News - Resistive RAM provides 1TB on a chip smaller than a stamp

[Kumagoro]

What are the read specs like in comparison to nand though. Is it the asynchronous xip read which is 3 orders of magnitude faster 0.04MB for flash versus 17MB for the rram. If so bring on the rram ssds. I am more interested in having a cheap faster boot drive of 64or 128GB than lots of storage.

[crossy]

What are the read specs like in comparison to nand though. Is it the asynchronous xip read which is 3 orders of magnitude faster 0.04MB for flash versus 17MB for the rram. If so bring on the rram ssds. I am more interested in having a cheap faster boot drive of 64or 128GB than lots of storage.

Agree with you on the "bring on the rram ssds" but surely current SSD technologies are getting close, or in some cases exceeding, the capacity of SATAIII, so unless we're going to move to PCIe for storage there's not really much point in a performance hike.

On the other hand, increased capacity would be welcomed by everyone because, at the moment at least, HDD's only make sense when you're talking about volume sizes above 500MB (because large SSD's are very, very expensive). So if we can get 1/2/3TB SSD's then most people are going to be able to replace all their HDDs and then there's the spin-off benefits, such as low-power, silent NAS boxes - ideal for that bedroom hosted media server or living room HTPC!

Like most things, it'll come down to the price - current "going rate" for 1TB drives (or as close as eBuyer etc have) is £500. If that comes down to, say, £200 then that's the upper limit of "affordable" for a lot of folks. Heck, if that came to pass then the only HDD left in my desktop would be the 3TB slab that I used to hold my online backups.

[Kumagoro]

I see what you are saying about storage,I just hope they see the market for a lot cheaper version as a boot drive.

I disagree with there being not much point for faster drives on current sata speeds. Headline speeds maybe saturating but the 4k speeds haven't gone up much for several years now it seems. so if these rram ssds when they exist have significantly better small file performance they would be still worthwhile even on sata1 in my opinion.
Of course that does depend on if my assumption that it's the nand which is holding it back rather than some other bottle neck.

[DanceswithUnix]

I see what you are saying about storage,I just hope they see the market for a lot cheaper version as a boot drive.

I disagree with there being not much point for faster drives on current sata speeds. Headline speeds maybe saturating but the 4k speeds haven't gone up much for several years now it seems. so if these rram ssds when they exist have significantly better small file performance they would be still worthwhile even on sata1 in my opinion.
Of course that does depend on if my assumption that it's the nand which is holding out back rather than some other bottle neck.

On cheap SSDs the interface between the flash chip and the controller can be a bottleneck. Hence you see mention of things like toggle interface flash. I don't know why that hasn't already trickled down to the lower end stuff.

Flash does not allow random writes, hence the technology is classed as PROM not RAM. If all that page management and wear levelling just disappears, that is a whole complicated lookup table system gone and I expect the result will be not just simpler but faster too.

[crossy]

On cheap SSDs the interface between the flash chip and the controller can be a bottleneck. Hence you see mention of things like toggle interface flash. I don't know why that hasn't already trickled down to the lower end stuff.

Erm, it has. From Review: Samsung SSD 840 EVO (120GB)

19nm Samsung Toggle DDR 2.0 NAND Flash Memory (400Mbps)

and since that 840 EVO is a sub £100 drive, I'd class that as "lower end". Although, I'd like to see someone other than Samsung alone using that tech, if the stated benefits are as good as they say.

[1Razor]

Think of the possibilities for the Mobile phone market...... Hmmmm

[DanceswithUnix]

Erm, it has. From Review: Samsung SSD 840 EVO (120GB)
and since that 840 EVO is a sub £100 drive, I'd class that as "lower end". Although, I'd like to see someone other than Samsung alone using that tech, if the stated benefits are as good as they say.

Hmm, 128GB SSDs seem to be starting around £70, and I didn't consider my 256GB Samsung 840 to be lower end when I bought it (sort of mid range).

I guess the spread of prices down at the 120GB size is quite narrow now, so they can all be considered low end, hadn't really thought of it like that!

[sander37]

Now lets see if we can get those SSD prices down lol.

[Ksyruz]

If this is 20x faster than current nand which is 30MiB/s, wouldn't this be only compatible on PCI-E. If so then they are not making it into the SATA market, as SATA would only double to 12Gbit/s by next few years, and current NAND can run at those rates

[Funkstar]

If this is 20x faster than current nand which is 30MiB/s, wouldn't this be only compatible on PCI-E. If so then they are not making it into the SATA market, as SATA would only double to 12Gbit/s by next few years, and current NAND can run at those rates

With SATA 3.2 they will be hitting 2GB/sec, plenty fast enough for R-RAM.

[loyal986]

Thats great news, would be awsome if the price would be low, than they are in bussiness. Give ma na 1Tb SSd and I am satisfied.