Vassar Technology Today | Pimp your PC: Converting to “solid-state”

Matthew Leung Managing Editor

The aspirations of computer scientists to create artificial intelligence that replicates human intelligence are based largely on Moore’s Law. This law outlines the development of increasing speeds of the microprocessor and indicates that around the year 2050, a microprocessor as powerful as the human brain will be available to consumers for less than $1,000. But with such high processing speeds, the hard drive (the source that feeds the processor the raw data and records the processed data) must be able to keep up as well.

Ironically, the hard drive is the slowest component in the computer because it is the only component that has moving parts. Even some of the fastest hard drives available today, which spin the disk at about 15,000 times per minute, take about four milliseconds to retrieve or save data. In that fraction of a second, a typical 3.4 gigahertz processor on a personal computer would have completed 14 million calculations.

Nonetheless, the reason that hard drives are still in use today is that they are the cheapest way to store a large volume of data. But the scene is changing with the development of flash memory.

The advantages of flash memory over a hard disk include faster access, lighter weight, less space consumption, less heat emitted, less noise, and less power consumption. Additionally, flash memory has no moving parts (hence the name “solid-state”), and is less vulnerable to shock.

Flash memory also promises much for the future: consumer-wide implementation of flash memory in place of hard drives will allow for the development of computers with zero boot-up time. Also, Samsung and Seagate have partnered to develop a hybrid of hard disk and flash memory that will be ready for consumers in 2007, and will provide the best balance of price, speed, and storage capacity.

But there is no reason to wait for the far-off future. This past June, Kingston introduced an eight gigabyte (GB) compact flash card that costs about $400. Moreover, just a minimum of three GB of disk space is required to support the Mac OSX or Windows XP operating system. Since a three GB flash memory card costs less than $100, solid-state computing is a present reality rather than a dream of the future.

While the ideal concept of a solid-state computer can be achieved today by using flash memory, the potential benefit of increased speed will have to wait. This is because the flash memory presently available to the consumer is not designed to replace hard drives and therefore is much slower: High speed models can write data at about 20 megabytes (MB) per second, compared to the fastest hard drives today, which write data at about 300 MB per second. However, by replacing a laptop hard drive with flash memory, speed improvements might be possible, since laptop hard drives usually run much slower, sometimes even close to a read/write speed of 20 MB per second.

If you decide to go ahead with solid-state computing, the most basic way to do so is to run part or all of your computer from a USB flash drive. For example, you can run the operating system itself from the hard drive and place all program files on a flash drive. Alternatively, Windows XP and Mac OS X can boot from a USB flash drive. (For detailed instructions for Mac and Windows, refer the web-only addition to this article at misc.vassar.edu)

To completely convert your computer into a solid-state system, you need a hardware adapter to connect directly to the socket on the motherboard where the hard drive was originally connected. The flash memory then piggybacks the adapter, and the computer is fooled into using the memory as a bootable hard drive. Addonics technology (addonics.com) sells this adapter in a desktop and laptop version.

Now that you have a pimped-up, solid-state system, your laptop can be your true virtual friend. The shock-proof system will be able able to accompany you outdoors, on the road, and wherever you may find yourself connecting to the Vassar wireless network.