Dave, Such large memories are cool, but of course AGI requires a lot of processing power to go with the memory. The price cited at the bottom of the below article for 120GB wasn’t that much less than the price for which would could by 128GB with 8 quad core opterons in one of the links you sent me last week.
Ed Porter
-----Original Message-----
From: David Hart [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Monday, December 10, 2007 11:40 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: [agi] news bit: "DRAM Appliance" 10TB extended
memory in one rack
Hi,
Some news with interesting implications for future AGI
development, from http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/12/10/amd_violin_memory/
- more at http://www.violin-memory.com/
10TB of DRAM? Why not?
By Ashlee Vance in Mountain View
<mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> → More by this author
<http://search.theregister.co.uk/?author=Ashlee%20Vance>
Published Monday 10th December 2007 17:06 GMT
AMD and Violin Memory have ignited a love affair
around Hypertransport that should result in what the industry technically
refers to as huge DRAM appliances being connected to Opteron-based servers.
Violin Memory Inc. had eluded us before today's
announcement, which is either the fault of the company's PR staff or our
lack of attention to e-mail. No matter. We've spotted this start-up now and
don't plan to let go because it's banging away at one of the more intriguing
bits of the server/storage game - MAS or memory attached storage.
The company sells a Violin 1010 unit that holds up
to 504GB of DRAM in a 2U box. Fill a rack, and you're looking at 10TB of
DRAM.
It should be noted that each appliance can support
up to 84 virtual modules as well. Customers can create 6GB modules and add
RAID-like functions between modules.
The DRAM approach to storage is, of course, very
expensive when compared to spinning disks, but does offer benefits such as
lower power consumption and higher performance. Most of the start-ups
dabbling in the MAS space - like Gear6
<http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/08/28/memory_appliance_gear6_cachefx/> -
zero in on the performance gains and aim their gear at any company with a
massive database.
Now Violin plans to tap right into AMD's
Hypertransport technology to link these memory appliances with servers. "The
cache coherency protocol of Hypertransport technology will enable several
processors to share extensive memory resources from one or more Violin
Memory Appliances. This extended memory model will enable these servers to
support much larger datasets," the companies said.
"An AMD Opteron processor-based server connected to
a HyperTransport technology-enabled Violin Memory Appliance will have both
directly connected memory and Extended Memory resources. Directly connected
memory can be selected for bandwidth and latency while the Extended Memory
can be much larger and located in the Memory Appliance. Applications such as
large databases will benefit from the large-scale memory footprints enabled
through Extended Memory."
The two companies expect these new systems to arrive
by the second half of 2008.
Those of you who want to try Violin's gear now can
get a 120GB "starter kit" for $50,000. (r)
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