Apple Notebook with Robson Caching?

[backspinner]

battery consumpion in sleep depends on the amount of RAM it has to keep alive

 

[iMeowbot]

Just how much faster is the transfer rate of NAND over HD? I can see the use of NAND memory to store OS states, so you can turn off a laptop without having to reboot, similar to saved states in Virtual PC. A very useful option.

You're really going to be running into the diminishing returns problem there. A ten second boot vs. 2 minutes is a major usability difference. Ten seconds down to a couple less? Meh. I don't think that truly instant on is going to be practical for general purpose computers for a while yet, there are still things that will cause delays, such as peripherals that need to wake up and report that they're ready. Even keyboards and pointers have little processors that need to start up.

Second point, isn't there limited write-erase cycles on NAND memory, like there is on compact flash memory, or they the same thing?

Yep, same thing. There's a finite life to all read-write media, including magnetic disks. Flash would hold up to having stuff written fairly often, sya a few times a day, but it's not a place you might want to store temp or swap files.

 

[BOOMBA]

I agree it sounds like something that would be useful in a media center PC DVR thing that needs to turn itself on quickly at a certain time to record something, or so you don't have to wait a minute before you can watch a DVD or something.

More like regular "TV start up times".

 

[MacQuest]

DigiTimes rocks!!!

 

[CaptainHaddock]

The speed of Flash RAM would probably depend more on how the memory units are accessed. If you put many memory units into a kind of speed-optimized RAID, you could read and write data very quickly, at the same speed as volatile RAM.

Considering that, a 50% speed boost for booting and launching your most frequent applications isn't such a bad idea; or else, as suggested, Macs could gain an instant sleep function that didn't use up any battery power. My iBook does run out of battery power after two days or so asleep. Sleeping to Flash RAM would be good for 10,000 sleep cycles or so.

 

[Spock]

or so you don't have to wait a minute before you can watch a DVD or something.

A little off topic but i think HP just released a new notebook that can play DVDS without booting up the computer its pretty cool

Im on a roll here but the thing is called Quick Play and v2.0 is on a upcoming notebook with what looks like it has a intel Yonah

 

[blakbyrd]

A little off topic but i think HP just released a new notebook that can play DVDS without booting up the computer its pretty cool

Im on a roll here but the thing is called Quick Play and v2.0 is on a upcoming notebook with what looks like it has a intel Yonah

Yeah, I heard about that. Pretty cool.

 

[06m1r3m86]

Some of ya'll are asking how this makes booting times faster. Well, the way I understand it, in order for a computer to boot, the info has to be transfered from the Hard Drive to the RAM. Since NAND is RAM and it retains data even if it doesn't have power, the instant it does have power it can boot almost instantly from the flash memory and then transfer things into main RAM once the computer is up and running.

 

[gnasher729]

I was under the impression that NAND memory was, though faster than older types, still slower than standard hard drives...how would this improve boot time?

MacOS X boot times are irrelevant anyway; how often do you boot your Macintosh?

Flash memory is a bit different from harddisk: 1. Access time is much much lower. You can read any byte almost immediately from Flash; on a harddisk it takes several milliseconds until you can read or write the data. 2. Transfer rates are much much lower than on a harddisk; only one or two megabyte per second instead of 50. 3. Power consumption is much much less. With a harddisk, you need to keep a huge amount of mass rotating at 5400 rpm; that takes a lot of battery life.

If you make a copy of a 5 GB folder; flash memory will not be able to help at all. But for many uses, flash memory in a laptop together with a clever operating system will be able to save a lot of energy, and possibly make the laptop even run faster; mostly if your applications access lots of small chunks of data.

 

[mdavey]

MacOS X boot times are irrelevant anyway; how often do you boot your Macintosh?

The idea is to remove the difference between wake-from-sleep and boot, so that when a computer sleeps, it is using no power and when it boots after a power loss, it starts almost instantly. Leaving today's desktop computer on standby isn't energy-efficient. Leaving today's laptop computer on standby drains the battery.

 

[azzurri000]

Warning: very newbish question ahead -> Would this technology make the notebooks more expensive?

 

[iMeowbot]

Warning: very newbish question ahead -> Would this technology make the notebooks more expensive?

I'd assume so, but even at retail a GB of name brand flash is pretty cheap these days.

 

[Norse Son]

Digitimes is like the ugly sister in the family. We'd all like to forget about her, but we can't.

I guess we can just shove her in the closet.

Here's to the Crazy Ones ​

Heck, about a month ago one site on the Net was quoting Digitimes and a rumor they had - based on "reliable sources" that Apple would release Yonah PowerBooks in Taiwan in... late Spring, or June? And they were talking about the worldwide debut, too, not just the Taiwanese market... Why would Apple release a Yonah PowerBook in Taiwan, months after their PC competitors, and in June, right when they're focusing on WWDC?

No, I haven't put much faith in anything DigiTimes has said for a couple of years now...

And speaking of relatives, DigiTimes kinda reminds me of that crazy, one-wide-eyed & scowling, grizzle-bearded uncle, who sat on the porch drooling & snoozing the day away, but then would suddenly rustle to life and bellow out, "Back when I was a kid, we used to have to spacewalk 5 miles to school through an asteroid field both ways, and had to share one umbrella during meteor showers... zzz... And did I tell you about the time I gave old Gracknee Brrrz 3 black eyes and a broken antennae just for lookin' at my girl with his horns tied behind his back... zzz..."

Still, a flash drive would be handy if it was big enough to store the MacOS X environment (keep a continuously-updated copy on main hard drive)... Kinda how a traffic cop can see better what's going on at a busy intersection if they're looking down on it, and can then better direct traffic to avoid accidents & bottlenecks - does that make sense? How it would work with NAND flash is a tad beyond my knowledge... But Apple can't be putting all those flash chips they've been buying up between now and 2010 in iPods - where are they gonna put 'em?

 

[Norse Son]

this flash caching i bet is what'll be used on intel macs, not just because of instant bootup, but for anti-piracy. want to stop people stealing something? chuck part of it on a Flash chip. sorted

After I left this afternoon that same idea occured to me, too. It sure didn't take long for MacOS X x86 to appear on the web after developers started receiving the kits following WWDC. And I'm not putting much faith in the TPM chips Apple will likely use on its Intel systems, so this kinda makes sense.

If MacOS X doesn't find the Apple-certified mobo + TPM + NAND-disk combo on a computer it will refuse to install and/or boot... The TPM could well be used by other PC manufacturers, but I doubt they could duplicate the NAND-disk's embedded instructions in order to load MacOS X. So, until such time as Apple decides it makes business sense to license MacOS X - and, by extension, the TPM/NAND-disk - to Dell, HP, Sony, et al, it will be near 100% certainty (I did say, "near") that only Apple's Mac + Intel will tri-boot (MacOS X, Linux and... ugh... Windows).

 

[mac15]

I don't know what the heck you guys are talking about. I know my laptop and two other friends who can go to sleep for hours and maybe lose 1-2% charge. And we are talking about a two year old 17" pb, month old 15" pb and 5 month old 14"ibook. Maybe the three of us are lucky, but this is the first I have heard of 10% battery loss in sleep mode (cover shut). Matter of fact, I could swear I have gone 24+ hours with maybe 8% power loss.

Thats right, they don't have a clue what they're talking about. My powerbook could sleep for a week or two although I don't think I could leave it there that long to test it out