Innovation Promises to Cut Massive Power Use

[Nflight]

The post describes a smaller amount of energy to run an almost 50 times faster memory chip! http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120719111310.htm I think anyone would be excited by that but wait there's more! The chip also requires up to 90% less energy to operate, how can this be you ask? Innovation is the key to success, if you ponder it enough and stay focused you can achieve anything!

Wow - This is my imagining order for my next computer I would like 4 gig of SSDAlloc (http://ssdalloc.cs.princeton.edu/) per core if I ever use Windows again! :blob3:

Technology is exciting when you sit in my seat!

[NeoGen]

I glanced through the article and I see what they mean, and agree with the power saving, but I can't see where does it say it's faster.
Current high end DDR3-2400 memory chips achieve a peak of 153.6 Gbit/s (19.2 GB/s) which is many times more than any SSD drive I've ever read about, including the ones that are connected to PCIe x16 ports. I believe when DDR4 hits the market, probably sometime in 2013, it will run at even faster speeds.
If the bottleneck of the current SSDs is the interface and not the flash chips themselves, then SSDAlloc should have a bright future ahead, because even though SSD drives are expensive (about $1/GB average) compared to traditional HDDs, RAM is even more expensive than that (>$6/GB at least).

The only drawback is that all major operating systems will have to go under an overhaul to fully support it, I believe you can't just create a device driver that identifies an SSD drive as RAM and all of a sudden 60Gb of "RAM" appear. To remove the separation between RAM and storage, there might be some deep changes at kernel level that need to be done, and I don't know if Microsoft, Apple, and other companies will want to do that.

[Nflight]

Copied the whole paragraph: "Flash memory is much faster than a hard drive, and flash is getting faster all the time. Currently, high-end flash memory has retrieval speeds of a million requests per second. (A top mechanical hard drive's retrieval speed is about 300 requests per second.)"
Its either the 14th or the 15th paragraph in the story.

On a similar path IBM has patented GPU accelerated databases: http://www.tomshardware.com/news/ibm-patent-gpu-accelerated-database-cuda,13866.html I can not find the link because I think I saw it on Twitter this week which stated IBM has patented more in the intellectual property of GPU related software development.

As you know speed is everything now a days and many companies are all focused on lowering their energy use. If you can do more quicker with less energy used you have now saved lots of money. Faster GPU's, Faster memory, Altering the way OS's deliver the information is the next scenario. Plus AMD is talking more and more about RISC OS's. http://www.tgdaily.com/hardware-features/64645-arm-chips-may-prompt-x86-pc-exodus

We are an adaptive society, I do not fear the change I welcome it.

[NeoGen]

I am skeptical by nature when there are announcements of large technological leaps so when I read that paragraph it just sounded a bit vague as it only states "flash is getting faster all the time", I will need to see some specific values before I believe it.

I'm also not sure about the "million requests per second" as even high end enterprise SSDs that I looked up (OCZ Z-Drive R4 C Series (http://www.oczenterprise.com/ssd-products/z-drive-r4-c-series.html)) seem to peak at 500,000 IOPS, and cost almost $5,000 (http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005HU0LMU/ref=asc_df_B005HU0LMU2106122?smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=asn&creative=395093&creativeASIN=B005HU0LMU&hvpos=1o1&hvexid=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=9809229211934799685&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=).

Now on the RISC side, the game is indeed changing, even Microsoft is developing Windows RT (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_RT), which is pretty much a Windows 8 version to run on ARM processors. Doesn't say which ARM processors though, and because not all ARM architecture based processors are created equal, I wonder if AMD, Intel and other companies develop slightly different processors will there be software incompatibilities between platforms? I can only hope they follow strict guidelines to have them all equal because just like right now we have x86 and x64, I hope we don't end up having to juggle AMD-ARM, Intel-ARM, VIA-ARM, etc, and multiple different versions of software compiled for each.

[Nflight]

You know I am skeptical too of some of the words spoken on the web, not everything is factual. So I pursue all areas of investigation to learn many new projects that claim really unrealistic amounts are pulling our chain. OR it could be the reporter makes a printed mistake and we the readers need to right a wrong. Either way this is my opinion:

Technology is advancing in miraculous ways not just lately but at an increased rate, across all platforms, ~number of science applications in ways we the users can usually not hear about till it is reported to the masses. We are not solely focused on Research and Development yet we demand our products perform. Could it not be fathomable that actual products known in close circles can actually exist in laboratory experiments? I think it can. So while some of these verbal expressions through the reporting media cause us to ponder if it can be or can't it is plausible that a reality shift of greater overall output is possible. Don't give up hope technology is going to surprise us all shortly with amazing discoveries.

My Science Opinion elsewhere then this topic. . . RISC is the new direction many are going in OS software development, I say this in understanding that with Windows the amount of DLL's that have to run in the background at all times is getting excessive. Too much running drains the power requirements and without the DLl's protecting the masses of computers is impossible. So Windows and other software developers are moving away from one single solution and looking at several different platforms (NeoGen your fears about the OS's is under wraps here). Interoperability between the the different current selection of OS's have proven capable between Apple and Windows, and even to include Sun/Oracle based OS's each running a variant of Html. The software on the web is compatible then why can't the OS's be many and varied to keep the Hackers at bay. More variants and the hackers have way more work to figure out who is damaging who. I am not afraid of where this scenario is going, as each software platform is expecting to have to adjust to the variables. Each one of those programmers is fed up with battling the botnets and such that control our computer world. Deployment of a scattering of different OS's will reduce the Hardware OS over taxing of our current based OS systems and allow the computers to run more efficiently.

EXAMPLE: every time I receive, upload and install a window's update my system seems to run slower. Each time I receive a new Update I get 4 to 8 new updates that each installs another DLL file, why not instead of installing new ones consolidate the existing ones into fewer making my system run faster? To give you a slice of input from hardware to software each click on the mouse or keyboard must first run through all 811 DLL files installed by updates, not the ones installed from a version upgrade. Each time you need something the OS program needs to watch each DLL file to make sure no erroneous program gets into your system. I am really angry no one has thought about consolidating DLL's after all this time. Where are the innovators?

I am at Wits end. We brought computing into our lives to enhance our lives and all they do is frustrate us. I can still out think my system in math results on the calculator built into this software. The delayed response really is urking me, I can't play games because the jerking motion as the mouse irks across the screen gives me a headache. Typing a letter I have to lean back in my chair as the paragraph display in my Win Doc program spells out my words for the whole last four lines. (Maybe I can type at 100 words a minute!) I am getting angry with the whole situation but you can see that with this old system I am frustrated by technology overwhelming my abilities.

Enough ranting, please comment everyone! :blob3: