CD rom drive, assuming you can get one that old that can read CD-Rs.
Also, flash is lucky to survive a million writ
Re:Not just MP3's anymore (Score:2)
One of the nice things about Compact Flash is that it was designed to work on an IDE bus. That means that with a cheap, simple
adapter [acscontrol.com], that compact flash card is now an IDE hard drive.
As for keeping the system state, don't power off, use "suspend-to-RAM".
steve
Article Fubared (Score:2)
Can someone explain??? (Score:3, Interesting)
For the same size die, I would expect that the DRAM would hold a little more than the FLASH. Either the FLASH die is huge compared to the DRAM die in this case, or I am missing something.
Can anybody clue me in?
Re:Can someone explain??? (Score:2)
Re:Can someone explain??? (Score:2)
Possibly they can get away with larger die sizes on FLASH because they can get away with errors. Many blocks (up to 1% I think) of a FLASH die are allowed to be bad (but reallocated) at production time, whereas a single bad bit in SDRAM means that die goes in the bin. I guess that makes it possible to have good yields even with large die areas.
Re:Can someone explain??? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Can someone explain??? (Score:2)
I'm assuming that the flash chips are much bigger (in physical size) because they are meant to be used alone (and will cost a lot more), but the DRAM chips are meant to be used in groups in a larger package.
Then again, I might not know what the hell I'm talking about.
component count != size (Score:2)
Re:Can someone explain??? (Score:4, Informative)
In addition to that flash is MUCH easier to produce than dram.
that's certainly impressive... (Score:3, Interesting)
Tell ya whut I would be more impressed with technologically, if some RAM company wants to make a splash and show off some real branez. A smart and adaptive memory chip reader that you could stick in a ram slot like a daughtercard that you could then insert any mix or match multiple RAM sticks into and it would read and access and use them all.
We are awash in so called "obsolete" RAM that is still functional. It used to be just a coupla decades ago we threw away stuff when it was broken. Now we throw away perfectly fine stuff, things that aren't broken, they are just "obsolete" although they might only be a few years old.
Anyone see anything potentially wrong there? Same thing with CPUs. We have SMP mobos (and kernels), how about NON-SMP MO mobos, any braniacs got any examples of that, were you can mix and match older processors and keep using them? I know you can make a cluster whatsis with older boxes, I am talking a single machine that you could add tons of older oddball ram sticks to and plug in a variety of CPUs.
To me, RAM and CPUs should be treated like drives and other peripherals, you should be able to daisy chain them better (different kinds, sizes, functions, etc) on a single machine.
Re:that's certainly impressive... (Score:2)
Re:that's certainly impressive... (Score:2)
what? many of those cars were easy to maintain and keep going. It's now that we are approaching throwaway cars.
There dificult to maintain and cheap.
Something become throwaway when it it cheaper to replace then fix. I can buy a new car for 7 grand. granted it's the bottom of the line, but I could buy one every 5 years and always be under warrenty.
" mix or match multiple RAM sticks into and it would read and access and use them all."
yes, that would be cool, but after a
Re:that's certainly impressive... (Score:2)
And for that matter, computer hardware design. [amazon.com]
Its great that you are jazzed about salvaging older parts; harness this energy to learning about computer design.
P.S.- I threw out my maxxed out PowerMac 7200 dual booting to linux/Mac OS 8. Why? Too slow. I had other machines to work on at home. Love's labour's lost.
How do they fit this? (Score:2, Interesting)
Last I checked, the highest transistor counts we had were around 400-500 million. That's like 1/16 of what would be needed to do this. What am I missing?
Re:How do they fit this? (Score:3, Informative)
Its currently at two bits per transistor. Search for "multi level flash", "mirror bit flash", "NROM"..
man, I can't wait until (Score:2)
640 PetaBytes should be enough for anyone....well everyone, really
This is why I read slashdot (Score:2)
I'm so glad to get useful computer tips like this. This is why I love this forum. You never know when some obscure technology will suddenly become crystal clear by means of a helpful, knowledgeable story poster. My spelling has improved because of Slashdot, too. Thanks, guys! You're real swell.
Sincerely,
A grateful IT professional.
memwear (Score:2)
Re:2GB is a lot on one stick of ram (Score:3, Informative)
As well this is a ram chip, NOT a ram Stick. So you can have a number of this ram chip on one stick to make different sizes of ram sticks.
Re:2GB is a lot on one stick of ram (Score:2, Informative)
RTFpostSubject (Score:3, Informative)
Re:2GB is a lot on one stick of ram (Score:2)
Re:2GB is a lot on one stick of ram (Score:2)
>sake of having more ram. Won't more ram eventually become unnecessary
>with all the bottlenecks computers have?
man top
man iostat
man vmstat
man netstat
Re:2GB is a lot on one stick of ram (Score:3, Informative)
Re:2GB is a lot on one stick of ram (Score:2, Interesting)
I think it'd be a real benefit for massive amounts of RAM to be commonplace, even for the home user. It'd free up system designers to do things a little differently.
(please don't flame me for using the following as an example -- it's simply one system with which I'm familiar, and works in a way that would benefit from 'excessive' RAM)
OS X's document-centric approach to applications means that you rarely need to close programs. The only on-screen overhead a running app has over a closed app is a
Re:2GB is a lot on one stick of ram (Score:4, Informative)
For example, you can buffer transfers that would otherwise go to or from the hard drive, so you spend less time waiting on I/O.
Re:2GB is a lot on one stick of ram. (Score:2)
Even with 10 gigs of ram, you'll still need stuff like swap anyway, for reasons described on http://kerneltrap.org/node/view/3202
Also, think about how you can access memory in a linear way with 4gigs of ram (which is a very large amount of memory pages), some of the operating systems internal data str
Re:2GB is a lot on one stick of ram (Score:5, Interesting)
No... err... rather, something will fundamentally change.
Instead of having a hierarchy of memory (hard drive, ram, cache, etc), you'll see RAM and flash merge into a "universal memory". Everything will come on a single chip - processor and storage. RAM won't be required since the on board storage will be both quick and nonvolatile.
Currently, as much as 75 percent of a processor's area is used for cache memory. This is a number that is increasing, too. This is because RAM is too electrically "distant" from the main processor to be of any high-performance use. The near-term solution has been to pile on lots of cache memory in order to make up for it.
Recently, Ovonyx [ovonyx.com] licensed their phase-change technology to Nanochip [prnewswire.com]. Now, the phase-change technology is the same thing that is currently used in CD/DVD-RWs. With this implementation, they'll be programming and reading the material electronically instead of optically. Since they'll be doing it with MEMS and atomic probes, the density will reach levels of 1 terabit/square inch (125 gigabytes) and will do so very quickly. For more information, see HP's probe storage page [hp.com]. As a side note, HP and Nanochip are just a couple miles apart so it is rumored that Nanochip is hiding the HP plan at this point. Commercialization in 2006 isn't too far off. Also note that Microsoft is an investor in Nanochip as well. Bill Gates mentioned at Cebit that terabit chips will be here "very soon". Something to think about.
Re:2GB is a lot on one stick of ram (Score:2)
So EVERY update, every revision, every EVERYTHING would need a change in the produciton cycle, shipping times, ect)
Its just not very practica, even more considering that 8Gb is just one GB, which is about 50c worth of hd space. Even the socket for the rom chip is more expensive...
Re:Wow... not! (Score:3, Informative)
Because your CF card has more than one chip inside?
Re:DDR DRAM!! (Score:2)
Re:DDR DRAM!! (Score:2)
(Burning mod points)
Re:Geometries? (Score:2)