Vista with a Flash

[rabb1t]

DailyTech - 7/26/6 - Samsung's 4 GB Vista flash SSD to be priced under $200 (http://www.tgdaily.com/2006/07/26/update_4gb_ssd/)

Following the announcement of its 4 GB solid state disk (SSD) flash drive late yesterday, Samsung today clarified some open questions and provided additional information about the product to TG Daily.

According to a spokesperson, the drive will be targeting owners of high-end PCs that intend to accelerate the performance of their Windows Vista PCs. The drive is likely to be available to system vendors to be pre-installed into new PCs as well as to the retail market to enable users to upgrade PCs they already own.

In addition to a 2.5" form factor, Samsung will also offer a 1.8" version. Both drives can be mounted in regular 2.5" slots within the PC case.

Samsung has not released pricing on the device, but told TG Daily that it would charge a "slight premium" over the wholesale price of flash memory, which is currently around $65 for 4 GB chips. According to PriceGrabber.com, the average etail price for current 4 GB flash products ranges from about $80 to $200, depending on manufacturer and product.

Samsung declined to specify a price range of the device when it launches, but mentioned that a "price below $200 would be a reasonable assumption."

I'd consider that if it were a big enough speed gain. However, properties on my windows directory is showing 3.8 gig, and I'd be worried about the 4 gig drive 'forgetting' it had windows and my PC not turning on one day. :p

Odd I haven't seen any news about these new 4 and 8 gig sizes going onto a Hybrid hard drive. If I recall those were slated for early '07.

[Fozzik]

What makes me skeptical about this new tech is the bus speed. The aren't using anything fancy...just the regular old parallel ATA bus running at 100 MB/s or whatever, and supposedly the transfer rate on these SSDs is something like 57 MB/s. If true...that isn't any faster than the hard drive I have now, which was cheaper and about 100x the size.

I guess I'm just really not understanding the benefit as far as speed goes. I know the latency would be lower, because there's no drive to spin or heads to move...but if you are dealing with the same max bandwidth on the bus, how can it be that much faster?

[Razorwire]

it looks more like a laptop tech to me and it would have the added bonus of lower power consumption AND more shock resistant incase you dropped your laptop.

but what I think they are taking about is Vista's reported capability to use a flash drive like "extra memory" or as a paging location (I can't remember which), as an extra hdd it doesn't appeal but as a paging location it may just help out.

[Fozzik]

Yeah, Vista has the super paging or whatever that allows it to use pretty much any memory device (even USB memory sticks) as a cache for the hard drive. So it would work sort of like virtual memory...but like I said, if it isn't any faster what's the point? I guess any time you can move your paging file to a second drive which is idle, it improves performance some.

[Razorwire]

Yeah, Vista has the super paging or whatever that allows it to use pretty much any memory device (even USB memory sticks) as a cache for the hard drive. So it would work sort of like virtual memory...but like I said, if it isn't any faster what's the point? I guess any time you can move your paging file to a second drive which is idle, it improves performance some.

I think the idea is to get rid of the seek time.

I don't understand it so I am probably totally off base.

[akherat]

Another take:

typically, the 2nd slowest access to data a Windows computer can make is to the paging file on the hard drive. By inserting a solid state flash drive of 4 GB (with a 2GB PC, a 3.5 GB page file would be standard), you can take the paging file off the disk completely. This would, especially for AMD based architectures, make the paging file like a L4 or L5 cache - you'd see a huge performance increase in hitting page files, because the 4 GB device would talk at SATA 2.0 burst speeds through the HyperTransport link directly to I/O interface on the CPU.

So for something like Vanguard, when you load in the map section you're in and the surrounding map sections, depending on size of sections, etc., some of those sections might end up in the page file rather than in physical ram. Having them on a solid state flash "in front" of the HDD would make accessing those sections much, much faster.

Essentially, this would provide a performance increase to people who load large amounts of information into RAM (generally speaking, enthusiasts/gamers).

[Fozzik]

...because the 4 GB device would talk at SATA 2.0 burst speeds through the HyperTransport link directly to I/O interface on the CPU.

That sounds awesome...except the Samsung SSD device which started the conversation is a parallel ATA 100 device. :p

That's the reason I was asking in the first place. It seemed silly to have a potentially much faster drive bottlenecked by a (relatively) slow bus.

None of that really matters though since, as I already mentioned, the sustained transfer rate of these first Samsung SSDs is something around 57 MB/s. Not a barn burner by any stretch...that's pretty much the same as sustained transfer rates for your typical hard drive.

As was mentioned, the only potential benefit is the lack of seek time...and I'm really not sure how (or in what situations) that would really benefit you.

[akherat]

As was mentioned, the only potential benefit is the lack of seek time...and I'm really not sure how (or in what situations) that would really benefit you.

Heh, okay, I didn't really look all that hard at the product, and missed the ATA-100 thing.

The premise I suggested is still valid, in that putting the windows page file on the device eliminates the need to hit the disk, which will speed things up - at ata100 speeds it wouldn't be as significant as if it were SATA, but it would still be a performance boost.

I would hope to see a SATA version of this device in the future, particularly once Vista gets closer.

[akherat]

I actually read through both articles this time :)

I was sort of correct, in that they will function as an L4 or L5 cache - basically they will be used to store data that was typically stored in the paging file in the hard drive, only since these devices are larger, they will be able to do a bit more (and have more, individual paging files), and Vista will have the api's in place to use them for things like holding the system state using less power, so that recovery from sleep is virtually instant.

As for where you will actually "see" the benefit, have you ever been working in an application and then clicked over to another application, and it paused or took a moment for the screen to populate the data? That lag is what these devices are designed to eliminate.

There is a SATA version mentioned that will ship next month.

[rabb1t]

As was mentioned, the only potential benefit is the lack of seek time...and I'm really not sure how (or in what situations) that would really benefit you.

Choose your own (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choose_Your_Own_Adventure#Choose_Your_Own_Adventur e_books) porn?

Wouldn’t save and loads go quicker too? Since those are typically stored in “my documents” which defaults to C?