Installing Robson Flash Memory_Is it User Upgradeable?

I found out recently in dealing with the Compal IFL90 that the Robson memory isn’t very user upgradeable and we (PowerNotebooks.com) won’t likely be selling the modules separately for installation later by users choosing to purchasing XP now or to not do the upgrade option at the time of their purchase.

So, if you want that technology now I recommend that you purchase it now with your laptop along with Vista and if you are not ready for Vista and still want XP to consider going with a dual boot.

Otherwise, if you purchase it now and plan to use XP initially you most likely will end up with a device in your device manager that hasn't been installed (because of no drivers for XP). I am guessing at the ramifications for this because I have yet to personally try installing XP on a Santa Rosa machine that has Robson memory installed. (This will still be the situation even in the dual boot situation on the XP side).

“Not really [user upgradeable]. As you know, Turbo Memory isn't supported by Intel to work in WinXP at all, and to install it and get it up and running later on in Vista OS will not be an easy feat except for more experienced users [technicians]. Turbo Memory needs BIOS support and you need to enable AHCI and some other options in CMOS. Then in Vista, you need to load the Turbo Memory driver along with the Intel Matrix RAID software and make a couple of other changes in the Turbo Memory console to enable ReadyBoost and ReadyDrive features.”

Hope this helps you out!

Please feel free to give me a call and I will be happy to discuss this further with you!

 

Hey Ron! Came out of the wilderness to join Donald on the forums?

Welcome! Thanks for the information share

 

Thanks for the update on Robson Ron.

I am glad I pre ordered my IFL90 with Robson.
Tim

 

Not to pick your brain to much or cause this thread to go crazy, but I'm still not sure why Robson isn't user upgradeable. As I understand it, the Flash modules are using a mini-PCI connector. Are they just not friendly to access from a user's point of view?

Thanks!

 

Yes, I thought it was time to come on out and play with the rest of the gang!

 

pyro, it isn't that it is physically difficult to put the module in there (although it could be on some models). Rather it is the set up that would be beyond most users. Techies such as yourself would have no problem with it as long as you followed the steps correctly.

 

Thanks for the information Ron, this question has been floating around the hardware forum for a while and it is good that we now have a solid answer.

 

You cheated! Ron was supposed to answer

No problem, I was just wondering since I've seen some of the Robson system's internals over the last few months and have yet to see a fixed Robson card.

I know about the setup routine.. it's not fun and I wouldn't wish anyone without a good deal of experience to do the installation.

Thanks PowerNotebooks!

 

Ron was still asleep

I'll stay out of this one from now on though...

 

Hi Pyro,

Yeah, I was just heading home yesterday when I made that post so Donald jumped in

Donald and I were discussing your question today and we really want to take a look at the machine when it comes in. Location of the Robson and perhaps put photos in this post again.

If the installation procedure isn't too tough and is understandable buy most Techies then we will likely change our position.

So, basically, hopefully this thread will help some of the guys that are waffling a bit before they buy as to whether to install now or not.

Once the IFL90 is here we will need to address the issue further as we all know many people will choose not to install now and then later upgrade to Vista and may want to upgrade.

Interesting enough is that this issue may die if people find out later that Robson isn't really cut out to be everything marketers would like us to believe.

Time will only tell.

 

Working at Intel I've seen alot of internal information and testing (some more marketing based then fact based), but for the most part the product delivers.

The biggest hurdle is getting people to understand the technologies intent. From what I've read on here alot of people hear "memory" used in the information and instantly associate with some sort of RAM. This leads to expectations that aren't going to be displayed in the real world's demonstrations. What the buyers need to be sure they understand is first, how a swap file works, or a computers paging system. Next, that Robson is more like a faster technology for the swap file.

The big intent is that the HD is and has been the slowest link the PC's chain, and technology like Robson are being created to help remove that weakness.

Production of Robson memory is also preparing the market and ramping the volume on NAND, so that we can get a faster solid state drive to market which will remove the HD bottleneck almost completely. It's sad really, how many technologies never made it out of the secret labs at Seagate for removing this bottleneck as early as the mid 90's.

Anyways, I didn't mean to hijack your thread here, but this might help someone in the future

 

You are allowed to hang out and share your thoughts, that was just a bit of a hazing, or right of passage for Ron though

 

He needs it you know...it will make him strong like Ox

 

Thanks for your comments and I don't feel you are hijacking any thread at all!

Your comments are good and these are the sort of questions and answers people need to hear surrounding a new technology like this one. So, this entire thread should be good and enlightening to those wanting to understand some of the issues, ramifications surrounding the Robson (Intel Turbo Memory) and its technology. At least if it hasn't been discussed elsewhere already at NBR.

Yes, I hear from some friends in the industry that a couple of companies like yours and Micron, Sandisk, etc. that are really working hard to get the solid state NAND developed (replacing HDDs at lower capacities). This sounds promising once they can get it to work faster at the storage capacities greater than 30 GBs.

I believe it when you say Seagate and others have known about these technologies for a long time; however it is nice to see it actually going forward now. I look forward to solid state technology and for it to keep improving!

 

People like me who say that adding 1GB or RAM is going to give more performance overall than adding 1GB of Robson are not misunderstanding the technology. Quite the contrary, they are understanding it very well. Your example of the swap file is actually one of the easiest scenarios to handle when talking about RAM vs Robson. Let me break it down into questions and answers.

Q: Why does an OS swap memory pages to a file on a hard disk?

A: This is to allow the computer user to use a bigger memory space than what RAM allows. So on a machine with 1GB of physical RAM the OS can allow access to a virtual memory space of 2GB (for instance): 1GB held in physical RAM and the additional 1GB held on disk. (I am simplifying things a bit because different OSes do the mapping differently.)

Q: There's gotta be a price to the use of the swap, right?

A: Yes, hard disks are much slower than RAM. So every time a memory page must be sent to the swap file or read from the swap file, there's a significant performance cost.

Q: So the performance of the device on which the swap file is kept is important, right?

A: Yes it is. You want your fastest device to hold the swap file. Either your fastest HD. A flash drive is even better.

Q: So really the best thing to do to reduce the price of swapping is Robson, right? After all, it is a super fast flash drive directly interfaced through miniPCI.

A: Not at all. The best thing you can do to reduce the price of swapping is to not pay that price at all. If you usage shows that on a machine with 1GB or RAM, you use 1GB of swap, the best thing to do is to add 1GB of RAM. By doing so, you will not swap anymore and won't pay the price of swapping.

Ok, Q&A over. Time and again when I've setup performance servers the first thing to do was to evaluate how much RAM would be needed to hold everything in RAM and spec out the machine to have that much RAM. No swapping. Robson is a crutch, not a solution.

 

Actually, it's not the same.. In NT Kernel based editions of windows, you can't really disable the swap file, and windows will always push crap into it like DLL's that it's not ready to unload, which still takes physical ram to map out the locations on the swap file.

I think there are two flaws in your example above (although your QA is mostly on target). The average joe has no clue how their swap file works, and they don't want to know (One of the biggest things I still hear daily is people mixing the term "memory" between ram and HD). The problem is that you know, and the people you work with know, so you assume everyone does. It's simple one you know the truth, but to many people are still convinced that computers are magic beyond their comprehension, which is how corporations like it, so the user base is chained to them.

I worked for about 12 years doing home and business computer/network repair / installation services, and there were a good majority of people (smart people like physicians) that pay companies to come out and turn on printers on Monday's because they don't want know how to turn them on after the secretaries\receptionists leave on Friday.

The other part of the equation that you are missing is that with Robson being a seperate entity on it's own bus, you can configure the data that it's buffering to enable the system to speed up things YOU find important (Which Vista should already know how to do). I promise you there are companies writing tweak software right now to let users make the most of their Robson cards.

The thing you did nail is that it's only a partial solution. This is the step that was require though to get the big mainstream fabs needed for solid state drives, much like hybrid drives are a step (Also pushes the volume needed to get the prices down to make it practical). Gotta remember how slow the market is to adopt totally new technology. And you can't use the population of this forum as a sample either, since people here either have little knowledge and are trying to find answers, or they have ton's of knowledge and this is all a hobby.

 

About disabling the swap, see:

http://www.blackviper.com/AskBV/XP17.htm

And especially this image:

http://www.blackviper.com/images/WinXP/ScreenShots/tweak5c.jpg

The author does say rather cryptically that "some software may fail" but for all I know that could mean that disabling the swap will not leave you with enough virtual memory to run everything you normally run. At any rate, you can go into the control panel and disable the RAM.

This objection is neither here nor there. The problem with the "average joe" boils down to this: if the average joe asks me whether I think he should get Robson or RAM, what do I tell him? I answer RAM because everything Robson does can be done with RAM. The average joe does not need to know about swap files. He does not need to disable it because by design the OS will use RAM rather than the swap file.

A cache is a cache is a cache. On a computer that only has RAM and a hard disk, the OS already caches files to RAM. That's one of the basic functions of the operating system. So RAM is a cache and Robson is a cache. You can use the same algorithms to control both. The fact that Robson has its own bus changes nothing to this.

The only thing Robson gives you that RAM cannot give you is persistence across reboots and lower power consumption. That's all. RAM can give you everything else Robson can and can give it to you more efficiently.

 

So it is NOT recomended to purchased both robinson and install XP? Are options for users who don't wana buy Vista quite yet?

 

I'm getting more and more convinced that Robson is designed to be a cost effective imitation of Hybrid Hard disks. I may be wrong, but both aim to do the same thing- Speed up access times. In that scenario, I can see how robson would augment RAM. But the question arises that how would the OS know what to cache on the chip? Is it going to be the page file? Is it going to be the so-called Vista Superfetch(Haven't used Vista, but XP sure sucked with its Prefetch)? I haven't read too much about Robson, so possibly the questions make no sense...

 

@ Kiwi

Robson doesnt work under XP. Vista only.

@sesshomaru

Robson and hybrid disks are the same. They both use Vista readydrive. Only differance is that hybrid disks might be supported by other OS in the futuer and some disk manufactuers might use their own managment software and not use Vista readydrive.

Vista Readyboost and Readydrive manage the flash cache. They try to predict which files you will need by analysing the user pattern and learn what the user does. Also Readydrive doesnt store all files on flash. Large files (larger then 1-2MB are better kept on the hard disk. Only small files are kept in the flash. Normal hard disks are slow when accassing random files. They have to reposition the head for every file and this takes longer then actually reading the file. Flash doesnt have to reposition anyhting. There are no mocing parts so reading many small files will be faster with flash. For larger files the hard disk is faster because once in position the hard disk can read faster then flash.

 

I'm aware -- what I'm concerned about is this: I was planning on picking up Robinson, installing XP, and then later installing Vista. Now were being informed that this is extremly difficult.

 

I think that should work. You need to setup the Robson software everytime you format or reinstall Windows too.

 

Kiwi, yes this is the point of this thread. You will want to weigh out your options carefully. If you are not real technically inclined then it will likely be best that you consider not installing the Robson at all if you plan to use XP for any length of time.

Also, when upgrading later it really may not be that big of a concern (benefit) if you just plan on going with the most amount of RAM memory as you can and not planning to install the Robson flash module later as well.

It is true that statistics show and as mentioned in this thread of how beneficial Robson really is (or isn't) depending on how much RAM memory you choose to install. The benefits of Robson does go down significantly in proportion to how much memory you install when going to Vista.

Now, you could possibly install Robson anyway at the time of purchase along with XP but you will likely get unknown device errors within the Device Manager, etc.; however you may be willing to live with that option as well.

With that being said we will need to investigate if we will be installing Robson and XP at the same time and until we receive the laptops in hand to determine whether this will be a possible option or not. We will want to confirm that there are no other conflicts or set backs in doing this other than getting an unknown device, etc in Device Manager.