SPCR

It's been a while since I've heard mention of the i-RAM 2 - supposed to use SATA 3 Gb/s, DDR2, and so on. The few articles I can find say it'll be released in February 2006 (ahahahaha).

The original i-RAM seems to have shot up in price... the 2 looks like it'd be perfect, if it ever comes out.

Anyone know if it's been abandoned or not?

Last time I heard, they moved the whole thingy to 5.25" bay. Here's report from TechPowerUp. Not much details though - especially how're they going to keep it powered during PC off.

It was shown at Computex, with a release date "several months" away.

The power details confuse me - they seem to be saying that it'll be powered by a standard molex, but they also say that data will be kept as long as there's "standby power". I didn't think "standby power" involved any power going to the molex connectors?

The molex is probably to keep back-up battery happy while pc is on.

I guess they may have to give a 24-pin passthrough connector just to tap on +5VSB, or a wire that can be crimped (is that the word? ) onto +5VSB line. The latter is cheaper but too risky as user may lock on to a wrong wire.

Only four DIMM slots?

No installing Vista on that without 4x4Gb sticks of ram, at least the Beta2 requires 15Gb to install.. I tried installing on a 8Gb partition IIRC, and it said minimum size 14900Mb or something like taht.. so i made it 30gigs.

I still like the idea of the thing, but the design looks a bit sucky to be honest...

The articles say the maximum is only 8 gb - how hard is it for them to add extra slots? The requirement for a 5.25" bay is another downside, and with decent-capacity flash-based drives on the way, there hardly seems any point.

Wich is probably why they will delay the release until all but a few nutters on SPCR has forgot about the whole thing...

8Gb max? I can´t imagine that selling at all when vista is released then. Not that 16Gb of DDR2 would be cheap anyway.

I wouldn´t really care where its mounted or what shape it is, just as long it doesn´t have a gazillion cables going all over the case(unlikely) and it works.

nici wrote:Wich is probably why they will delay the release until all but a few nutters on SPCR has forgot about the whole thing...

Hey, I like my i-rams.

8Gb max? I can´t imagine that selling at all when vista is released then. Not that 16Gb of DDR2 would be cheap anyway.

I didn't realize Vista is going to be so big, but should have expected it anyway. It wont even fit on my i-rams raided (8GB combined).

Imagine 32GB of RAM to get two iram2s raided. Pricey and complicated! I have to think that it's going to be a big negative to sales if the primary consumer OS wont even fit on the drive.

I wouldn´t mind an i-Ram myself now..

Anyway, it was just the Beta2, for all i know the official release might be smaller... Or not. But if its actually that big, then i honestly don´t see this selling too well if it will ever actually be released...

I think this is an area where flash is still going to rule. With Samsung's new 2Gbit chips (vs the previous 1Gbit chips) densities and speeds will double.

http://theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=32663

That means it will be plausible to have a 128GB 2.5" drive running at full SATA1 speed, which would be pretty usable...

You're probably right. Volitility of the RAM drive alone seemingly ensures it's never going beyond niche.

Eunos wrote:The articles say the maximum is only 8 gb - how hard is it for them to add extra slots? The requirement for a 5.25" bay is another downside, and with decent-capacity flash-based drives on the way, there hardly seems any point.

Adding more memory slots would require either:

1. Registered DIMMs (to maintain signal reliability with such a high load on the memory bus) or
2. More memory controllers (more expensive) and a more complex FPGA to interleave data among them (more expense and power consumption).

Add to that, a higher load on the 5V standby power (the limit of which 4 dimms come close to reaching) and the battery life being as short as it is already (10-16 h) and adding more memory slots is quite an unattractive proposition for an enthusiast-level device

With this Super Talent 2.5 inch 8GB IDE Flash Drive as used in recent SPCR review on Puget's system - cost around USD 380 for 8 GB, I think i-RAM2 does not have much chance of success.

Eh, that SuperTalent drive is pathetic, maximum of 12MB/sec write speed. And they build that entire 2.5"size case for a measly 8GB, when you can get 20MB/sec 8GB compact flash cards on the same web site for only $170. IMO this SuperTalent product is junk. If it were the same speed as the iRAM it might be worth thinking about, but it's far from it.

I figure there's three main factors: performance, capacity, and bottom line price. Regular NAND flash can beat the iRAM on capacity pretty easily, so any flash product that only provides equivalent capacity is just not offering enough. Driving flash in parallel will easily provide enough performance to max out the hard drive interface, thus making flash and iRAM performance equivalent, so again, any flash product that doesn't provide equivalent performance just isn't offering enough.

The Tech Report reviewed the Super Talent's IDE flash drive and compared it with four Seagate Momentus, a Barracuda 7200.9, a Western Digital Scorpio, two Hitachi Travelstar, and the Fujitsu MHV2040AT. Right now, these drives are not very good performers, but they are dead silent, without any mechanical part, and they consume between 0.07 and 0.38 watts only.

Super Talent's 2.5" IDE Flash hard drive - Why wait for hybrids?

Slaugh wrote:The Tech Report Right now, these drives are not very good performers, but they are dead silent, without any mechanical part, and they consume between 0.07 and 0.38 watts only.

Super Talent's 2.5" IDE Flash hard drive - Why wait for hybrids?

I hear ya. 8 or 16Gb of I-ram must consume a whole lot of power. And remember that it does so even when the computer is turned off. Maybe we are not talking kilowatts but the flash solution seems more green to me. But the write speed is too low at the moment.


I havn't done my homework on Vista but I heard something that it supports Nand Flash via Usb to keep the page file on it or I actually think it was that new "buffer file" (Frequently used data, to make access times lower). Vista reads from this file a lot more than it writes to i so Flash makes a lot more sense here. But I might be wrong...