• New research suggests setting fire to your SSD makes it last 10000x longer
    24 replies, posted
[quote]A brief jolt of 800C heat can stop flash memory wearing out, researchers in Taiwan have found. Flash memory is widely used in computers and electronic gadgets because it is fast and remembers data written to it even when unpowered. However, flash memory reliability suffers significantly after about 10,000 write and read cycles. Using heat, the researchers have found a way to "heal" flash memory materials to make them last 100 million cycles. Hot chip Heat has long been known to help heal degraded materials in old flash memory. But because the heat healing process meant baking the memory chip in an oven at 250C for hours, few saw it as a practical solution. Researchers at electronics company Macronix have found a way around this by re-designing chips to put a heater alongside the memory material that holds the data. In a paper due to be presented at the International Electron Devices Meeting 2012, the Macronix researchers said their onboard heater applied a jolt of heat to small groups of memory cells. Briefly heating those locations to about 800C returned damaged memory locations to full working order. The re-designed memory chip was safe, they said, because very small areas were being heated for only a few milliseconds. The process also consumed small amounts of power so should not significantly reduce battery life on portable gadgets, they said. Tests carried out by Macronix on the novel memory chips shows that they can last at least 100 million write and read cycles. The true upper limit of their reliability has not been plumbed, the researchers told IEEE Spectrum, because it takes weeks to write and read data tens of millions of times, even to fast memory chips. Testing for billions of cycles would take "months", said the researchers. Macronix said it planned to capitalise on its research but gave no date for when the improved flash memory might start appearing in gadgets.[/quote] [url]http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20579077[/url] Who would have thought?
So if I duct tape my Nvidia GPU to my SSD, my SSD will last longer? :O
Neat. [editline]4th December 2012[/editline] If I had an SSD that was.
[QUOTE=Angus725;38696679]So if I duct tape my Nvidia GPU to my SSD, my SSD will last longer? :O[/QUOTE] My sides
Physics, chemistry and electronics always blow my mind. This reminds me of the graphics card fix where you would put it in the oven for a while at 400 degrees and it would be fixed. For years I was seriously convinced that it was a massive inside joke that had been going on for ages and that people were just baking their broken cards saying it fixed them. So strange that it actually does work.
[QUOTE=Angus725;38696679]So if I duct tape my Nvidia GPU to my SSD, my SSD will last longer? :O[/QUOTE] The article said it only needed a brief jolt of 800°C. Prolonged exposure is probably not good for it.
[QUOTE=T2L_Goose;38696748]Physics, chemistry and electronics always blow my mind. This reminds me of the graphics card fix where you would put it in the oven for a while at 400 degrees and it would be fixed. For years I was seriously convinced that it was a massive inside joke that had been going on for ages and that people were just baking their broken cards saying it fixed them. So strange that it actually does work.[/QUOTE] That's to melt the solder and to resolder the connections...if the soldering was the problem with the card. [editline]3rd December 2012[/editline] [QUOTE=Mindtwistah;38696758]The article said it only needed a brief jolt of 800°C. Prolonged exposure is probably not good for it.[/QUOTE] Yea probably. Many electronic parts tend not to like heat that well.
Thats a amazing discovery. Can't wait for them to capitalise on it so I can finally get reliable storage instead of buying new HDD's every 2 years.
[QUOTE=laserguided;38696804]Thats a amazing discovery. Can't wait for them to capitalise on it so I can finally get reliable storage instead of buying new HDD's every 2 years.[/QUOTE] If you're buying new HDD's every 2 years you're buying shit HDD's.
[QUOTE=Mindtwistah;38696818]If you're buying new HDD's every 2 years you're buying shit HDD's.[/QUOTE] I bought decent HDD's until even my Samsung F3 died. Its like subscription based storage.
[QUOTE=Mindtwistah;38696818]If you're buying new HDD's every 2 years you're buying shit HDD's.[/QUOTE] or really really high density HDDs higher density is significantly more prone to failure
[QUOTE=laserguided;38696855]I bought decent HDD's until even my Samsung F3 died. Its like subscription based storage.[/QUOTE] F3's aren't exactly known to be the most stable HDDs.
I wonder if that makes SSD's more susceptible to power fluctuations however. Heat changes the amount of energy required to change the state of the transistors (Most SSDs use MOSFETs as the storage medium). If there is more heat (phonons), then the bandgap (energy required to switch on a gate), is reduced, ergo if a power surge comes in, then it could change the state more easily though. [B]EDIT:[/B] Nevermind its a brief burst of heat, not sustained
[QUOTE=Mindtwistah;38696758]The article said it only needed a brief jolt of 800°C. Prolonged exposure is probably not good for it.[/QUOTE] Yeah but Nvidia GPU's don't get that hot You'd have to use an Intel Processor for that
[QUOTE=Mindtwistah;38697008]F3's aren't exactly known to be the most stable HDDs.[/QUOTE] A year ago tons of people were recommending it for reliability. Oh well, good to know.
[QUOTE=laserguided;38697144]A year ago tons of people were recommending it for reliability. Oh well, good to know.[/QUOTE] No FP just loved it because of the price/performance ratio Reliability wasn't overly considered
I thought this was one of those joke youtube videos about a guy throwing his broken ssd in a fire or something. But wow.
[QUOTE=laserguided;38697144]A year ago tons of people were recommending it for reliability. Oh well, good to know.[/QUOTE] we were recommending it mostly for speed, but considering the alternatives at the time were Western Digital or Seagate Barricudas, I'd say it was the most reliable drive
Now you can use your SSD as a CPU heatsink.
I wouldn't trust a heater that goes up to 800 degrees in my computer. What if it malfunctions? If this kicks off, at least a few out of the huge amount that get produced will.
[QUOTE=ProWaffle;38697551]I wouldn't trust a heater that goes up to 800 degrees in my computer. What if it malfunctions? If this kicks off, at least a few out of the huge amount that get produced will.[/QUOTE] Why would you trust the fans in your GPU? Those stop blowing and the computer doesn't turn off, it will just get hotter and hotter and melt. What if your PSU explodes? It could burn your house down.
Ooooh. That's one of two reasons I don't want an SSD dealt with. Now all they need to do is drop the price-per-gigabyte down on a level comparable with platter drives and I'm switching over.
Time for special "Heat tempered" editions that cost 30% more.
[QUOTE=TheTalon;38697143]Yeah but Nvidia GPU's don't get that hot You'd have to use an Intel Processor for that[/QUOTE] My i5 2500k never goes above 65c on full load even when OCed to 4.4GHz. That's not very much, especially since I have shit airflow. Are intel really that known for hot processors?
[QUOTE=Starship;38698618]My i5 2500k never goes above 65c on full load even when OCed to 4.4GHz. That's not very much, especially since I have shit airflow. Are intel really that known for hot processors?[/QUOTE] It's not the newer line of processors - rather, the NetBurst-based CPUs (Pentium 4, etc) had some serious heat issues.
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