Technology Marches On

[Vince]

A bit off topic here;
Two monthe ago I had a need to do some route testing on my sons computer that had never had MSTS installed. Rather that burn a MiniRoute onto a DVD I was intrigued by the Jump Drives or Flash Drives as they are called. Freys Electronics here in town was running a sale. A 4 gigabyte Sony flash drive was listed for $33 dollars in store price. I decided to splurge. I ended up owning this little thing, about 2.5 inches long by 1/4 inch thick by 1/2 inch wide with a retractable USB2 plug on one end and a green LED that lit up when the storage was accessed.
The experiment was completely sucessful; I was able to load the my MSTS route onto the drive and load it on my sons machine for the test run. (I did delete it after the test.)

This past Thursday Freys Electronics again has Flash Drives listed on sale....but get this; Where I paid $33 dollars for the 4 Gig stick they now have listed an 8 Gigabyte stick listed for. . . $34 dollars!
Twice the capacity for about the same price! Where is this going and what's the point of this post you may ask?
Well a couple of days ago there was an article in the local paper that standard DVD's are soon going obsolete in favor of HD (BluRay) DVD's. Okay, that's just fine, improvements to the product only requiring manufacturers to change out the laser assembly and some firmware changes to accommidate the new BluRay on the old frame DVD players, add a new logo and voila, you have a HDDVD player.

But wait a minute here! Looking at the progression in the capacity of the Flash or Jump Drives and the reduction in price, 50% in only 3 months just how long do you think it's going to be before the 'New HD BluRay DVD' is going in the can?

All you have to do is to trace the progression of CD->DVD->DVD+->HDDVD compared to the progression of Jump Drive technology AND dramatic price reductions to know that you should never even consider buying a HDDVD because it's already obsolete!

This morning I sucessfully copied a DVD full length movie (Flight Plan with Jodie Foster) from the DVD to my 4 gig jump drive and still have space left over. (The copy process took 8 minutes) Does the movie play? Sure, just fine. I plug the drive into the front USB port and the movie plays. Now granted, this is on my desktop computer and I do not watch full length movies on a 17 inch monitor but how long do you think it will be before television manufacturers begin equipping a television set with an auxillary USB port?

I say, not long at all. I mean, TV people DID give us a combined TV/VCR and TV/DVD player did they not?
So BluRay stay away, we don't gonna need you no more!
I see the prices of these Jump drives coming down to the neighborhood of 2 dollars for a 4 gig unit and when that happens CD/DVD/HD-DVD will go the way of ferrite core memories. ( yes I did work on those units).

I do believe the era of rotating storage is about to come to an end with all it's attendant mechanical doo-dads, and heads, and spindle bearings and access time and power requirements.

[Jim Prower]

It really IS amazing how tech has progressed in the memory chip segment. in the mid-90s, our beloved game cartridges were replaced by CD-ROMS. now, handheld systems can have games on postage-stamp-size chips that are as good graphically as those first CD-ROM games, on two screens! I am, of course, talking about the Nintendo DS.

I don't think rotating data will completely dissappear, though. a Jump drive is wonderfully handy to store semipermanent or temporary data, but I'm not sure about longevity, and sometimes the ability to change data becomes a curse rather than a blessing. When permanent data is needed, a DVD or Blu-Ray disc is a bit more convenient, and much cheaper to mass-produce.

[Vince]

......I don't think rotating data will completely dissappear, though. a Jump drive is wonderfully handy to store semipermanent or temporary data, but I'm not sure about longevity, and sometimes the ability to change data becomes a curse rather than a blessing. When permanent data is needed, a DVD or Blu-Ray disc is a bit more convenient, and much cheaper to mass-produce.

When they get cheap enough, in the area of .25 to .30 cents per gig in bulk, jump drives with movies on them can very easily be manufactured so that the data is not eraseable by the end user. And judging by the way the prices have been falling for the past year it's not gonna be long. A good example is the way HD drive prices have fallen....or pick just about anything in the tech market.
A 1 TByte drive for ~200 bucks. When I worked for big blue one of my accounts in NYC was Shearson, the stock firm. I was nearby when the data center director was pointing out his BIG room full of 3880 disk drives and said here we have our on-line disk storage of 3 Three! terrabytes.!! .........Which today for 600 bucks you can have installed in your desktop.

[OTTODAD]

Static solid disks or other media using Flash type memory are on the march and this is what was forecast early in 2007:

http://uk.gizmodo.com/2007/03/13/intel_enters_solid_disk_drive.html

There are other types of static memory being worked on which it is said will eventually replace rotating computer data media, their data read/write speeds also being much faster.

http://www.engadget.com/2008/03/21/array-based-flash-memory-could-enable-1tb-memory-chips/

Using it with non-PC players for TV, etc, of course means that their hardware has to be able to use such a whatever capacity memory media, good news for manufacturers selling new models of them ! ;)

O t t o

[USRailFan]

Now imagine what railroading would be like now if railway technology had moved ahead at the same pace...

[pstraten]

I agree with you there, Vince.

At least, if I had any money I wanted to invest in a computer storage manufacturer, it wouldn't be in one that was based on spinning wheels.

:)

[Vince]

Static solid disks or other media using Flash type memory are on the march and this is what was forecast early in 2007:
http://uk.gizmodo.com/2007/03/13/intel_enters_solid_disk_drive.html
There are other types of static memory being worked on which it is said will eventually replace rotating computer data media, their data read/write speeds also being much faster.
http://www.engadget.com/2008/03/21/array-based-flash-memory-could-enable-1tb-memory-chips/
Using it with non-PC players for TV, etc, of course means that their hardware has to be able to use such a whatever capacity memory media, good news for manufacturers selling new models of them ! ;)
O t t o

Thanks for those links Otto,
engadget's story had this qoute; ". . . . .a cost advantage over solid-state drives, which are currently in the range of $15 to $18 per gigabyte." Article dated March 07, 2008.

Well the 4 Gig stick I bought 3 months ago for 35 bucks tax included, works out to (back then) $8.75 per gig.
The ad in the local paper I referenced (last Thursday's advert) had an 8 Gig stick/jump/flash drive or whatever you wanna call it for .....drum roll..... $35 bucks. You do the math. :D
Heh, the article is only a month old and already the obsolete. In fact, if you want to split hairs, the article was obselete BEFORE it was published.
That's a bit scary.

[jtr1962]

I agree that spinning disk technology is on its way out. It's just a matter of when. I'd say within ten years at most, more likely five, we'll be rid of our magnetic mechanical hard disks. And I say good riddance since the hard disk is the biggest bottleneck in today's systems. Besides that, somehow I never really felt comfortable with the idea of storing my precious data via billions of microscopic bits on a disk spinning 120 times a second. To me it seems that catastrophy is only a hair's breadth away. It's a miracle hard disks work at all, let alone as well as they do. When they're replaced with solid state chips, I'll feel much better about my data.

Another thing in favor of solid-state is density. Today's hard disks are at most 1 TB. Granted, this is a huge amount of storage, but in the coming era of HD video we'll need more. At present rates, we'll be lucky if we can get mechanical hard disks to 4 or 5 TB within a couple of years. The 100% annual density increases in the earlier part of the 21st century have come to a halt. We're actually bumping up against very real physical limits now.

Enter solid state. While here too we'll have physical limits, nothing is stopping us from stacking several thin silicon memory chips inside the same package for increased density. Doing it this way, we'll probably be able to get at least tens of terabytes within a standard 3.5" HDD form factor. And since solid state is getter cheaper all the time, it's only a matter of time before it's cost competitive with conventional storage technologies. Power savings are yet another bonus. A 7200 RPM HDD might use 6 or 7 watts even at idle. A solid state disk uses far less, and then only when accessing data. When idle it uses zero power by definition.

[OTTODAD]

That's what I like about the ever changing progress and challenges in computing, keeping my 79 years old brain cells alive !

Hope to be around when all this happens and with a bit of luck shall then have an O/S which does efficiently what it is supposed to ! ;)

O t t o

[rdamurphy]

Now imagine what railroading would be like now if railway technology had moved ahead at the same pace...

Actually, it has! Computer controlled diesel engines, advanced traction and adhesion technologies, even so-called "old" technology like FREDs and Radios have advanced way beyond what they once were. And SD40-2 has 38 tons of tractive effort, an SD90MAC has 77 tons of tractive effort with only a 26 ton increase in weight. An AC6000 weighs 6 tons less than the SD90MAC, yet gets 83 tons of tractive effort. Compare an SD-9 with the SD40-2, and you'll only see about a 6 ton improvement in Tractive Effort! Pretty amazing if you ask me!

Now, if they could invent a robot to drag a coupler knuckle a mile through a snow storm on the side of a mountain in January!

Robert

[Conrail Tweety]

... how long do you think it will be before television manufacturers begin equipping a television set with an auxillary USB port?

About two years ago.

My Sony XBR LCD HDTV has a USB port.

[Vince]

About two years ago.

My Sony XBR LCD HDTV has a USB port.

Okay, now get yourself a 4 gig stick, (about $16 bucks in todays paper) load a movie on it and stick the stick in the TV's usb port.

Does the movie play? Probably not. If it does, I'd be suprised.
The TV set would need the software to play a DVD resident in it's OS. (Yes, even toasters have an OS today.)
Nothing lost to this experiment tho'.....You can use the stick as a handy removeable backup drive.

That's what I was talking about, the day where you can rent or buy a movie on one of these sticks. I predict the price of a 4 gig stick which can hold a full length movie AND more will be down to about $5 bucks in less than 6 months. That's comparable to the price of video tapes when they first came out. (VHS tapes. Sony's BetaMax was more)


Gawd!! Retailers are going to go nuts with this. The extremely small packaging is gonna be tough to secure from thieves.
Remember when CD's first came out and were packaged in boxes almost as big as the old vinyl packaging so the lowlifes woulden't steal them?
One of these things you could literally put it in your mouth and walk off with it. Jeez, that little magnetic or RFID security tag that gets pasted on most stuff today is almot as big as thing it secures.

Suddenly Captain Kirks memory crystals from 1970 are here! :cool:
His 'Beam me up Scotty' commicator arrived 3 years ago. (flip phones) :p
And NBC cancelled the series way back. Too far out for even the TV empty suits I guess. :rolleyes:

[longiron]

Since I work in the hi tech commercial storage market, I'm already seeing next generation storage systems that combine solid state storage with traditional hard drives. It will take some time to get the manufacturing economies for prices to come down. It's inevitable that solid state will replace spinning disks for many applications where fast transfer of data is the key criteria. But we may have spinning hard drives for applications where volume is the key criteria - think storing all those digital pics we're all accumulating.

chrisvw

[RobertVA]

Snip

Gawd!! Retailers are going to go nuts with this. The extremely small packaging is gonna be tough to secure from thieves.
Remember when CD's first came out and were packaged in boxes almost as big as the old vinyl packaging so the lowlifes woulden't steal them?
One of these things you could literally put it in your mouth and walk off with it. Jeez, that little magnetic or RFID security tag that gets pasted on most stuff today is almot as big as thing it secures.

Suddenly Captain Kirks memory crystals from 1970 are here! :cool:
His 'Beam me up Scotty' commicator arrived 3 years ago. (flip phones) :p
And NBC cancelled the series way back. Too far out for even the TV empty suits I guess. :rolleyes:If the manufacturer doesn't include a RFID chip in the flash drive (with a serial number that's listed in the retailer's inventory database) the retailers will either display claim tickets and require the actual media be kept in a secure storage location (like office supply stores handle valuable items or display the empty packaging and return the media to the package at the checkout counter the way game shops handle used DVDs and used console software.

Don't forget though, that the media and reproduction costs are often smaller than those that arose from the production of the intellectual property recorded on the media and any residual payments to the participants any time the material is copied or presented. Thus, the cost of the flash drive hardware will need to be down near the cost of the materials used to make a DVD before solid state devices will be competitive.

[jtr1962]

But we may have spinning hard drives for applications where volume is the key criteria - think storing all those digital pics we're all accumulating.

That's true now although it's only a matter of time before solid state overtakes spinning hard disks in both volume and cost per GB. I'd say were 5 years or less away from that happening. Hard disks aren't increasing in capacity that fast any more. The jump from 750 GB to 1 TB seemed to take forever.