View Full Version : Solid State Drives!!
johnkeel105
04-04-07, 05:26 PM
Since I first started reading about them I have been psyched. They are currently way too expensive for the average person but they have dropped alot in price from what they were a year ago. I was wondering what everyone else around here thinks about SSD?
Some Links to Recent Developments:
Sandisk:
http://www.sandisk.com/Oem/Default.aspx?CatID=1477
http://news.digitaltrends.com/article12453.html
Samsung:
http://www.wwpi.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1980
http://www.enterpriseitplanet.com/storage/news/article.php/3668136
This ain't no rumor my good man. You can buy em NOW (get one and test it for us :thumbsup:):
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147015
Personally I think they will only be viable in the mobile sector due to power savings...
I thought there were issues with these things only being able to be written to x number of times. Have they solved that or do you just replace them after a while like you would a normal hard drive?
buffbiff21
04-04-07, 06:25 PM
Yeah they have been out a while if I recall.
20 dollars per GB is not too attractive to me. :POKE:
Ill wait till they drop to about... $5/gb?
Have they solved that or do you just replace them after a while like you would a normal hard drive?
Yeah they will need to be replaced just like standard drives as they will fail after a certain number of reads/writes, but that number has been improved greatly.
Bman212121
04-04-07, 06:45 PM
I thought there were issues with these things only being able to be written to x number of times. Have they solved that or do you just replace them after a while like you would a normal hard drive?
I'm pretty sure they will get worn out, but the lifespan was good enough to where it wasn't a big concern. IIRC they can last 10 years under normal usage.
GamerGuyX
04-04-07, 06:46 PM
This ain't no rumor my good man. You can buy em NOW (get one and test it for us :thumbsup:):
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147015
Personally I think they will only be viable in the mobile sector due to power savings...
What interface does that SSD use? Is that IDE that I see?
What interface does that SSD use? Obviously not SATA.
It's ATA just like most notebook drives.
Sequential Read Sector : Up to 58MB
Sustained Write Sector : Up to 32MB
<1ms Read latency
Bolded the really key statistic for these drives.
Also unlike mechanical hard disks, the read/write speeds have nothing to do with the position of the data on the platter.
Bolded the really key statistic for these drives.
Yeah key statistic for Financial Institutions (or other Large Database app), but for enthusiasts it is usually throughput that makes all the difference.
Yeah key statistic for Financial Institutions (or other Large Database app), but for enthusiasts it is usually throughput that makes all the difference.
58 megs/sec isn't horrible though. My 320 gig, 7200 rpm SATA drive averages 57 meg/sec (66 meg/sec at the outside of the platter, 40 meg at the inside). And the seek time is 13 milliseconds. Random access is going to kill a normal hard disk due to the seek times, whereas a solid state drive will pretty much shrug it off (performance won't be as good as if everything is clustered together, but it's not going to drop in performance near as badly as a mechanical disk). For reference, my older 240 gig RAIDed pair of SATA's got about 80-90 meg/sec in sequential read. We're still in the same ballpark at least.
Furthermore, this thing is using a UDMA-66 interface, not a SATA interface. In other words, 58 megs/sec pretty much saturates the interface. A drive designed to use a faster interface would likely be much faster. The drive we're looking at here is designed to compete with notebook hard drives, but ends up with the same read performance and 13 times better seek performance than an average desktop hard drive.
I'd LOVE to put the database I use at work on one of these puppies (it's an application we're developing that's extremely latency sensitive), and one of 'em at home for some of my applications wouldn't be bad, either (but $500 for something that uses an old ribbon cable interface is a touch steep).
Yeah I agree the throughput is on par with modern spindle type drives, but I would never buy one just to get a faster access time. This is especially true considering the massive price discrepancy.
Yeah I agree the throughput is on par with modern spindle type drives, but I would never buy one just to get a faster access time. This is especially true considering the massive price discrepancy.
yeah prices definitely have to come down. That's probably why they haven't made one to compete directly with desktop hard drives. For certain niche applications that are less cost sensitive, they're great. We'll probably see 'hybrid' drives become commonplace sooner- drives with large flash caches- and hopefully eventually flash prices will become competitive with old school magnetic drives.
yeah prices definitely have to come down. That's probably why they haven't made one to compete directly with desktop hard drives. For certain niche applications that are less cost sensitive, they're great.
These drives will take the WHOLE mobile sector by storm and probably within the next year or two.
We'll probably see 'hybrid' drives become commonplace sooner- drives with large flash caches- and hopefully eventually flash prices will become competitive with old school magnetic drives.
I just hope they move away from NAND (or is it NOR), either way they are slow compared to DRAM and it's derivatives.
johnkeel105
04-04-07, 08:18 PM
Well the laptop I just got has a very very slow hard drive and someday I would like to replace it with a flash one. Because when running Vista i can tell that its going slow from the hard drive access not so much ram or processor.
I just hope they move away from NAND (or is it NOR), either way they are slow compared to DRAM and it's derivatives.
Key difference: DRAM is volatile memory. And a lot more expensive.
Key difference: DRAM is volatile memory. And a lot more expensive.
I'm well aware, but also willing to pay for speed ;)
I'm well aware, but also willing to pay for speed ;)
DRAM's slow compared to SRAM, why not just go for broke? Should be able to get a few hundered gigs of the stuff running at the same speed as your cpu's L2 for a few 10's of thousands.
DRAM's slow compared to SRAM, why not just go for broke? Should be able to get a few hundered gigs of the stuff running at the same speed as your cpu's L2 for a few 10's of thousands.
Have you and kevla1 been talking?
Have you and kevla1 been talking?
I'm taking your line of reasoning to its logical conclusion to demonstrate its absurdity. By your reaction, I think I succeeded.
Though I'm a touch confused, you earlier stated you wouldn't buy flash drives for their performance increase due to the cost.
Though I'm a touch confused, you earlier stated you wouldn't buy flash drives for their performance increase due to the cost.
Yeah because as I said I am interested in throughput not access time, which is the way I measure performance.
Anyway, you think DRAM based drives are absurd? I thought the iRAM was an excellent concept piece.
Yeah because as I said I am interested in throughput not access time, which is the way I measure performance.
Anyway, you think DRAM based drives are absurd? I thought the iRAM was an excellent concept piece.
Yeah, I think it's a bit nuts. You can already get something similar, that ramdrive from Gigabyte from a year or so ago, you could load up with 4 gigs of DDR. But the backup battery didn't last all that long when it lost power, and in any case, I wouldn't trust it for permanent copies of data... you'd still have to use a hard disk for truly permanent storage, which pretty much means it's nothing but a large, but manual cache (manual as in you manually decide what data to put on it). For some applications where you might need a small amount of really fast storage, it may have some merit, but for most of us... meh.
For most everything else, the memory hierarchy we have works fairly well- small amounts of superfast memory in the CPU and its caches, slower but cheaper system memory, and yet again slower and cheaper (but also non-volatile) memory for mass storage. The problem is, while hard disk transfer rates keep going up and up due to increased density, that does nothing for seek times- they've held in the range of 10-15 ms for many years now. Going to a solid state type of memory eliminates this bottleneck and this aspect of performance that's completely stalled.
Even if cost is no object, the fact you lose everything on DRAM as soon as you lose power is a rather large limitation. I don't mind leaving it in its current place in the memory hierarchy, as far as mass storage is concerned- your disk's built in cache. Even with flash drives it will likely have some benefit.
Anyways, unless you're doing nothing but streaming video off your hard disk, seek times are a big bottleneck, probably more than you realize. Getting rid of the limitation of having to move a mechanical head across the disk to find another piece of data is huge.
Even if cost is no object, the fact you lose everything on DRAM as soon as you lose power is a rather large limitation. I don't mind leaving it in its current place in the memory hierarchy, as far as mass storage is concerned- your disk's built in cache. Even with flash drives it will likely have some benefit.
iRAM ran of +5VSB which is always on... Unless you turned off your PSU, tripped over the cord, or forgot to pay your power bill your fine.
iRAM ran of +5VSB which is always on... Unless you turned off your PSU, tripped over the cord, or forgot to pay your power bill your fine.
Maybe power where you live is a lot more reliable. I don't relish the idea of rebuilding my system after a summer thunderstorm knocks out power (and yes I do have a UPS as well), hence, I wouldn't be keeping anything important on the drive. Even if that only happened once every few months, it's still not worth the hassle. The way I see using it is installing an application on a conventional hard drive, copying it to the ram drive, and using the ram drive's speed for fast application start. Essentially, what the operating system already does automatically by caching files in memory. Personally, I'm content to let the operating system do its job on that regard. Just seems like more hassle than its worth for a few seconds faster load time in a game. Outside of a few specialized applications (I could come up with some great uses for them, but few I'd need them for at home), I don't see much practicality.
Maybe power where you live is a lot more reliable. I don't relish the idea of rebuilding my system after a summer thunderstorm knocks out power (and yes I do have a UPS as well), hence, I wouldn't be keeping anything important on the drive. Even if that only happened once every few months, it's still not worth the hassle.
Exactly you have a UPS and it has battery backup, so theres two power sources keeping it alive.
Although, I hear thunder maybe once a year and storms are infrequent, so I see things differently than. you. The last time I lost power for more than a second or two was in 03 and thats because my roommate didn't pay the bill.
The way I see using it is installing an application on a conventional hard drive, copying it to the ram drive, and using the ram drive's speed for fast application start. Essentially, what the operating system already does automatically by caching files in memory. Personally, I'm content to let the operating system do its job on that regard.
Well I see the OS as the ultimate App and the reason I didn't end up acquiring an iRAM is because I would have needed a slightly bigger drive than the 4gb it was limited to. I've seen videos of full boot loads in a couple seconds.
Just seems like more hassle than its worth for a few seconds faster load time in a game.
Sometimes that slightly faster load time allows you to beat someone to a vehicle or whatever in any online game.
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