Apple Notebook with Robson Caching?

[MacRumors]

Digitimes again is making waves on the Mac web about a possible use of Intel technology in upcoming Macs.

Although Intel only demonstrated its Robson cache technology in the fourth quarter of last year, sources now claim that Apple Computer will launch a notebook computer in the middle of this month that utilizes the NAND flash based cache memory technology.

Robson utilizes NAND flash memory instead of the hard disk for computer startup and launching frequently used applications. The use of this technology would allow for faster boot up times and improved battery life in portables utilizing the technology.

Apple is widely rumored to be announcing the first of the Intel based Macs next week at Macworld San Francisco.

Digitimes, however, as a source has been consistently unreliable. There maybe a small exception to this, in that they did predict 2GB and 4GB iPod shuffles back in June. One could read into this as possibly referring to the recently released iPod nano (2GB and 4GB sizes). That being said, it's unclear if we can give Digitimes the benefit of the doubt. According to them a widescreen iBook and G5 iBooks and G5 PowerBooks were all due in 2005.

[WildCowboy]

Digitimes is going to have to hit a lot more rumors on the head before I'll actually believe one of them.

I'll believe this one when I see it...

[SiliconAddict]

Sounds like the same tech that is being codeveloped between Microsoft and I think Toshiba. Prob wrong on that. Vista is supposedly going to be taking advantage of this uber cache. What is more interesting is the fact that right here there are competing technologies being developed. Microsoft vs. Intel. Very interesting.

[bigandy]

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

[StealthRider]

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?

[gnasher729]

Originally Posted by StealthRider

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]

Originally Posted by gnasher729

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.

[Diatribe]

Originally Posted by bigandy

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

That might actually be a pretty good reason to use it. Put part of the system on there that is needed and that does its checks from there so it cannot be altered and you have yourself a viable anti-piracy option.

[Doctor Q]

AppleInsider picked up the story too.

[iMeowbot]

Apple could get very quick boots in many cases by doing a cache to disk right now. If state was saved when the system gets to the login screen, the same restore used for safe sleep could be used. If the quick boot fails (say, because the hardware configuration has changed), if could fall back to a conventional boot. I don't see where flash would add any sort of major boost to this.

[Norse Son]

Originally Posted by bigandy

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).

[Mac_Freak]

This technology has only few benefits, and it benefits Macs less. All it does is that it allows you to boot your system faster, but with Mac you just put your system to sleep in 2 sec and wake it up in another 2, which is what you can't say about Windows. Also this year a new HDD are to come out with the new perpendicular writing technology which will improve capacity as well as performance of them. Current HDD are capable of reading at speeds of 50MB/s, just how much faster that NAND memory can be?

[BlizzardBomb]

I really want a fast-boot system. Sleep is a total waste of electricity.

[yankeefan24]

Originally Posted by BlizzardBomb

I really want a fast-boot system. Sleep is a total waste of electricity.

I put my laptop to sleep last night with a full charge. Less than 20 hours later, i lost over 10% of battery charge. I just use sleep because i like apps like ichat mail and safari to stay open. When i boot up it takes forever for ichat to log in and safari and mail are also slow. This is something i'm hoping for, but i have to say that the rumor might not be reliable. BUT APPLE ALWAYS HAS TRICKS UP STEVE JOB'S SLEEVE.

[hscottm]

Just an obvious point - IF theres a PVR-type thing coming to market, this would be quite handy.

[Superhob]

The way I understand it, Robson is primarily intended to save power. When you put your mac to sleep, it is using battery power to keep the ram "alive" until you wake up the computer. Try leaving your powerbook or ibook on sleep overnight and you'll notice a fairly sizeable drop in battery charge.

Robson uses NAND flash, similar to the one in the nano, to store data without the need for a constant power draw.

[nagromme]

I assume this means there would still be an HD.

HD-less NAND-only sounds great, but would cost too much... for now.

[Mac_Freak]

Originally Posted by Superhob

....Robson uses NAND flash, similar to the one in the nano, to store data without the need for a constant power draw.

Isn't there some kind of new RAM memory under development that will allow you to do that?

[Diatribe]

Originally Posted by Mac_Freak

Isn't there some kind of new RAM memory under development that will allow you to do that?

Yes. I forgort the name though. But it is available only in small sticks like in the two digit area of MBs.

[macnews]

Originally Posted by Superhob

The way I understand it, Robson is primarily intended to save power. When you put your mac to sleep, it is using battery power to keep the ram "alive" until you wake up the computer. Try leaving your powerbook or ibook on sleep overnight and you'll notice a fairly sizeable drop in battery charge.

Robson uses NAND flash, similar to the one in the nano, to store data without the need for a constant power draw.

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.

[backspinner]

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

[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.

[mac15]

Originally Posted by macnews

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

[grahamtriggs]

Well, whilst trying not to make any real comment on Digitimes accuracy, there is an interesting way to look at the highlighted 'false' rumours:

G5 ibook / powerbook - talks about 2Q 2005, which might lead towards a WWDC announcement... and may have been on the cards in January, and switch to Intel decided afterwards when it wasn't going to work out...

Widescreen iBook - talks about 4Q 2005. Possible postponment, or even production ready for January with Intel processors (as rumours seem to be suggesting widescreen Intel iBooks).

I'm not trying to defend Digitimes, but maybe these weren't as far wide of the mark as they seemed at the time?

[thejadedmonkey]

Originally Posted by grahamtriggs

Well, whilst trying not to make any real comment on Digitimes accuracy, there is an interesting way to look at the highlighted 'false' rumours:

G5 ibook / powerbook - talks about 2Q 2005, which might lead towards a WWDC announcement... and may have been on the cards in January, and switch to Intel decided afterwards when it wasn't going to work out...

Widescreen iBook - talks about 4Q 2005. Possible postponment, or even production ready for January with Intel processors (as rumours seem to be suggesting widescreen Intel iBooks).

I'm not trying to defend Digitimes, but maybe these weren't as far wide of the mark as they seemed at the time?

I agree, it seems like Digitimes was blasted more than necessary.

However, rumor wise, f*** iWeb, THIS is the real rumor. who cares who reported it, iWeb was around in 2004 or something too. this should be page 1.

Ok, I'd love this in a laptop. Turn off the hard drive, use Ram...uber battery save.

I read on the new vista site that Vista will have this too.