# Intel turbo memory (flash)



## dehrmann (Jan 23, 2009)

How does Intel turbo memory show up in FreeBSD?  It looks like a mini-pcie card, which almost makes me think it will show up as an IDE controller, a la compact flash.

http://www.intel.com/design/flash/nand/turbomemory/index.htm


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## morbit (Jan 25, 2009)

As far I know, it's not usable under Linux at all, never heard of anyone trying to use it with FreeBSD.


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## dehrmann (Jan 27, 2009)

I found possibly another Intel mini pcie flash product (I'm not sure if it's a robson cache, or not).  It uses a pcie *interface*, but the pins are ATA pins...which essentially means a stripped-down clocked-up ISA bus is being run over pcie.  Scary.

Anyway, the southbridge would need to be aware of this interesting setup; it's not as simple as an ATA controller on a pcie link.  Buyer beware: there IS an ATA controller on this chip, just not the kind you think.


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## Crivens (Sep 13, 2012)

In hope that someone will find this usefull and maybe this will provide a driver putting this memory to good use (Zpool cache) - this page speaks of software support as described in "System BIOS with AHCI and IntelÂ® Turbo Memory support (Note: support documented in BIOS Writerâ€™s Guide, doc #24766)"

I'm not sure if this document is freely available, but maybe someone already has one copy and could provide more information?


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## morbit (Nov 27, 2016)

Looks like the technology never took off. You can get those chips cheap now though, yet I saw that writes to those can be slower than to HDD, so it may be very well obsolete now with SSDs.


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