http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2006/02/14/windows_vista_flash_booster_tech/

Someone wanna explain how they theorize it might work (I supposed I could research EMD a little)?

2/14/2006 11:12:20 AM

i don't understand the question...why do all these things seem obvious to me, but not to everyone else? i'm not TRYING to be a douche (unsuccessfully, i imagine), but it seems simple to me:

flash memory is more quickly accessed than hard drives

2/14/2006 11:18:30 AM

Yea, I had a brain fart and forgot about access time. I was thinking only about data transfer rates. I assume the access time benefit exceeds the data rate con.

2/14/2006 11:25:55 AM

data transfer rate will see an exponential improvement as well as access time, as all the bits are accessed in the same amount of time meaning not waiting for a rotation/armiture extension to write something

2/14/2006 11:58:50 AM

What?

2/14/2006 12:04:58 PM

solid state = move data to ram in chunks the size the os allocates arguably instantly

hard drive = move data to ram bit by bit as it's read, limited by the speed the drive spins and the amount of data the drive can transfer at once

then you've got to double this on the other side for writing it to another drive from ram

2/14/2006 12:47:11 PM

A sustained data transfer from a long in production Raptor drive is about double (~70MB/s in most cases) the most recently pre ramped flash product out there ~35MB/s a 50% increase over the previous fastest). Most production flash is in the 20MB/s range. Like I said, I don't know how the OS goes about loading drivers and things to memory, seems like if it could do it all sequentially in one long burst it would still win over flash.

2/14/2006 1:12:27 PM

I've never seen anywhere close that kind of performance on my raptor.. maybe because I'm beyond 50% capacity

you sure those numbers aren't inflated by contiguous reads? most files aren't continguously written and everytime the armiture has to move you're adding orders of magnitude to the time it takes to transfer

[Edited on February 14, 2006 at 1:36 PM. Reason : d]

2/14/2006 1:14:17 PM

Quote :

" PERFORMANCE Sandra 2005: This commonly used tool determined a solid 69 MByte/sec sequential read and 58 MByte/sec for the average data rate this drive is capable to deliver. Compare that to the approximately 42 MByte/sec (avg) of a typical 7200 rpm ATA drive. According to other tests I read before buying this drive, a 2 disc SATA RAID-0 configuration pulls even a solid 95 MByte/sec and practically doubles standard performance (for an extra $170.-) Sandra2005: Barracuda vs. Raptor Buffered Read [MB/s] = 89 / 121 Sequential Read [MB/s] = 57 / 68 Random Read [MB/s] = 41 / 38 Buffered Write [MB/s] = 100 / 82 Sequential Write [MB/s] = 57 / 68 Random Write [MB/s] = 39 / 52 Avg Access Time [ms] = 7 / 12 Drive Index [MB/s] = 51 / 58 "

Ok, so knock it down to 60MB/s. And the previous fastest flash was 23MB/s, probably meaning most flash out there now is in the 15MB/s range.

I think this has a lot more to do with the way the OS loads drivers and flash will help here, because fundamentally to me, it doesn't make a lot of sense that boots take so long.

2/14/2006 1:18:53 PM

I think they meant that the EMD stuff only comes into play while vista is running. Using it as preload cache for common applications.

I think then that the reg is speculating that this will drive the flash market which will result in HDD coming with more flash cache for the same purpose.

And that the newer HDDs will lead to faster boot times.

2/14/2006 2:56:11 PM

a brain fart.....

dont you work for a memory company??

2/14/2006 3:37:30 PM

yeah, well, to his defense, his (our) company isn't exactly stellar in the Flash memory business

2/14/2006 4:02:08 PM

Ooo, burn. Yea, I haven't studied flash (and don't know OS's) and was only thinking about the data transfer rates which I think I have shown to be a bit of a quandry in regards to how this might work making boots faster. Shaggy might be on to something, but it still stands that there could be many different ways this is supposed to work.

2/14/2006 5:17:15 PM

I wonder if you could store the most current boot loader, drivers, and whatever other things you need to boot the OS on the local flash inside the HDD. Then boot from the flash to save some time spinning up the disk.

I mean honestly my system is usually on all the time or if i do boot it its faster than it takes for me to find my wireless mouse.

Not to concerned about boot speed atm, but maybe microsoft forsees some need for this later on.

2/14/2006 5:21:22 PM

you scared me. I thought I'd have to hit the skip button to logon to windows.

2/14/2006 5:52:25 PM

Quote :

"I think they meant that the EMD stuff only comes into play while vista is running. Using it as preload cache for common applications. I think then that the reg is speculating that this will drive the flash market which will result in HDD coming with more flash cache for the same purpose. And that the newer HDDs will lead to faster boot times."

this is exactly what it's saying.

read about superfetch, that's what the EMD is being used for...
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/features/foreveryone/performance.mspx

[Edited on February 14, 2006 at 9:11 PM. Reason : .]

2/14/2006 9:10:41 PM

I guess it will store all the programs that it will need to load on boot before a shut down?

2/14/2006 9:22:48 PM

Quote :

"I wonder if you could store the most current boot loader, drivers, and whatever other things you need to boot the OS on the local flash inside the HDD. "

formatted properly, you could use this so transfer installs with different hardware. just be able to boot into a flash memory manager, load the newest drivers or whatever drivers your machine needs, reboot. no more repair installs for motherboard upgrades.

2/15/2006 9:22:06 AM