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back to article Penguins, only YOU can turn desktop disk IO into legacy tech

With the advent of flash-based storage memory, the prospect of banishing disk IO waits forever from transaction-based or other IO-bound server applications is close to becoming a reality. But what about desktops? We have a pretty weak example with Apple's MacBook Air ultrathin laptops, but these are underpowered little …

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    1. M Gale
      Reply Icon

      Re: Prior art

      Yep, and so did the BBC Micro that preceded RISC machines.. and as mentioned above, so did earlier Acorn machines that the BBC evolved from. In fact many early micros relied on a ROM to contain their OS code.

      Difference is, these are ROM chips. Okay, maybe some of them might have been EEPROM or UVPROM, but it's not like the machine you plugged them into had write access. The software was also vastly smaller than today's wares.

      Whether a modern machine can be made with one big flat non-volatile memory space that holds everything, without being a potentially unbootable nightmare in the event of a crash, or a potential security risk... well, I think that's what the article is asking Penguinistas to have a go at finding out.

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  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    This Flash obsession of yours is starting to make you say silly things Chris.

    Replacing DRam (12800MB/s) with Flash (15 MB/s) isn't going to make your computer faster.

    Syncing (I suppose mirroring in effect) DRam (12800MB/s) to Flash (15 MB/s) isn't going to work very well either.

    The reason your computer only takes 30 seconds to boot is because cause it takes all the code from the slow storage (that's the Flash storage) and moves it into fast storage (that's the DRam) before executing the instructions.

    If it was doing it all ( access to bits and execution of bits) at 15MB/s it might take a little longer than 30 seconds.

    If you want fast you're going to have to stump up the money for a battery backed up DRam storage solution, Flash isn't fast enough.

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    1. M Gale
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      Hm.

      Y'know, we already have flash-cached spinning disks.

      What about DRAM-cached flash cache on a spinning disk? Add in a few 1-farad capacitors to provide emergency "dump to flash" functionality in the event of a power failure (yes, they can be made smaller than the giant tin cans you get in car audio systems).. this is either a really perverse idea or a really good one.

      Or perhaps both.

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      1. bazza Silver badge
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        Re: Hm.

        @M Gale,

        I like the idea! Your Flash cached hdd will already have a RAM cache too. The only thing missing is the supercap UPS, and one could probably solder one of those on oneself. I might just try it myself.

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  3. ilmari

    DRAM cache is what the OS does. Throw in the preload utility, and the kernel will get hints to use idle I/O time to preread in disk contents. I wish it could go further than just reading in executables and libraries though, if it senses you've got ludicrous amounts of ram.

    As for execute-in-place (XIP), due to the block nature of nand flash, xip only works on NOR flash, which is horribly expensive and doesn't exist in anything with a faster cpu than your fancy wristwatch.

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  4. Pete Wilson

    Extremely Prior Art

    Multics, started in 1964, implemented a 'single level store'. No distinction between 'data in memory' and 'files'.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multics

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  5. STrRedWolf
    Linux

    Haven't been monitoring things, have we?

    Phoronix published results of the Flash Friendly File System (aka F2FS) that's bundled in the Linux 3.8 kernel. Compared on SSD, SD cards, and even USB flash drives against EXT3, EXT4, XFS, and even BTRFS... F2FS improved performance in most cases. In some cases it even beat exFAT and NTFS.

    I'm waiting for it to stabilize on 3.9 though.

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