[geeks] Flash drive questions

[Mike Meredith]

On Sun, 06 Aug 2006 17:09:36 -0400, Phil Stracchino wrote:
> Well, yeah.  But system memory gets written how often?  I'd 100%
> believe any given location in system memory on a hard-working machine
> might get written a million times in a year.

Well yes, using flash memory as a replacement for system memory probably
isn't a great idea but that isn't what we're talking about (at least I'm
not). We're talking about using flash memory as a extra tier of caching
for fixed disks ... *when* it becomes fast enough to do so.

> So, at worst, hitting the flash-based portion of system RAM incurs
> only about twice the performance hit of paging to disk.

Not system RAM! And paging *from* disk not to it. And yes it could be as
bad as 1/2 the speed, or (from Samsung's figures) 1.5 times quicker for
writes or 3 times quicker for reads. And I'm not trying to say that
flash is quicker *now* (although I believe it could be with the right
product), but that it isn't impossible in the near future.

> Ummm..........  Dunno about you, but I'd consider that a problem.
> Especially if the flash was the majority of my RAM.

I want all the RAM I can stuff in a box.