News ReRAM boosts SSD performance 11-fold

ReRAM has been proven to boost SSD performance by eleven times, according to researchers at Chuo University.

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2012/06/15/reram-ssd-boost/1

 

Where do I sign?

 

Impressive, but when? So ReRAM is like DRAM except its data is retained even when power off?

Elpida a Giant?

 

Looks like the SATA interface will bite the dust then. It'll take a good PCIe interface to make the most of that if they can improve read speeds in a similar manor.

 

Awesome... So... When do we have another SATA interface? Or is this going to use pci-express lanes?

 

I've only got a semi.

 

Im throwing my money into the monitor, but nothing is happening!!!

 

Sounds very clever, but at the same time so very simple!

 

Just when SSDs were getting affordable...BAM!

 

*chuckle*

I think this would spell the end of SATA – not a bad thing if I'm honest. Just make everything PCIe should make things a bit simpler/cheaper.

And yes Baz, I agree – mostly we need cheaper SSD before we need faster ones. I'm not against MOAR SPEED!!11! but I'd rather be able to afford a few TB of SSD at the speeds they are now first

 

Impressive - as others have said the price will go through the roof, but it's some years away from being introduced.

As for the type of interface to the PC/tab/phone/yet to be discovered device...... a single platform like PCI-E should do justice to the drive itself..... but it's more likely that there will be cheaper and more generic options available by the time this becomes a retail product.

 

I'm not sure a move to PCIe is that great, it means that mATX and even regular ATX users will have a lot less space that is needed for GPU's to be cooled efficiently, and then the space where the SATA ports would be would be left bare, what goes there? SATA III isn't currently saturated (only with a few high end SSD's in RAID 0) so I think we haven't seen the end of SATA yet.

 

I don't mean to be a critic, but these numbers are probably a bit exaggerated, at least compared to what a commercial version might provide. Because it is mostly reliant on a caching architecture, performance metrics are more complex than write throughput and read latency. Unless I misunderstood the article, this drive is enhancing the NAND parts at all, just caching them with ReRAM, so the accelerated write time is not a measure of how fast the data is written, but how fast it is moved into the drive cache. The data is written to the NAND array and any requests for that data are redirected to the cache array until it is fully written into NAND.

This isn't a bad design or anything, it's how most storage devices work already, but (I assume) using a much larger cache, probably a few GB vs the 64 MB HDD's use. But such a design could easily eat up a lot of the ReRAM cache while moving a large file around, and then any read requests would be much more likely to have a cache-miss. Which is probably why we don't have any numbers for the drive's read times; the performance boost is more obvious if they optimize the drive for write times than if they had to show the drive performing exactly like a SSD for the first 10 minutes of operation while the cache is populated.

All that being said, I think it's a great design concept and a genuine first step in making a commercially viable ReRAM device. I just think the numbers we see are comparable to the range specs on wireless routers, which they test in open fields to avoid any of the interference you might get from, say, a building with walls.

And IIRC, there are designs being made already for SATA III's successor that will communicate along PCI-E lanes.
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I agree completely yougotkicked. The only change I'd make is that the wireless router tests aren't done in open fields, they are done in enormous hangers with faraday cages in the walls. Can't have any "normal" outside intereferance, you know, interfering in the test.

 

Thunderbolt?

 

Screw Thunderbolt - it'll be a long, long time before this is at capacities that would make an array of ReRAM disks make sense. Aside from that, it's not an industry standard - Intel owns it.

Why move to TB when there are already a huge number of PCIe SSDs? Personally, I'd rather see it on a standard interface that's known and proven, and not controlled by a single corporation.

TB is also not bootable, if I'm not mistaken, while PCIe has the potential to be, depending on driver support.

Were this to happen, who's to say the manufacturer's wouldn't start sticking x1 or x4 slots on another part of the board? ATX tends to have some room to spare. Or look at mSATA slots - even the mini-ITX board I have has mini-PCIe - that seems a perfect fit here.

 

SSD's are barely affordable at reasonable capacities now so this tech would be at a stupidly high price just like SSD's were two years ago. I am still waiting for 1TB SSD's to be affordable. At least 240GB SSD's are starting to be affordable though.

 

To those thinking that this is about to roll out soon, I wouldn't hold my breath, the article says its being unveiled at a conference in Hawaii, so even if it does get a sponsor, your probably talking a few years till its tested and at the speeds mentioned mobo manufacturers are going to have to sort out more bandwidth for whatever port/slot they plug it into, again needing a few years of development.

But I agree its a step in the right direction, less power more speed. Last year I bought a 256GB SSD its the single best advance in computer speed for years. Keep em coming boffins you know we love it.

 

At least the OCZ RevoDrive 3 can be used as a boot drive, I am currently running on one.

There seems to be no drivers for anything but Windows 7 at the moment on their site, and they have in fact replied to a forum thread asking for Linux drivers with "We do not have Linux drivers for Revo3 and we are not planning any.".