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back to article Microsoft wants slower flash chips

Microsoft wants slower flash chips that skimp on power use in its big, big data centres. EETimes reports Dileep Bhandarkar, Microsoft's chief architect for global foundation services – he helps design Redmond's massive data centres – saying he doesn't need the highest IOPS NAND. He needs more IOPS than disk systems but wants …

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  1. Thomas 18
    Happy

    Cheaper flash thats still faster than magnetic disks

    That's what consumers want too! At least this one does.

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  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "focused on performance per Watt per dollar"

    Now, who's better poised to be delivering that in Windows?

    x86 architecture or ARM architecture?

    Not looking good for Wintel is it.

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    1. kb
      Reply Icon
      Happy

      that is simple, AMD.

      The new AMD chips give incredible bang for the buck and with everyone jumping on OpenCL, even Nvidia is gonna support OpenCL, that just makes the bang even higher. ARM just doesn't give you the processing power since it is a MUCH simpler design, I mean i could probably deliver a machine that only used a couple of watts total if I used a 6502 as the CPU but it wouldn't really be useful as a server now would it?

      The elephant in the room for ARM is the 30+ years of X86 code already written. it would cost billions to rewrite all that code to run on the ARM CPU whereas the CULV AMD and Intel chips get lower every year while gaining more abilities. personally i'd rather have a machine built around brazos that can give me full hardware accelerated 1080P and give me 6 hours on a bettery than an ARM based that can't run a single program i use daily but gives me 12 hours of...what I'd actually run on it is anybody's guess.

      As for TFA if MSFT can get the chip fabs to give us 128gb SSDs for $30 USD? yes please, i'll take two.

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  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    If they want really slow flash chips...

    ... they should use the ones in a phone SIM card. Why is it the flash memory in a USB sticks and SSDs works instantly but I always have to wait 5 mins for the memory in a SIM to come online when I switch a phone on?

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  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    yep who cares about speed of copying large files.

    I care about reliability, price and size.

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  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "the 30+ years of X86 code already written."

    "the 30+ years of X86 code already written" is almost all in high level languages.

    If people were sufficiently motivated, they could recompile it with a different compiler (or different switches on the same compiler), as they did when x86 became AMD64. The existing source is not the issue for ARM, that's been addressable for a while. Performance soon won't be an issue either (already isn't in many cases).

    There is an ARM-specific issue though, and that is the diverse nature of ARM-based platforms. Get Microsoft on the case and there might be an incentive for a set of common platform standards for the hardware. That would be handy.

    "what I'd actually run on [ARM] is anybody's guess."

    Probably not DOS (well, not native anyway), but beyond that, the world is your oyster. Open your eyes.

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