“I think Apple’s going to be offering instant-on computers in the very near future. Make that near-instant. Faster than normal, anyway. And some of these may just be the integrated music and video home-media boxes people have been predicting ever since the iPod redefined Apple’s game,” Seth Jayson writes for The Motley Fool. “Robson is the name… that Intel has given its upcoming technology to integrate NAND flash into computers. It will load important chunks of the operating system into flash memory, where it remains even when the machine is powered down. On restart, a computer won’t need to go through so much of the usual laborious process of grabbing data from the hard drive, loading it into RAM, reporting it to the Men In Black, and so on. Intel has so far been showing off this technology in laptops, where it promises to provide longer battery life. But there’s another related benefit.”
Jayson writes, “It might be possible to get these things to start up instantly — or nearly so… So Intel’s got simple, desirable, potentially market-shaking technology that could make computers turn on as quickly as our toasters. It uses flash memory. Apple’s already working with Intel for Macintosh processing chips. And Apple also just happens to have paid Intel’s joint venture a $500 million advance to start making flash chips… It’s my bet that Apple will not only move in this direction but also get there before the rest of the crowd.”
Full article here.
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Now, as any PowerBook, iBook or really any Mac OS X user will tell you, Mac OS X machines are kind of “instant-on” already. Just “Sleep” by closing the lid or by choosing “Sleep” from the Apple Menu instead of shutting down and when you want the Mac “on”, just open up your PowerBook’s or iBook’s lid or jiggle your desktop Mac’s mouse (or hit any key on the keyboard). With insanely great uptimes, Macs are just “on” or “off” (asleep) these days.
That said, what Jayson describes would be true “instant-on” for Macs and it would pave the way for reliable, quick-to-power-up Macs and Apple appliances. Like a stereo receiver or a kitchen appliance, your Mac or any Apple appliance or component (DVR – flash for the instant-on OS, hard drive for the storage – perhaps?) would just be “on” with a press of the power button and “off” with another press. Just think about all of the possibilities beyond the Mac that exist in the living room and elsewhere for Apple to use this technology. And it would be just like Apple to do it first.
i’m sorry for the spelling/grammer mistakes… too much wine.. too little sleeep…
If I could make one investment advice…. believe in what you invest in… only invest in what you purchase at home or at work… only invest in what you are comfortable with…. keep the faith. Always remember….don’t drink ANY cool-aid. the returns are…. ummm… well. ….ummm … too great to ignore.
WATCH FOR THE SIGNS….
If the flash memory were large enough (several GB’s or more) it would be possible to have all (most) of the recent OS files and data cached there so the hard disk would not be accessed as much … would be a cool way to have “almost instant on” (just like my Palm, lowly but handy, Zire 31) and would be energy saving as well … possibly saving to hard disk could be done in some buffered way every so often.
Sounds cool … MW is various as I like “various” kinds of memory (especially since my long term and short term memory is failing … We’ll hello … just call me Dory!) …
It sounds like the right technology to use for a Front Row set-top box.
Well, the nano’s 4 gigs and look how tiny it is, I bet I could fit a nano in my little 12 inch powerbook SOMEwhere……
I think MDN and Sol is right. This NAND agreement is to supply the iPod, Mac, and most importantly, additional consumer electronics products.
I think Apple is working on a video variation of the Airport Express/set-top box that will use 4 to 8GB of NAND memory, in the near term, to provide instant-on access to Front Row on the TV display and local content storage. A smart system could actually cache the first 2 to 3 minutes of all your locally networked audio/video content in this box so that it can start to play immediately upon user selection. While it starts to play, the rest of the media file begins to stream from your main storage location.
I’m a little late to the party but any implications for instant-on if your computer is capable of running more than one operating system?
Big deal. Hasn’t my PDA been able to this for about the past 10 years? Come to think about, I never had to wait for my Sinclair ZX81 to boot up either. The move from 1980’s ROM to 1990’s EEPROM to today’s NAND Flash just seems evolutionary rather than revolutionary to me.
I think flash memory usage will result particularly interesting for improving responsiveness and reduce power consuming in two specific processes (expecially important for laptops):
hybernation and memory swap area
If Apple put 4gb of NAND flash into the new Intel Macs, then the whole os could fit on the flash. This would have two benefits for Apple; OSX running and booting faster and if done properly make it even harder to install on generic p.c. hardware.
Note: I didn’t say impossible just harder.
Thol
p.s. Just switched to a 20″ iMac and loving it
i knew it.. i knew it…
i’ve telling this for months.. if apple could do something like that they’re in a real nice spotlight again, which makes all those “apple is expensive”-wankers say “hmmm, apple has some pretty good ideas.. why doesn’t this ugly dell have that??”
right on! now make leopard top notch! on the contrary of what i thought, recent switchers i know are already selling their new mac’s… they don’t like it…. 🙁
Good show! I was wondering about if such a thing were possible about a year and a half ago. I am very happy to see that such an advancement for Apple hardware and thus the customers may be in the cards.
Of course it won’t be worth two hoots in hell if Apple doesn’t advertise it…if such a thing occurs.
I would hate this on my Windows box. I can see it now. The OS (loaded in Flash) gets corrupted and I’m stuck in a continuous loop of restarting my crapped up system. I have to restart so many times now that this would really be a bummer.
“Hard drives are the slowest part of a computer, so besides “instant on”, the overall performance of a system will be truly as fast as the CPU and buses.”
I don’t think so because in my experience writing to a Flash drive via usb is much slower than writing to my harddrive. Maybe that is because of the usb not the flash tech, but in my experience you’re statement doesn’t make any sense.
“It should be remembered that Apple need to solve the issue of slow processors in their laptops.”
Yes, Apple wants us to remember this but we should remember that this isn’t true. Just after the switch announcement IBM revealed their low power G5 chips that are perfectly suitable for notebook use. The powerbook is no longer stuck with G4 meaning it can compete just fine while staying PPC. Apple is switching to Intel for tech like this, tech that they have developed and constantly have to forget about because MS doesn’t want to make the changes necesarry to use it. Other benefits include intel’s deal with morgan freeman for a movie store, which apple may merge into or may use the same intel DRM tech that I assume the other store will use.
The comment of implication for multiple OS’s is really interesting. Maybe for a dual OS machine you strap a 4 gig NAND chip on that can receive the RAM of the one OS while you’re working in the other. For a triple OS machine you get two 4 gig chips? If this wouldn’t work for technical reasons that I haven’t taken into account let me know, but it seems doable to me.
I’m a Wintel user (!) and I’ve got to tell you, that I have never been very clear on the difference between “sleep” and “hibernate” in Windows…it’s unnecessarily confusing.
Also, I have disabled “hibernate” b/c it actually takes longer for my WinXP machine to “wake-up” from hibernation than it does to do a cold start-up.
thelt,
In sleep mode the memory content is mainteined and just the power to processor activity is cut off, some power consumption is thus present; in hybernate mode the machine is completely poweroff and the current memory content is saved on disk, thus a slow wakeup but no power consumption. By using flash memory in hybernate mode would make it no slower from sleep with the great advantage of no power consumption.
Additionally if the same flash memory during normal activity would be used also for memory paging, this would give a real bump in performance and again a much much lower overall power consumption.
Well, its not instant on. Instant on employs flash technology not just waking from sleep. Look, I love Macs as much as you guys but they are a) infallible and b) do not employ the technology of the future now. Come on MDN, stop the bullshit.