Coming to computer stores in the not-too-distant future will be a new type of PC. It will not have a hard drive, and the operating system will be burned onto a chip, making malware manipulations and viruses problems of the past. This trend toward solid-state PCs is being driven, in part, by security concerns and a push to converge operating systems toward Unix/Linux platforms. The elimination of spinning storage platters, which are near the end of their bulk capacity, will also increase operating speed.
Solid-state mass storage has been around for more than a decade. There are all sorts of ways this can and has been incorporated into systems already. OS dependencies aren't really an issue - vendors can easily represent storage in a way that doesn't require changes to any OS. Microsoft published early UMPC designs a few years ago and has been shipping Windows on such machines for at least a year. Windows Vista not only supports booting from flash, but it also supports mapping flash as memory instead of storage. In terms of solid-state appliances, there are plenty of phones and pda's that use only solid-state storage. These have been around for years as well and run a variety of OS's. Regarding the claim that OS vendors are somehow errant in enabling writes to storage reserved for OS data, it would be a huge step backward to disallow this. There are many good reasons to modify kernel data and binaries. Controlling access to that data and binaries is a much better approach and is something that modern OS's such as Windows have been doing for years. Finally, I suspect the phrase "Quantum physics" was used so often to make the article seem more scientifically credible to the layman. Quantum physics really isn't relevant at this level of discussion. Ultimately, I can't help but suspect this article is simply a way to tell some sensational story about a new technology that will cause Linux to unseat Windows and create all sorts of disruptions in high-tech. While that might be an interesting topic to ponder at the water-cooler, it's hardly relevant where solid state storage is concerned.
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Solid-State PCs: Computing’s Next Horizon
Posted by: Jack M. Germain December 21, 2006 04:00 AMComing to computer stores in the not-too-distant future will be a new type of PC. It will not have a hard drive, and the operating system will be burned onto a chip, making malware manipulations and viruses problems of the past. This trend toward solid-state PCs is being driven, in part, by security concerns and a push to converge operating systems toward Unix/Linux platforms. The elimination of spinning storage platters, which are near the end of their bulk capacity, will also increase operating speed.
Windows Vista not only supports booting from flash, but it also supports mapping flash as memory instead of storage.
In terms of solid-state appliances, there are plenty of phones and pda's that use only solid-state storage. These have been around for years as well and run a variety of OS's.
Regarding the claim that OS vendors are somehow errant in enabling writes to storage reserved for OS data, it would be a huge step backward to disallow this. There are many good reasons to modify kernel data and binaries. Controlling access to that data and binaries is a much better approach and is something that modern OS's such as Windows have been doing for years.
Finally, I suspect the phrase "Quantum physics" was used so often to make the article seem more scientifically credible to the layman. Quantum physics really isn't relevant at this level of discussion.
Ultimately, I can't help but suspect this article is simply a way to tell some sensational story about a new technology that will cause Linux to unseat Windows and create all sorts of disruptions in high-tech. While that might be an interesting topic to ponder at the water-cooler, it's hardly relevant where solid state storage is concerned.