Say good bye to your Hard Drive

[Chosonman]

http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/tech/200504/kt2005042618344411790.htm

Samsung, MS to Develop HDD


By Kim Sung-jin
Staff Reporter

Samsung Electronics successfully demonstrated a hybrid hard disk drive (HDD) that combines the rotating storage media with flash memory under the close cooperation with Microsoft Corp. at the annual Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) in Seattle.

The world?s largest memory chipmaker said Tuesday that its OneNAND Flash memory has been incorporated into the design of Microsoft's prototype Hybrid Hard Drive (HHD), the first fully functional disk drive to combine NAND-based flash memory with HDD.

The prototype of the HHD, designed to work with the next version of the Windows operating system (OS), code-named ``Longhorn,?? is being exhibited for the first time at the ongoing WinHEC that will run through to Wednesday.

Samsung Electronics expects the demand for HHD will surge in line with the fast penetration of Longhorn into the worldwide PC market.

The hybrid drive?s architecture includes a 1-gigabit OneNAND Flash memory as a buffer so that the drive can combine the density of magnetic storage, according to Samsung Electronics.

``Samsung?s cutting-edge NAND flash memory acts as a buffer, providing the HHD with fast reads and writes, as well as better power consumption and increased reliability, as the drive's platters can be spun down for longer periods of time,?? said Chae Hee-kook, a Samsung Electronics spokesman.

The HHD consumes one-tenth the power used up by conventional HDDs, thus increasing the battery time of notebook computers by 10 percent, said Samsung.

The unique architecture allows the HDD to cease spinning for long periods while the computer is on, with the computer processor provided with data from the non-volatile flash memory, thus extending the life of HHD twice as long as conventional HDDs.

In addition, the use of a solid-state memory as a front-end to the drive should allow the Longhorn operating system to boot significantly faster, Samsung said.

The value-added HHD, which will cost more than conventional HDDs, will be manufactured by Samsung Electronics? disk drive division as well as other disk drive makers.

Samsung Electronics expects mass production of notebook computers equipped with the HHD to begin in late 2006.

The 1-gigabyte OneNAND fusion memory, manufactured with the state-of-the-art 90-nanometer design rule, combines NAND flash memory, SRAM (static random access memory) and system logic in one chip package. OneNAND Flash was originally designed for memory-intensive applications in third-generation mobile phones, as well as portable communication and computing devices.

Gartner Dataquest projects Microsoft?s new Longhorn OS will dominate 80 percent of the global PC market by 2008.

 

[KB]

MS makes a hardrive? I wonder if you can install Linux on it?

 

[dguy6789]

Originally posted by: KB
MS makes a hardrive? I wonder if you can install Linux on it?

Thats like saying "Intel makes a lan port? I wonder if you can goto amd websites?"

 

[oldman420]

seems clever next they will finally come up with a chip based drive that will not even have a platter at all.
talk about a performance booster

 

[jameswhite1979]

Solid state is the future for sure.

Quantum Rushmore Ultra 5320 3.2Gig solid state drives $28,000 nut not yet at that price!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[oldman420]

wow thats some ssd

 

[sparkyclarky]

looks like it has potential, but I'll believe it when they bring it to market on time and for a reasonable price with significant speed gains over current HD tech

 

[drag]

Originally posted by: dguy6789

Originally posted by: KB
MS makes a hardrive? I wonder if you can install Linux on it?

Thats like saying "Intel makes a lan port? I wonder if you can goto amd websites?"

Not nessicarially. MS likes making things that only work with their OS.

It's more like:
"Intel makes a motherboard chipset? I wonder if you can use AMD cpus on it?"

Which the answer is: "definately not"

For example many hardware manufactures only realy test their DSTS (which is used by the OS to help comunicate with the hardware for ACPI support) with the Microsoft ASL compiler. This thing isn't a very good test and it only realy tests for compliance with Microsoft's OS and not the actual ACPI standard. This is one of the reasons that Linux sometimes has buggy support for ACPI on some items. It's not the developer's fault, it's only tested to work with MS software and thats it and lots of MS stuff doesn't comform to standards. (I don't think that it's much of a problem with newer hardware though). (and MS was part of the group that established the ACPI standard in the first place)

I think that it's likely that it will have some sort of propriatory tie-in that will allow Linux to work fine with it, but not as well as it does with MS software. Like some sort of optimization with the filing system or something like that. Something small, stupid, and annoying.

Then again it may not even be worth it.

Look at it this way:

If the device is much more expensive, say 70 bucks or so, then a regular harddrive, then that means that instead of having the Gig of cache on the drive, you can simply add another 1 gig of regular RAM to your system.

So that would allow you to cache more of the files your system uses, (since the OS caches as much information in the RAM as possible), so you get better performance (the main memory would be much faster then the flash ram on the drive) with more flexibility (you can use the 1gig of RAM if your system ends up having high memory usage).

So the whole idea of blowing your money on flash ram when you can do the exact same thing in regular RAM is just silly if you think about it, unless it's significantly cheaper.

 

[n0cmonkey]

I'll be "that guy" then. I think it'll be pretty much compatible with today's drives. I don't think there will be special drivers for it or anything.

 

[Brent of Liquid5th]

As much as it is fun to bash Microsoft, I can't think of a piece of hardware that MS makes that you can't use with another OS. Their wireless stuff is close, but it all still works fine in a heterogeneous network.

 

[bsobel]

Originally posted by: sparkyclarky
looks like it has potential, but I'll believe it when they bring it to market on time and for a reasonable price with significant speed gains over current HD tech

This is part of the instant on push in longhorn, Microsoft is just specing the drive, they won't be producing it. You'll see this from most vendors around the longhorn time, Samsung was just the reference partner.

Bill

 

[bsobel]

I think that it's likely that it will have some sort of propriatory tie-in that will allow Linux to work fine with it

Drag, are you trying to be VL

If the device is much more expensive, say 70 bucks or so, then a regular harddrive, then that means that instead of having the Gig of cache on the drive, you can simply add another 1 gig of regular RAM to your system.

The main push here is around instant on and battery life, so no, just adding another gig of regular memory to the system does not address why they are developing this drive.

So the whole idea of blowing your money on flash ram when you can do the exact same thing in regular RAM is just silly if you think about it, unless it's significantly cheaper.

Again, you can't do the same thing.

Bill

 

[drag]

Why not?

Now the point of the drive is to reduce battery usage. You use the drive, it cache's information into the flash ram and you operate from this cache.

How is this advantagious over just normal cache in main ram?

The reason, as I understand it, that the flash ram is there is to reduce the amount of times the OS must access the harddrive itself for information and thus allowing the drive to spin down and go unused for longer amounts of time.

So the advantage of the flash cache over main ram is what? As long as the OS is efficient at utilizing RAM I see little advantage.

The only thing I see is that it's non-volitile so you can turn off the device and turn it back on and have the OS load up faster. But with modern power management features on battery-driven devices it's pretty much a non-issue when you use sleep mode and stuff like that.

 

[yelo333]

Originally posted by: drag
Why not?

Now the point of the drive is to reduce battery usage. You use the drive, it cache's information into the flash ram and you operate from this cache.

How is this advantagious over just normal cache in main ram?

The reason, as I understand it, that the flash ram is there is to reduce the amount of times the OS must access the harddrive itself for information and thus allowing the drive to spin down and go unused for longer amounts of time.

So the advantage of the flash cache over main ram is what? As long as the OS is efficient at utilizing RAM I see little advantage.

The only thing I see is that it's non-volitile so you can turn off the device and turn it back on and have the OS load up faster. But with modern power management features on battery-driven devices it's pretty much a non-issue when you use sleep mode and stuff like that.

I believe that is why. If they used regular ram for this, then they can't use it to cache disk writes, or, at least, by default. If they did so, what happens when you lose power? Also, by having this as part of the drive itself, then, when your computer crashes (It's still windows ), you won't lose the data that was waiting to be written to the drive.

Write caching is a risky thing, especially when used over minutes of time. Granted, the 5 seconds or so SMARTDRIVE waited was safe enough, and genuinely improved performance in the DOS world. However, now we are talking 15 minutes or more. Would you _really_ want your data sitting in system ram for that long?

On the other hand, I would rather have the read buffer handled as it's always been, by the OS, using system ram. It seems odd to do it any other way. For something like instant-on, it also seems to me that such a setup would better be implemented outside the hard drive, perhaps on a solid-state HD all it's own. Or, for that matter, why not have a small solid-state HD be for the write cache/instant on stuff, and keep the good old HD as it is?

 

[winterlude]

It seems that the idea for the flash ram on the HD (besides instant on etc.) is to be a buffer for the HD, while system RAM is a buffer for the system. Sure, it seems self evident by the names, but consider the consequences.

For example, say you are downloading something. If the flash buffer has the space, it can hold the download without starting up the HD. Once the buffer's full, the HD starts up again and sorts out what goes where as it empties the buffer. Same would go for office documents. Even on auto save ever ten minutes, the files would be saved to the flash RAM and not technically to the HD, therefore, the HD doesn't have to spin.

Lots of disk intensive task could conceivably receive a huge boost if the HHD is intelligently designed (or perhaps more accurately, if Longhorn is).

It's not the system RAM's job to do the above mentioned things (although it could), because, if there is a crash or a stack dump, you would lose your downloads, saved file back ups etc. which is exactly what you wouldn't want to happen. With this flash RAM on the HD, system crash or not, the info is still there just as if it were on the platters of the HD.

 

[drag]

hm..

I wasn't thinking about writes. It makes more sense that way...

To allow a safe place to stick data in case of system crash, since it's non-volitile flash.

 

[spyordie007]

since it's non-volitile flash.

And that's why it would help so much with fast boot times; because the bootloader and first pieces of data would be sitting in the NVRAM and start loading more or less immediatly.

MS makes a hardrive? I wonder if you can install Linux on it?
----------------------------
Thats like saying "Intel makes a lan port? I wonder if you can goto amd websites?"
----------------------------
Not nessicarially. MS likes making things that only work with their OS.

Bill touched on this a little but I thought I would add in here. Microsoft will not be making the hard drive; the drives will be made by multiple hardware vendors.

It really isnt that much of a stretch to add NVRAM to a HD. People have been talking about it in concept for years, now is just the first time we see someone who is looking to do it en mass.