Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
With the cost of flash memory, couldn't they put 8GB flash in there for OS and Apps and a 1.8" or 2.5" drive for data. Quick boot, less power draw for OS and Apps, accesses drive only for other data, swaps open docs, files, etc to flash while in use, writes to drive upon save/close.

That is the intention. Why on earth people are moaning about how their laptops wont have much space because of flash limitations is a load of crap at this point.

The initial concept is to use flash based memory to boot and do the menial tasks to avoid the spool up and down of the drives and thus reducing wear and gaining battery life. There will be an additional traditional drive in their for the data.

Sure that will change over time as flash based memory prices and sizes changed but at this point in time it appears the majority of the people on this thread have missed the point!
 
flash based....huh?

ok so I don't exactly understand how flash based laptops work. Can someone either give me a crash course or lead me to something that explains it. Would the laptop still have ram and flash memory? Would the ram be removed and flash memory is placed in the laptops instead? I have no clue how it would boot faster and save battery life...someone please help:rolleyes:
 
ok so I don't exactly understand how flash based laptops work. Can someone either give me a crash course or lead me to something that explains it. Would the laptop still have ram and flash memory? Would the ram be removed and flash memory is placed in the laptops instead? I have no clue how it would boot faster and save battery life...someone please help:rolleyes:

Just like Nanos vs. video iPod, you get longer battery life out of a device that accesses data from a flash drive because it doesn't have any moving parts. Hard drives take more energy and longer read times because of the moving parts. The flash replaces the hard drive and not the RAM.
 
On the contrary. I hope he does. His ass needs to be humbled.

-Clive

I think you are right, if a bit assertive in your presentation :)

Flash is just now starting to ship at 16gb which means it will take MONTHS to experience its first price drop from bleeding edge user price to premium application price. Apple typically comes in shortly after that point and does a supply agreement with a huge cash deposit and "averages down" its cost and the contract allows Apple to immediately capture any unexpected price drops. They cited that in 1Q07 results in January.

Seagate has announced 1.8" 120gb microdrives.

The "next iPhone" (ATNN) with a larger display and possibly an optical drive could easily have flash+HDD+wireless broadband.

802.11a/b/g/n of course, but how about 802.16 wimax?

Companies, cities, and even some cell companies are preparing for a massive wimax rollout (wireless broadband internet with ranges similar to analog cellular). 6G.

By the time the Tablet device we are discussing is shipping in quantity, it could maybe be as early as Christmas 07 (11-23-07) but more likely early 08. We'll see.

By then wimax will have been deployed to some degree in most big cities. You know, where Apple stores are located.

I hope to see that. Then the pressure to have significant "local storage" or HDD or flash is substantially reduced by immediate access via broadband to your server, Apple's server, Google's server, FROM ANYWHERE.

Rocketman
 
ok so I don't exactly understand how flash based laptops work. Can someone either give me a crash course or lead me to something that explains it. Would the laptop still have ram and flash memory? Would the ram be removed and flash memory is placed in the laptops instead? I have no clue how it would boot faster and save battery life...someone please help:rolleyes:

Roland.g has half of the picture right.

"Flash" (NAND Flash, Flash drives, etc) can be considered cousins of RAM, both of which reside in the solid-state storage family. Solid-state is fast because, as others have said, it does not require spinning up to speed and searching for bits of data on a platter. With a solid-state chip one applies voltages on certain leads of the chip, and, accordingly, a bit associated with that combination of input leads is "released" on output leads. So, basically, to run a solid-state chip, you apply a bunch of different combinations of voltages across the chip, and different voltages are spit out at (and interpreted by) the processor. The speed of accessing these bits is limited only by the clock speed of your system and the "slew rate" (time it takes to change voltage from 'on' to 'off' or vice versa) of the components used.

Of course, that is the very simplistic view of solid-state chips. As increasing capacity and other factors become involved, the equation becomes much more complicated, and things slow down. I don't know much about that. I only took entry-level circuits ;).

How this applies to how your computer runs:

Your computer's HD has a boot-sector. That is the information used by the computer required to start up and launch an OS. Since this is typically stored on a regular HD, it takes time to spin through and read all the necessary bits of info. If the boot sector was located on a solid-state chip, boot times *could* be near instantaneous - limiting factors would be the internal bus speeds and crap like that.

What others have said, however, is right: solid-state reliability wears down over time, much like a recharable battery. Improvements have been made, but greater strides must be taken, still, before we convert solely to flash. There are millions of tiny read/writes that occur when we use our PCs, and flash memory can't quite handle that yet.

Hope this helps!

Anyone else, please correct me where I may have misspoken.

-Clive
 
Small size has high value for me. If flash allows something even thinner, I'm willing to pay for that. I'm willing to accept being unable to transport 100s of GB of my accumulated data, even. 32 GB is usable, especially if upgradable.
 
What others have said, however, are right: solid-state reliability wears down over time, much like a recharable battery. Improvements have been made, but greater strides must be taken, still, before we convert solely to flash. There are millions of tiny read/writes that occur when we use our PCs, and flash memory can't quite handle that yet.

Hope this helps!

Anyone else, please correct me where I may have misspoken.

-Clive
Sounds like you know more than I do on this so no challenge here. But I do want to emphasize your last point which I left inside the quotation box.

I think this is one of the main reasons why an all solid-state flash drive laptop will not occur for another 2-3 years. Price for solid state is going down fast, but it's this limiting read/write cycles that sounds problematic.
 
Sounds like you know more than I do on this so no challenge here. But I do want to emphasize your last point which I left inside the quotation box.

I think this is one of the main reasons why an all solid-state flash drive laptop will not occur for another 2-3 years. Price for solid state is going down fast, but it's this limiting read/write cycles that sounds problematic.

This I didn't know. What does that say about the life span of a Nano as well as an iPhone?
 
Are there mainstream laptops with flash memory yet? Or would these be the first?

-=|Mgkwho
 
Roland.g has half of the picture right.

"Flash" (NAND Flash, Flash drives, etc) can be considered cousins of RAM, both of which reside in the solid-state storage family. Solid-state is fast because, as others have said, it does not require spinning up to speed and searching for bits of data on a platter. With a solid-state chip one applies voltages on certain leads of the chip, and, accordingly, a bit associated with that conbination of input leads is "released" on output leads. So, basically, to run a solid-state chip, you apply a bunch of different combinations of voltages on the input leads. The speed of accessing these bits is limited only by the clock speed of your processor and the "slew rate" (time it takes to change voltage from 'on' to 'off' or vice versa) of the components used.

Of course, that is the very simplistic view of solid-state chips. As increasing capacity and other factors become involved, the equation becomes much more complicated, and things slow down. I don't know much about that. I only took entry-level circuits ;).

How this applies to how your computer runs:

Your computer's HD has a boot-sector. That is the information used by the computer required to start up and launch an OS. Since this is typically stored on a regular HD, it takes time to spin through and read all the necessary bits of info. If the boot sector was located on a solid-state chip, boot times *could* be near instantaneous - limiting factors would be the internal bus speeds and crap like that.

What others have said, however, is right: solid-state reliability wears down over time, much like a recharable battery. Improvements have been made, but greater strides must be taken, still, before we convert solely to flash. There are millions of tiny read/writes that occur when we use our PCs, and flash memory can't quite handle that yet.

Hope this helps!

Anyone else, please correct me where I may have misspoken.

-Clive

Nope you are dead on. I'm in fact surprised that we haven't heard more complaints from iPod shuffle owners who are constantly swapping out their play lists of the flash memory eventually quitting. But i suppose even at a rate of change where you swap contents every couple of days it would take years to wear down the device.

The problem with most OSs is that they are incredibly disk intensive. Especially Unix-based OSs. The problem gets worse with journalling, etc, going on (which you'd turn off with Flash memory) but there would still be a lot of on-off states for the flash memory to handle. It would be interesting,
though, to learn of Apple putting any effort into optimizing some of the OS functions that are more disk intensive to work a little differently.

Ironically, things were better in this respect when they had large amounts of their OS loaded into ROM....
 
With the cost of flash memory, couldn't they put 8GB flash in there for OS and Apps and a 1.8" or 2.5" drive for data. Quick boot, less power draw for OS and Apps, accesses drive only for other data, swaps open docs, files, etc to flash while in use, writes to drive upon save/close.

Who cares about quick boot? How often do you boot your Mac? I close the MacBook when I don't need it, and when I open it, it runs within one or two seconds. Flash memory serves as a cache, and fixing the contents of any cache is always stupid, stupid, stupid.

Good use of flash memory would observe which data is used often, especially where are small amounts of data that are used often (flash memory is faster for small amounts of data than a harddisk, but slower for large amounts) and cache them, and cache data that needs to be written.
 
While it is true that flash has a "lower" lifetime than a HD (assuming you do not expose the device to hi G's too often), it is also true that bad bits are dynamically logged so you don't notice it. While I would not use flash for a transaction handling server, remember the Tablet (ATNN) we are discussing definitely has real memory for stuff with rapid or many updates, flash could be the primary drive if it is iPhone like, in which case one might presume OSX lite is tailored to address that issue and do minimal updates on a write basis to flash. If the device ALSO has a HD that could be used for many update tasks and only on some completion state have it do any updates to flash or your wireless server.

All this attention to limitations of memory and storage devices reminds me of the 70's. Punch cards, tape drives, 8.5" floppies, and the occasional HD pack the size of a washing machine with a whoppng 10mb.

The issues are indeed similar. A resource limited environment, tiny device volume, battery time critical, and heavy CPU/storage energy management. All while trying to minimize price and maximize throughput. I would expect an ATNN price point at least as high as a MacBook, probably the black one.

Rocketman
 
This I didn't know. What does that say about the life span of a Nano as well as an iPhone?

The advantage of the Nano is the lack of constant read/writes. Unless you go through and update song info (ratings and what-have-you) while listenting to tunes, you will have minimal R/Ws -- only significant ones when you update your iPod via your computer. Full-size iPods work the same way with the cache. It'll load the next 30 minutes of music into the cache (solid-state) and cycle through it before adding more. That's way, sometimes when you skip through songs on a HDD-based model, it'll pause and re-spin the harddrive. When this happens, you've reached the end of what your iPod cached, and now it has to load more data in there.

I can't speak for the iPhone, because I don't know how complex it is, but I would assume that, with the exception of loading web-pages and e-mails, I can't think of anything that will cause an overabundance of R/Ws. All other data; tunes, contacts, photos, so on; will either be primarily read data, and not written.

I wouldn't be too concerned with it. The iPhone certainly isn't as versatile as a laptop, which alone reduces its complexity, leading me to think it won't be an issue.

I am open to other opinions, though! Anyone else?

-Clive
 
Flash is just now starting to ship at 16gb which means it will take MONTHS to experience its first price drop from bleeding edge user price to premium application price. Apple typically comes in shortly after that point and does a supply agreement with a huge cash deposit and "averages down" its cost and the contract allows Apple to immediately capture any unexpected price drops. They cited that in 1Q07 results in January.

USB Flash Drives are for sale at Amazon.co.uk for <£10 for 2GB, <£20 for 4GB, so 32GB would cost £160 at that rate. Save another £60 by getting rid of the harddisk altogether. A Mac with 32GB permanent storage would be acceptable (not for everything, but for many uses), especially with an OS installer that installs only stuff you need (no need for Garageband, for example).
 
The whole talk of tablet macs still amuses me. It seems that iPhone-like devices are inevitable, but tablet style devices: no way.

I'm really interested in two things:
1. How modified is the OS/X on the iPhone? It's purely Flash, and I would think that many of the "features" of OS/X are permanently off on this thing. The question is how much is disabled, and how much is merely not made "visible".

2. Is the version of OS/X running on the iPhone able to run on other devices as well?
 
The problem with most OSs is that they are incredibly disk intensive. Especially Unix-based OSs. The problem gets worse with journalling, etc, going on (which you'd turn off with Flash memory) but there would still be a lot of on-off states for the flash memory to handle. It would be interesting, though, to learn of Apple putting any effort into optimizing some of the OS functions that are more disk intensive to work a little differently.

OMG, I never even though of that... journaling would KILL solid-state.

But what about ZFS... wouldn't that fix the problem?

-Clive
 
I can't speak for the iPhone, because I don't know how complex it is, but I would assume that, with the exception of loading web-pages and e-mails, I can't think of anything that will cause an overabundance of R/Ws. All other data; tunes, contacts, photos, so on; will either be primarily read data, and not written.

Simple maths: There are 8GB in the iPhone. Flash can handle at least 100,000 writes, that is a total of 800,000 GB written (the OS needs to be clever to make sure that all areas of memory are written equally often). If you plan to use the iPhone for ten years = 3600 days, that's 222 GB that you can write every day. That's an awful lot. Check with Activity Monitor if your Mac comes anywhere near that; for most people, it won't. At 10 MB per second, writing 222GB would take 22,000 seconds or more than six hours.

In other words, if you write 10 MB per second, six hours per day, for ten years, that's when the iPhone's memory will start wearing out.
 
USB Flash Drives are for sale at Amazon.co.uk for <£10 for 2GB, <£20 for 4GB, so 32GB would cost £160 at that rate.

No, it's not a linear progression for premium items. 32GB would cost at least $500 if they shipped it. They have to wait and let 16GB chips saturate the market first. ;)

-Clive
 
Simple maths: There are 8GB in the iPhone. Flash can handle at least 100,000 writes, that is a total of 800,000 GB written (the OS needs to be clever to make sure that all areas of memory are written equally often). If you plan to use the iPhone for ten years = 3600 days, that's 222 GB that you can write every day. That's an awful lot. Check with Activity Monitor if your Mac comes anywhere near that; for most people, it won't. At 10 MB per second, writing 222GB would take 22,000 seconds or more than six hours.

In other words, if you write 10 MB per second, six hours per day, for ten years, that's when the iPhone's memory will start wearing out.

Bravo. Good Maths!

-Clive
 
Does anybody know if there would be any issues with running Windows using Bootcamp on a laptop like this? If Apple just released proper drivers would everything would work OK? Or is there something about an unconventional computer like this that would "break" Windows (not that it's in the greatest shape as it is, of course)?
 
No, it's not a linear progression for premium items. 32GB would cost at least $500 if they shipped it. They have to wait and let 16GB chips saturate the market first. ;)

-Clive

On www.amazon.co.uk, I found 32 GB USB drives for £99, 16 GB for £59. That is including tax, plus shipping, manufacturer + quality unknown.
 
As an Amazon Associate, MacRumors earns a commission from qualifying purchases made through links in this post.
With the cost of flash memory, couldn't they put 8GB flash in there for OS and Apps and a 1.8" or 2.5" drive for data. Quick boot, less power draw for OS and Apps, accesses drive only for other data, swaps open docs, files, etc to flash while in use, writes to drive upon save/close.

Yeah i reckon they have a 11" or 12" Macbook Pro TABLET hiding somewhere

1.83GHZ LOW VOLTAGE DUO (L2500)
1GB (1 slot only can upgrade to a 2gb)
8GB flash drive for OS and main programs
80GB 1.8"Drive
7400 Turbocache Graphics

Same price as a basic MacBook Pro so $1999
 
Doesn't NRAM have a much longer lifespan than traditional FLASH? Doesn't also retain data even when the power is turned off?

- Scott
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.