Why are there no DDR flash drives?

[xnamkcor]

I can't find any physical product that uses iNAND and USB.

 

Is SO-DIMM too large for a thumb drive?

Also, USB 3.0 probably can't even do SSD full speed, why want DDR3?

[dragoon20005]

http://www.sandisk.sg/products/usb/drives/extreme/

oh that drive

 

its has a SSD controller inside?

 

thats interesting

 

 

edit

 

this is with the guts shown

 

that small square chip is the SSD controller you mentioned?

 

[xnamkcor]

http://www.sandisk.sg/products/usb/drives/extreme/

That just looks like a normal thumb drive, and the "up to xMb/s" seems to just be realworld throughput of USB 3.0.

http://www.everythingusb.com/media/sandisk-extreme-atto-turbo-benchmark.png

[TheProfosist]

oh that drive

 

its has a SSD controller inside?

 

thats interesting

 

 

edit

 

this is with the guts shown

 

that small square chip is the SSD controller you mentioned?

 

That just looks like a normal thumb drive, and the "up to xMb/s" seems to just be realworld throughput of USB 3.0.

http://www.everythingusb.com/media/sandisk-extreme-atto-turbo-benchmark.png

read up on it there are a couple reviews that go over it and yes that chip should be. There are review on neweg and amazon that go over it and there shou even be one usb 3.0 flash drive comparison on toms hardware that has something about it in. The main difference youll see in going to be in random performance versus say a more standard patriot flash drive that uses multiple channels to do something close to RAID0.

[xnamkcor]

read up on it there are a couple reviews that go over it and yes that chip should be. There are review on neweg and amazon that go over it and there shou even be one usb 3.0 flash drive comparison on toms hardware that has something about it in. The main difference youll see in going to be in random performance versus say a more standard patriot flash drive that uses multiple channels to do something close to RAID0.

Like the OCZ PCI-e SSDs that use a controller for each lane?

 

So, the question is, at what point would SSD no fully saturate the Bus? USB 3.0? Thunderbolt? PCI-e? What speed improvement would we get from the DDR, as opposed to the SSD? Not just raw numbers of SSD vs DDR3, but actually considering the Bus used.

[IdeaStormer]

I am aware there is none yet 

 

if you want the smallest SSD it will be the M.2 SSD

 

What about a SATA DOM? Its pretty small and SSD.

 

[xnamkcor]

What about a SATA DOM? Its pretty small and SSD.

 

Is that powered off the voltage the data connector uses?

[IdeaStormer]

Is that powered off the voltage the data connector uses?

That white plastic on the right side is the power connector.

[Ahnzh]

1) That is quite possibly the worst analogy I've ever seen.

 

2) What if I told you USB can provide power and charge devices?

 Not intended to be good, it makes it clear what I'm talking about though.

 

you keep your USB plugged in nonstop? I'm not using them every day. More like once in 3 months or so. that way the data will be gone in some point of time. Additionally you need a constant 1.5 Volts, that's hard to achieve via a battery. Maybe you can lower this to a certain point but you still need a minimum voltage. Judging from the size you would have to recharge the battery every 7 days or so. Don't underestimate the power consumption.

 

 

It just makes no sense to create a portable device that you have to constantly worry about losing your data if you don't charge it every day.

[hojnikb]

oh that drive

 

its has a SSD controller inside?

 

thats interesting

 

 

edit

 

this is with the guts shown

 

that small square chip is the SSD controller you mentioned?

 

 

Yep, thats actually the same controller, that is used in this ssd..

http://www.sandisk.com/products/ssd/sata/standard/

[hojnikb]

read up on it there are a couple reviews that go over it and yes that chip should be. There are review on neweg and amazon that go over it and there shou even be one usb 3.0 flash drive comparison on toms hardware that has something about it in. The main difference youll see in going to be in random performance versus say a more standard patriot flash drive that uses multiple channels to do something close to RAID0.

 

Nope, thats not the thing. Every flash controller uses raid0 like tricks to achieve high read/write speeds. Its just that controllers in stadard flash drives are much much simpler (slower processors, no dram cache, simpler firmware) and finetuned for sequential speeds rather than random speeds. Thats why you get like 1000IOPS max outta standard flash drive.

[xnamkcor]

 Not intended to be good, it makes it clear I don't know what I'm talking about though.

Fixed.

 

you keep your USB plugged in nonstop? I'm not using them every day. More like once in 3 months or so. that way the data will be gone in some point of time. Additionally you need a constant 1.5 Volts, that's hard to achieve via a battery. Maybe you can lower this to a certain point but you still need a minimum voltage. Judging from the size you would have to recharge the battery every 7 days or so. Don't underestimate the power consumption.

 

 

It just makes no sense to create a portable device that you have to constantly worry about losing your data if you don't charge it every day.

Did you know they make USB power sources that don't require a computer now? You can just leave it on your desk.

Also, the minimum is closer to 1.35V for SO-DIMMs.

 

 

It just makes no sense to create a portable device that you have to constantly worry about losing your data if you don't charge it every day.

The only reason you'd risk losing charge is if you purposefully removed it from it's power source for a long period of time. Which would only be a problem with irresponsible people or homeless people.

[hojnikb]

Just FYI, flash devices like usb drives also cannot store the data for very long times (jedec standard is 1 year i believe)

[xnamkcor]

Just FYI, flash devices like usb drives also cannot store the data for very long times (jedec standard is 1 year i believe)

That's a standard for the Flash Memory typically used on USB sticks, that does not cover "SSD" quality NAND with SSD Controllers and a USB interface or a DDR3 solution. For that you would need to refer to JEDEC's standards for how long a DDR3 DIMM should be able to store data when powered.

[hojnikb]

Either way, ddr3 is pointless as a storage device, especially when used in a removable form.

[Ahnzh]

flash devices run refresh cycles to keep the data, i know. I still don't see any reason to build DDR3 in an USB stick. NAND+SSD is 1. cheaper 2. more reliable 3. just as fast since the bottleneck will be the USB bus.

 

 

 

A small update, i got some information about the case, it's not large enough to hold the extended m-ITX Board so i had to switch things up a bit. Now getting the bigger brother, i guess during the build process some things will change.

 

 

I keep you up to date with everything i buy for it and put together a shopping list once I'm finished.

 

For now i got the USB drives today that the OS is going to run from. First off:

 

Kingston 32GB DataTraveler Workspace. It's an SandForce controller driven SSD in a USB stick that's Windows To Go certified, so it was created to run an OS from it.

 

 

 

Then i got a 32GB Kingston DataTraveler R3.0 for holding the jails and config files.

 

Ofc I ran a small test to share it with you guys.

 

First off the OS Stick:

 

 

 

 

I was pretty impressed. 40+MB/s to the Stick and 200 MB from it, no time to ramp up the speeds or so. 40/200 is not an average. It stayed stable through the entire time with maximum variations of half a Megabyte per second.

 

the Data Stick isn't really worth mentioning, I tested it the same way though, and it was peaking at 32MB/s writing 171MB/s reading but taking 5 seconds to reach this speeds writing. Reads were unstable at a range of 130MB/s to 170MB/s. Nothing special, it doesn't need to hold anything important though, just some small files that get loaded into the ram once at booting FreeNAS. It will serve the purpose but MY LORD, this DataTraveler Workspace is insanely fast

 

/edit: actually it's as fast as SATA DOMs in writes and you got even more performance in reads. That is really impressive

 

 

pictures to it can be found *here*

 

 

CMOS got a 3 Volt battery. I guess building an even smaller battery into a DDR stick might work, SO DIMMS need need around 0.3 Ampere and 1.3 Volt. Let's make it easy, i just found a 1.2 Volt Batterie, 2600mAh, let's make a rough calculation. 0.36 Watts for 0.3 Ampere and 1.2 Volt. 2600mAh, 1.2V and 0.36Watts give me a time of 8.67 Hours from 100% to 0% capacity. Even if you build in a larger battery, tweak the voltage/ampere needs of the DDR and everything i highly doubt you will get to something that holds for a week or 2. I just don't believe in it, it's insane to try it, i am sorry @xnamkcore

 

 

Irresponsibility... yeah .... i often have a stick lying around somewhere for a week or so. You got clouds, you got mobile phones, you do not need USB sticks too often any more. That results in them lying around on a desk for a few days consecutively, then you're maybe putting a small file on it, plugging it out again and OH, the battery is empty because you didn't put it back into your Computer's USB when you came home directly because you were tired... nothing irresponsible i can see with that.

[TheProfosist]

Yep, thats actually the same controller, that is used in this ssd..

http://www.sandisk.com/products/ssd/sata/standard/

thanks

Nope, thats not the thing. Every flash controller uses raid0 like tricks to achieve high read/write speeds. Its just that controllers in stadard flash drives are much much simpler (slower processors, no dram cache, simpler firmware) and finetuned for sequential speeds rather than random speeds. Thats why you get like 1000IOPS max outta standard flash drive.

either way not as good as a SSD controller with SSD nand even if the sequential might be slower the random is multiple times higher.

[xnamkcor]

Either way, ddr3 is pointless as a storage device, especially when used in a removable form.

You're on a forum where one of the main attractions is making towers pretty. 

"Pointless" doesn't mean anything.

[hojnikb]

It is pointless to use an inferior technology though (which in this ddr3 is, because FLASH can easily cap usb3 bandwidth, but without the problems ddr3 has -- no loss of the data with power loss and much much higher density)

[hojnikb]

DDR3 as a "storage" device only makes sense, where crazy IOPS are needed (datacenters and such).

[xnamkcor]

It is pointless to use an inferior technology though (which in this ddr3 is, because FLASH can easily cap usb3 bandwidth, but without the problems ddr3 has -- no loss of the data with power loss and much much higher density)

It's pointless to put LED strips in a case.

 

 

DDR3 as a "storage" device only makes sense, where crazy IOPS are needed (datacenters and such).

 

Or 4k(+) game footage at 60FPS(+).

Also, the existence, popularity and the fact that RAMDisk has a paid retail version validates the use of RAM as storage.

[hojnikb]

Or 4k(+) game footage at 60FPS(+).

 

You can do easily that with a decent ssd

 

Also, the existence, popularity and the fact that RAMDisk has a paid retail version validates the use of RAM as storage.

 

Hate to brake it to ya, but ramdisk does not work as storage

It can act as a scratch disk for heavy io stuff though.

[Ahnzh]

You're on a forum where one of the main attractions is making towers pretty. 

"Pointless" doesn't mean anything.

'Pretty' but 'functional'. All of these Computers work fine, it's build with sanity. Additionally to the original usage they serve as a decoration. To me it doesn't matter if i put in LEDs into my case to make it look nice or buy a vase somewhere in a shop, it serves the same purpose.

 

It is pointless to use an inferior technology though (which in this ddr3 is, because FLASH can easily cap usb3 bandwidth, but without the problems ddr3 has -- no loss of the data with power loss and much much higher density)

THIS! check my benchmark of the Kingston USB stick with Sandforce controller in case you don't trust it.

 

DDR3 as a "storage" device only makes sense, where crazy IOPS are needed (datacenters and such).

NOT THIS! even then it makes no sense to get a DDR based device (10$ per GB at average compared to 1.2$ per GB for an enterprise ready SSD). IOPS will be comparable to SSDs since there's a SAS/SATA controller that's limiting the IOPS. Even if not, there's no reason a sane man would waste 10x the price for a device that offers less, no redundancy, no failover, no security at all... I see you trying to give it some sort of sense, but there isn't

 

 

You can do easily that with a decent ssd

THIS!

 

Hate to brake it to ya, but ramdisk does not work as storage

THIS!

 

It can act as a scratch disk for heavy io stuff though.

NOT THIS! Too expensive, too powerful alternatives which provide almost the same functionality with more benefits.

 

 

 

@hojnikb: don't even try to discuss with him, he just wants to be right and is ignoring the facts. I see you trying to give RAMdisk a sense but from the perspective of a potential user it just has none. It's wasted money in every point of view, even from an Enthusiast's one.

[xnamkcor]

'Pretty' but 'functional'. All of these Computers work fine, it's build with sanity. Additionally to the original usage they serve as a decoration. To me it doesn't matter if i put in LEDs into my case to make it look nice or buy a vase somewhere in a shop, it serves the same purpose.

 

THIS! check my benchmark of the Kingston USB stick with Sandforce controller in case you don't trust it.

 

NOT THIS! even then it makes no sense to get a DDR based device (10$ per GB at average compared to 1.2$ per GB for an enterprise ready SSD). IOPS will be comparable to SSDs since there's a SAS/SATA controller that's limiting the IOPS. Even if not, there's no reason a sane man would waste 10x the price for a device that offers less, no redundancy, no failover, no security at all... I see you trying to give it some sort of sense, but there isn't

 

 

THIS!

 

THIS!

 

NOT THIS! Too expensive, too powerful alternatives which provide almost the same functionality with more benefits.

 

 

 

@hojnikb: don't even try to discuss with him, he just wants to be right and is ignoring the facts. I see you trying to give RAMdisk a sense but from the perspective of a potential user it just has none. It's wasted money in every point of view, even from an Enthusiast's one.

So, aside from it being "pointless", SSD being cheaper, USB 3.0 not having the bandwidth to take advantage of DDR3, and at least one person here being too lazy to keep it charged, this is totally doable.

[Ahnzh]

So, aside from it being "pointless", SSD being cheaper, USB 3.0 not having the bandwidth to take advantage of DDR3, and at least one person here being too lazy to keep it charged, this is totally doable.

And hitting a nail through your foot into a huge stone and making it happen to walk with because you spend huge efforts in it is doable as well. Not practicable though. Since after 3 steps at MAX you get rid of the nail and walk to the next hospital (PC Shop). If i had to charge my phone every 8 hours without even doing anything with it i would throw it away and get a phone that I'll have to charge at night after using it the whole day instead of 3 times a day LOL. Who would waste money developing this crap if it's this obvious that it's not gonna help anybody.

 

 

/edit: typo

 

//edit: the question was: 'why are there no DDR flash drives', not 'is it possible to create a DDR flash drive' and to get more into detail most of the SSDs are made of DDR NAND flash. DDR RAMs as a flash is just not practicable. We are drifting to off-topic. Let's stop this discussion, the question should have been answered long ago