question of the day

Forum: LXer Meta ForumTotal Replies: 41
Author Content
tuxchick

Nov 19, 2010
3:23 PM EDT
Question of the day: why do we mock people who call hard drive storage "memory", but "flash memory" is acceptable?
Steven_Rosenber

Nov 19, 2010
3:42 PM EDT
So you think semantics should get in the way of a good mocking? I call it "non-volatile memory," so let the mocking begin.
Scott_Ruecker

Nov 19, 2010
3:53 PM EDT
For me its either 'disk storage' or solid state or 'flash' storage..

jezuch

Nov 19, 2010
3:57 PM EDT
We should also start mocking people who call SSD's "disks".
gus3

Nov 19, 2010
4:00 PM EDT
As I recall, hard drive storage can also serve as "virtual memory".
Steven_Rosenber

Nov 19, 2010
5:17 PM EDT
Can we all agree to use the term "bit bucket"?
mrider

Nov 19, 2010
5:20 PM EDT
If it's in teh big box, isn't it just a CPU?
hkwint

Nov 19, 2010
5:25 PM EDT
It's all speicher to me...
mrider

Nov 19, 2010
5:27 PM EDT
@hkwint:

I had to read that twice to make sure you weren't being rude. :)
dinotrac

Nov 19, 2010
5:43 PM EDT
Seriously, TC - I can't remember.
cr

Nov 20, 2010
2:52 PM EDT
"Question of the day: why do we mock people who call hard drive storage "memory", but "flash memory" is acceptable?"

Perhaps because, from the hardware point of view, they're two separate things, even though, when they're packaged up as USB devices, we often use them interchangeably nowadays, treating flashdrives as bulk storage.

Flash memory is EEPROM, electrically-erasable programmable read-only memory, which is built to be flash-erased in blocks rather than one slow byte at a time. Nowadays, the motherboard's BIOS socket, where an EPROM would be installed, is replaced by a soldered-in Flash ROM, but that device is probably given its initial programming in an EPROM programmer updated with the Flash device's voltage and timing specs before it's soldered into place. It's all silicon, so it can improve in density and speed in line with Moore's Law up until leakage and thermal dissipation problems become insurmountable. For embedded applications, where the data changes but the program doesn't, Flash-ROM is often used as sole program storage, and the CPU executes its firmware from Flash just as it would if it were executing it from RAM.

A hard drive uses a read/write head to drive saturation-level magnetic fluctuations into regions of a magnetizable surface. The basic process is the same as for a floppy, except that the rotating disk on which the magnetic surface is deposited is rigid metal or glass instead of Mylar; the heads are still moved by electromagnetic means, with the physical inertia of the head carriage or arm limiting improvements in seek times, and higher rotation speeds can only reduce the wait for the needed sector to arrive under the head just so much. Despite some incredible engineering, hard disk technology will never catch up to silicon in speed, only continue to improve in density, so those drives are forever limited to bulk storage uses; rotating magnetics haven't been used for main memory since the early mainframe days, before integrated-circuit RAM (static or dynamic) became practical.

They really are two different things.
Bob_Robertson

Nov 20, 2010
3:25 PM EDT
Most of the people I deal with call that box that the keyboard plugs into their "hard-drive".

Anything more technical than that is outside of their capabilities of understanding.

Canopeners are still a high-tech innovation out here on the coastal plain.
cr

Nov 20, 2010
3:30 PM EDT
@bob: lol

"The secret is to bang the rocks together, guys!"
tuxchick

Nov 20, 2010
8:26 PM EDT
Almost, cr: "The secret is to bang the rocks together, with your fingers not between them!"

Thanks for the technical explanation, it actually makes sense. So either it is true or you sling it good :)
hkwint

Nov 20, 2010
8:36 PM EDT
cr: How 'bout them hybrids?
Bob_Robertson

Nov 20, 2010
9:22 PM EDT
Hybrids?

I wouldn't be surprised if, looking at them objectively, it doesn't turn out that their increased efficiency is entirely due to recapturing power through regenerative braking.

What I'd like is a single rotor Wankel driving the generator in a plug-in hybrid. That would combine the best of several different disciplines into something very pretty, from an engineering point of view.

Or were we talking about rice?
hkwint

Nov 20, 2010
10:36 PM EDT
Yes, we're talking about ricers, you know, the people who're trying to optimize their system to make Gentoo compile faster:

http://funroll-loops.info/

I always use tmpfs on RAM as it brings great speed improvements. Nowadays, you have the Seagate drives with selective cache. They cache much-used data using some kind of heuristics, in the 'flash memory'.
cr

Nov 21, 2010
4:48 AM EDT
@tc:

Quoting:Almost, cr: "The secret is to bang the rocks together, with your fingers not between them!"


...That's not how I heard it on the Sub-Etha broadcast... (h2g2 reference, folks, for anybody who's now scratching their head more than normal) ...Besides, with their fingers in the way they'll invent language much quicker.

@hkwint: Not having worked with them or studied the data sheets, I can only guess that some or all of the on-drive cache has a flash shadow added to it to carry often-used data across power cycling. I came up the hardware side before branching into embedded and then software (embedded is still the hub of my expertise), but a lot of the new hardware arrived after I became a custodial single father and ceased to have discretionary income, so I didn't get to play with it unless it showed up at someone's curb on trash day. Thus, I only guess.

@bob: wankel... I knew someone with an RX7. It was as dirty as my (then) moped at the exhaust-pipe. Have there been advancements, or do they still take two-stroke oil with their gasoline?
Bob_Robertson

Nov 21, 2010
11:12 AM EDT
Cr,

That's someone who didn't maintain their engine. The rotary gets "ring" problems just like a piston engine, allowing oil to enter the combustion chamber.

Hybrid disks are interesting. It will be fun to see where the techniques of utilizing flash memory leads.

I find it most interesting that flash wears with changes, but it's so much faster so it's good for files that change. A balancing act, for sure.
jacog

Nov 22, 2010
6:32 AM EDT
We talk about "dialling" numbers on our phones. I have not seen a phone with anything that can be called a "dial" in years. Antiquted verb, I tells ya.

I think a John's Phone (http://www.johnsphones.com/) would be feature complete if it came with a dial.
cr

Nov 22, 2010
10:32 AM EDT
My verbiage glitch is TMA (Too Many Acronyms).

I long ago encountered it when my then sister-in-law, who's a Bradley Birth instructor, was discussing my work in embedded design with me. She stalled when I mentioned PROM, Programmable Read-Only Memory (which encompasses EEPROM, ultraviolet-erasable EPROM and fusible-link PROM but not mask-programmed ROM); in her field of expertise, that stands for Premature Rupture Of Membrane.

After reading a recent Phoronix article linked here at LXer, I went searching to try to find out just what DRM they were discussing (Direct Rendering Manager), and just when that replaced Digital Rights Management as the default definition. In the process I found out that DRI is no longer the firm who marketed CP/M.
hkwint

Nov 22, 2010
1:03 PM EDT
Digging in Wikipedia for acronyms can be a real burden indeed!

Once, SS was something you wanted to avoid at all times (at least over here), and now it seems to be social security. Looking up BSA is also quite fun!
hkwint

Nov 22, 2010
1:04 PM EDT
Cr by the way: dibenzoxazepine, Chromium or Costa Rica?
gus3

Nov 22, 2010
1:32 PM EDT
Or carriage return?

Really, Hans...
hkwint

Nov 22, 2010
2:06 PM EDT
gus3: Darn, you spoiled my nice riddle!
cr

Nov 22, 2010
2:24 PM EDT
@gus: back in the later CP/M days, my hacking signature was "CHR$(13)", so, yeah... (If you go looking for me in the Oak CP/M archives, prepare to be not impressed.)

@hkwint: you forgot my hardware background, which would make it Crystal Rectifier (much to the annoyance of my NewAge friends)

I had to look up that chemical name to see what that was about. From http://www.zarc.com/english/tear_gases/crdibenzoxazepine.htm... :

Quoting:Due to CR’s persistent and long-term effect, presently very few liability conscious agencies use this agent.


...No wonder I'm having a hard time finding contract work!
jdixon

Nov 22, 2010
2:49 PM EDT
> ...No wonder I'm having a hard time finding contract work!

You obviously need a few (c)haracter (r)eferences. :)
hkwint

Nov 22, 2010
2:55 PM EDT
Oh I'm sorry, I really didn't meant it that way! But I C hoose R esponsibility though. Just to show what great abbreviations are on Wikipedia.

At least Challange Repsonse filtering taught us CR is not a bot!
dinotrac

Aug 01, 2011
10:24 AM EDT
I mock you all for being too challenged to realize that it is all shared external memory in the same sense that books and elders are.

gus3

Aug 01, 2011
12:22 PM EDT
It took you 8-1/2 months to come up with that witty rejoinder?
cr

Aug 01, 2011
2:02 PM EDT
Throw another syslog on the campfire and gather round, Ol' Dino's gonna tell it like it was.
dinotrac

Aug 01, 2011
2:15 PM EDT
@gus 3:

Yes. I'm brilliant, not fast.
jdixon

Aug 01, 2011
3:44 PM EDT
I think the thread got resurrected by a spammer before Dino made his comment.
dinotrac

Aug 01, 2011
6:33 PM EDT
@jdixon:

Resurrection?

I'm sorry, pal, but religion lies outside of the TOS.
jdixon

Aug 01, 2011
7:10 PM EDT
> .I'm sorry, pal, but religion lies outside of the TOS.

True, Dino. I apologize. I should have said resuscitated.
tracyanne

Aug 01, 2011
7:11 PM EDT
Not Resurrection, this is one of the immortals.
tuxchick

Aug 01, 2011
11:00 PM EDT
Resurrected it is, because dinosaurs have been extinct for like lots of years.
hkwint

Aug 02, 2011
7:00 AM EDT
You clearly haven't seen Godzilla / Jurassic park! Because Dean has a role in it.
dinotrac

Aug 03, 2011
9:14 AM EDT
I am bemused by your silly little chatter.

Just so long as you remember to bow and scrape accordingly.
TxtEdMacs

Aug 03, 2011
10:14 AM EDT
Quoting: [As] so long as you remember to bow and scrape accordingly.


What do you mean remember? If you don't you get your head mangled removing the barnacles and other debris that automagically attaches to hulls when exposed the the salt water environment. I not only bow and scrape; I stomp on it when I peal it away. Good riddance I say. But what was the point of your post?

YBT
tuxchick

Aug 04, 2011
12:33 AM EDT
We am now embiggened.
dinotrac

Aug 04, 2011
4:21 PM EDT
Aye.

Posting in this forum is limited to members of the group: [Editors, MEMBERS, SITEADMINS.]

Becoming a member of LXer is easy and free. Join Us!