Re: Death of spinning disk?
-Original Message- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List On Behalf Of Timothy Sipples Sent: Friday, November 28, 2014 2:14 AM [ snip ] - smoke/vapor-based recording; I use the word recording here quite consciously. These recording systems could not be played back when they were invented and used. They were simply used for studying the general behavior and characteristics of sound waves. Now, thanks to digital processing -- high resolution digital scans of the smoke imprints combined with computer-based reconstruction of the audio that produced the imprints -- the information they contain can be recovered. That's how the world's oldest sound recordings are now being retrieved. Unfortunately Abraham Lincoln probably didn't speak into such a mechanism, or at least his recording was lost, so it's extremely unlikely a recording of his voice will ever be recoverable and playable. Might have been fun to hear Chopin and Liszt play Dueling Pianos :-) [ snip ] -jc- ** Information contained in this e-mail message and in any attachments thereto is confidential. If you are not the intended recipient, please destroy this message, delete any copies held on your systems, notify the sender immediately, and refrain from using or disclosing all or any part of its content to any other person. -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Death of spinning disk?
Chase, John wrote: Might have been fun to hear Chopin and Liszt play Dueling Pianos :-) Could be serious 'fun', hmmm! ;-) Serious music were played by musicians on toy pianos, see last paragraphs in this URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toy_piano Though originally made as a child's toy, the toy piano has been used in serious classical and contemporary musical contexts. ;-) Groete / Greetings Elardus Engelbrecht -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Death of spinning disk?
Miles Davis biographer and producer said while they were outlining Man with a Horn(album) Miles had his kids piano and was banging out ideas, but only about half the keys worked. He could hear them in his vision, but for mere mortals it was difficult to comprehend. In a message dated 12/1/2014 7:38:11 A.M. Central Standard Time, elardus.engelbre...@sita.co.za writes: Though originally made as a child's toy, the toy piano has been used in serious classical and contemporary musical contexts. -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Death of spinning disk?
Percentage/ratio cost differences are not *exactly* what drive cost-based decisions. To illustrate why, consider these two hypothetical scenarios: 1. A 1 TB hard disk costs $100 and a 1 TB SSD costs $1000. 2. A 1 TB hard disk costs $1 and a 1 TB SSD costs $10. In both cases the SSD is 10 times more expensive -- 1000%. But in Case #2 *both* are more affordable -- both experience 99% price drops -- and both more easily fit within more budgets. SSD only has to get affordable enough to take over more use cases from hard disks. Said another way, absolute prices matter. Said yet another way, the zero lower bound matters. A lot of people overlook this reality, but it's a frequent phenomenon in many markets. Timothy Sipples IT Architect Executive, zEnterprise Industry Solutions, AP/GCG/MEA E-Mail: sipp...@sg.ibm.com -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Death of spinning disk?
sipp...@sg.ibm.com (Timothy Sipples) writes: Percentage/ratio cost differences are not *exactly* what drive cost-based decisions. To illustrate why, consider these two hypothetical scenarios: 1. A 1 TB hard disk costs $100 and a 1 TB SSD costs $1000. 2. A 1 TB hard disk costs $1 and a 1 TB SSD costs $10. In both cases the SSD is 10 times more expensive -- 1000%. But in Case #2 *both* are more affordable -- both experience 99% price drops -- and both more easily fit within more budgets. SSD only has to get affordable enough to take over more use cases from hard disks. Said another way, absolute prices matter. Said yet another way, the zero lower bound matters. A lot of people overlook this reality, but it's a frequent phenomenon in many markets. the PC market with $400-$500 computers would be more price sensitve in that range ... however there is the issue is how much do the slower or faster disks affect total system throughput bottleneck. Said another way, it is the relative system costs that matter (and how it contributes to total system throughput). I've periodically mentioned starting to observe in the 70s that disks were increasingly becoming the bottleneck in overall system throughput. In the early 80s, I wrote a paper claiming that disk's relative system throughput had declined by an order of magnitude over the previous 15yrs ... systems got 40-50 times faster while disks got only 4-5 times faster. Disk division executives took exception and assigned the division performance group to refute the statement ... after a couple weeks they came back and effectively said that I had slightly understated the problem. The analysis is then respun and turns into a SHARE presentation on how to optimize disk for system throughput. About the same time there were issues about how datacenter executives view disk costs based on pure price/megabyte ... they would insist on filling the (new) 3380 disk drives completely full of data ... or otherwise they were wasting money having half empty 3380s. The issue was having extra data filling 3380s interferred with disk arm optimization and accesses for high used data ... degrading overall system throughput (to save a couple dollars per megabyte on disk they were willing to sacrifice degraded system throughput of system that overall ran to tens of millions). There was a semi-facetious proposal floating at SHARE that IBM announce a special high-performance 3380 that was much smaller, faster and more expensive than standard 3380 disk (with much higher cost/megabyte) that would boost overall system throughput. In reality it was just a 3880 microcode load that restricted arm access to only 1/3rd the cylinders. This was something that a datacenter executive could do all on their own with standard 3380 at less cost ... but many appeared to be unable to make that leap. There is recent thread in comp.arch newsgroup about memory being the new disk and disk being the new tape. If memory disk access latencies are measured in number of processor cycles ... the current latency for memory access measured in number of modern day processor cycles then is on the same order of 60s disk access latency when measured in 60s processor cycles. SSD then might be considered closer to fast tape. But for systems that are fully utilized and disk throughput is bottleneck factor for overall system throughput ... then spending thousands of dollars on more expensive disks might gain several percent increased total system throughput (for overall datacenter that runs several tens of millions, especially factoring in total datacenter costs, hardware, cooling, building, people, etc). Having large controller caches and using memory for keeping large amount of high use information ... complicates the analysis. some recent posts mention SHARE B874 (disk performance group respun analysis) http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011.html#35 CKD DASD http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011.html#61 Speed of Old Hard Disks http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#1 Multiple Virtual Memory http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#59 Is the magic and romance killed by Windows (and Linux)? http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011p.html#5 Why are organizations sticking with mainframes? http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011p.html#32 Has anyone successfully migrated off mainframes? http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#73 Tape vs DASD - Speed/time/CPU utilization http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#39 A bit of IBM System 360 nostalgia http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012o.html#62 ISO documentation of IBM 3375, 3380 and 3390 track format http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013m.html#72 'Free Unix!': The world-changing proclamation made 30 years agotoday http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014b.html#49 Mac at 30: A love/hate relationship from the support front http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014l.html#90 What's the difference between doing performance in a mainframe environment versus doing in others -- virtualization experience starting
Re: Death of spinning disk?
I was referring to a device called a phonautograph. The phonautograph recorded what is now the earliest clearly recognizable record of the human voice yet recovered: Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville (most probably) singing Au Clair de la Lune on April 9, 1860. An 1859 recording of somebody (probably Scott himself) striking a 435 Hz tuning fork has also been recovered. Scott started using his phonautograph invention in 1853 or 1854, but it hasn't been possible yet (and may never be) to recover his earliest recordings. Abraham Lincoln was alive for more than 10 years after Scott's invention of the phonautograph, but sadly there's no evidence Lincoln ever spoke (or sang!) into the device. Thomas Edison started making phonograph recordings in 1877. Currently, the earliest recovered Edison phonograph recording is from June 22, 1878. Unlike Scott, Edison could play his recordings back in his own era. Timothy Sipples IT Architect Executive, zEnterprise Industry Solutions, AP/GCG/MEA E-Mail: sipp...@sg.ibm.com -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Death of spinning disk?
On Fri, 28 Nov 2014 16:14:03 +0800, Timothy Sipples sipp...@sg.ibm.com wrote: Setting aside current pricing, what are the characteristics of hard disks that make them better suited to particular use cases than (modern, current) SSD? You make a fair point that if pricing is not an object, then there's no particular use case for spinning disk that comes to mind. If you figure that the durability issues can be overcome with over-provisioning, then the the durability issue is simply a price issue as well. (Mostly, I'm not sure if SSDs are more or less susceptible to data rot simply sitting unused on a shelf.) So the question would be how quickly can SSD pricing can catch (and likely have to pass to deal with the durability/over-provisioning) issue? If SSD capacity follows Moore's law and disk doesn't improve substantially, that could be as soon as 6 years or so. It would be interesting to find some historical disk and SSD capacity pricing over the last 6 years to see if that looks plausible. Hmmm According to the wayback machine, Newegg November 2008 best SSD price was $2.25/GB. Best hard drive price easily accessible was $0.12/GB. Today Newegg's best SSD prices are about $0.38 and best HDD prices are just over $0.03/GB. Make of that as you will, but my guess is that over the next 10 years, spinning HD capacity will remain cheaper than SSD. But at relatively small capacities, the price difference will likely become immaterial. Scott -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Death of spinning disk?
On Sat, 29 Nov 2014 17:47:50 +0800, Timothy Sipples wrote: I was referring to a device called a phonautograph. The phonautograph recorded what is now the earliest clearly recognizable record of the human voice yet recovered: �douard-L�on Scott de Martinville (most probably) singing Au Clair de la Lune on April 9, 1860. An 1859 recording of somebody (probably Scott himself) striking a 435 Hz tuning fork has also been recovered. Scott started using his phonautograph invention in 1853 or 1854, but it hasn't been possible yet (and may never be) to recover his earliest recordings. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonautograph Links to: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104797243 Thomas Edison started making phonograph recordings in 1877. Currently, the earliest recovered Edison phonograph recording is from June 22, 1878. Unlike Scott, Edison could play his recordings back in his own era. And somewhat even today: https://ccrma.stanford.edu/groups/edison/brahms/brahms.html -- gil -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Death of spinning disk?
Scott Chapman writes: Tape still has some characteristics that spinning disks can't quite match for particular use cases. True, agreed. Setting aside current pricing, what are the characteristics of hard disks that make them better suited to particular use cases than (modern, current) SSD? Note that we have seen *several* entire classes of storage disappear from the market, even in niche use cases and excluding persistent use cases -- meaning cases where the storage type was installed a long time ago and has simply persisted through inertia but would never be selected if installed now, even as a corner/niche case. In no particular order, here are some examples: - punch cards; One of the last major use cases was voting, infamously Florida, 2000. Though there are still some people that repurpose the remaining stocks for note taking with pens and pencils. - punch paper tape; I may have recently seen a paper tape (or linked card deck?) player piano available for sale, new, as a novelty. I hesitate because I'm not sure if the card/paper tape aspect of the piano was merely simulated with the actual playback based on electronic memory, perhaps embedded in the novelty tape/card cartridge. I didn't inspect it closely enough. - mercury delay line memory; - data cell drives (i.e. the IBM 2321); A fascinating device but way before my time. - the Exatron Stringy Floppy; - floppy disks; - magneto-optical disk; I think Sony might still be manufacturing their MiniDiscs, barely, primarily for the Japanese market, but these disks are clearly on their way out. - floptical disk; - digital cassette tape (displaced by the floppy disk); The original IBM PC was among the final wave of computers that could use this data storage medium. - sub-2.5 inch and 3.5 inch hard disks; I think these are all gone now. Apple's recent discontinuation of its iPod classic was the major, probably final blow to sub-2.5 inch drives. IBM pioneered teeny tiny hard disks, as it happens. (If anybody knows where I can find a 1.8 inch/320 GB external USB hard disk drive at a reasonable price, please let me know via private e-mail.) - VHS tape as digital storage; You can still find VHS tape sold (but fading) for its traditional video use cases -- e.g. convenience store closed circuit recording systems -- but VHS tape as a computer data storage medium has disappeared, mostly because it was never very good anyway. (Though it was cheap for a period of time.) - Digital Audio Tape (DAT); - disk packs (along with the Inmac catalog); - bubble memory; - phonographic cylinders; - magnetic wire recorders; - metal tape (e.g. UNISERVO); - Kinescopes; - many, many types of film media, including practically all of early film sound recording types; - smoke/vapor-based recording; I use the word recording here quite consciously. These recording systems could not be played back when they were invented and used. They were simply used for studying the general behavior and characteristics of sound waves. Now, thanks to digital processing -- high resolution digital scans of the smoke imprints combined with computer-based reconstruction of the audio that produced the imprints -- the information they contain can be recovered. That's how the world's oldest sound recordings are now being retrieved. Unfortunately Abraham Lincoln probably didn't speak into such a mechanism, or at least his recording was lost, so it's extremely unlikely a recording of his voice will ever be recoverable and playable. - non-vinyl and 78 rpm phonographic records; Vinyl records are still with us as a novelty. - donut core memory; This type of memory/storage persisted for quite a while in niche military/space applications since it can be made extremely rugged and durable. Stone (and other durable materials) engravings have not disappeared. They're still popularly used in building construction (cornerstones, dedication plaques), monuments, trophies, wedding rings and other types of jewelry, gravestones, sculpture and other works of art, spacecraft (messages sent to aliens aboard deep space probes), warnings to future people near permanent spent nuclear fuel dumps, and land surveying (e.g. marking land boundaries), as examples. It's one of humanity's oldest storage types, probably the oldest. (Cave drawings are old, too.) Old is not at all disqualifying for a storage type. In fact there's been some relatively recent innovation within this storage type, e.g. laser etching precious gems. Paper also shows no signs of disappearing as a storage medium any time soon, including optical scan paper media (fill in the ovals with a No. 2 pencil). Optical scan paper media is very popular for voting systems. DNA/RNA most certainly show no signs of disappearing, and they're extremely old. It's a pretty safe bet that particular storage medium will be around on our planet for another 1.5+ billion years. Let's hope so, anyway, though it's a separate question what code(s) those media will be making live
Re: Death of spinning disk?
Hmmm - sooner the better ;-) I can remember taking a 340 Meg hard disk with me as a better option to CF card(s) for my Canon G1 wen I went to the 'states a decade or so ago. Bloody disaster in the heat and humidity of Chicago. Lost almost all the shots on it. Wonder which old camera bag that's fallen to the bottom of ... Shane ... -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Death of spinning disk?
Timothy Sipples wrote: - punch paper tape; I may have recently seen a paper tape (or linked card deck?) player piano available for sale, new, as a novelty. Another novelty: A doll (circa 1800) who can draw pre-programmed words, pictures, etc. and has 'largest cam-based memory of any automaton of the era' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maillardet%27s_automaton Another URL: http://www.chonday.com/Videos/the-writer-automaton - VHS tape as digital storage; What about the failed Betamax (?spelling?) tapes? Were there any attempts to used them for computer storage? ...but VHS tape as a computer data storage medium has disappeared, mostly because it was never very good anyway. How so? Were there any documented attempts? Just curious if you don't mind. - many, many types of film media, including practically all of early film sound recording types; You forgot Microfiche? - non-vinyl and 78 rpm phonographic records; Vinyl records are still with us as a novelty. You can get devices to copy the sounds on vinyl records to DVD/CDs. Stone (and other durable materials) engravings have not disappeared. ... It's one of humanity's oldest storage types, probably the oldest. (Cave drawings are old, too.) Bushman paintings are protected by law here in Sunny South Africa. Paper also shows no signs of disappearing as a storage medium any time What about cellphones and tablets now being used as medium for storage? Groete / Greetings Elardus Engelbrecht -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Death of spinning disk?
On 28 November 2014 at 04:53, Elardus Engelbrecht elardus.engelbre...@sita.co.za wrote: - VHS tape as digital storage; What about the failed Betamax (?spelling?) tapes? Were there any attempts to used them for computer storage? Sony produced at least one digital audio recorder that used Beta (not Betamax) tapes for storage. I think they (and perhaps others) also produced an A2D device (modem) that took a two-channel analogue audio signal in, and produced a composite video signal out, ready for recording on any video tape recorder of the time. Tony H. -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Death of spinning disk?
On 28 November 2014 at 03:14, Timothy Sipples sipp...@sg.ibm.com wrote: - smoke/vapor-based recording; I use the word recording here quite consciously. These recording systems could not be played back when they were invented and used. They were simply used for studying the general behavior and characteristics of sound waves. Now, thanks to digital processing -- high resolution digital scans of the smoke imprints combined with computer-based reconstruction of the audio that produced the imprints -- the information they contain can be recovered. That's how the world's oldest sound recordings are now being retrieved. Unfortunately Abraham Lincoln probably didn't speak into such a mechanism, or at least his recording was lost, so it's extremely unlikely a recording of his voice will ever be recoverable and playable. There has been talk and serious research for many years into trying to discover and recover accidental sound recordings from various media. Essentially anything that can modulate a physical process with ambient audio is a candidate, e.g. as an artist applies think oil paint with a hard tool, or a potter shapes rotating clay on the wheel, the tool could be affected by the sounds nearby, which might of course include voices. I haven't followed this lately, but I think there has been no real success, and that though there may well be a signal, it will be overwhelmed by noise. Tony H. -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Death of spinning disk?
In ofeeb22c6c.b200d94c-on48257d9e.002229fa-48257d9e.002d8...@sg.ibm.com, on 11/28/2014 at 04:14 PM, Timothy Sipples sipp...@sg.ibm.com said: Setting aside current pricing, what are the characteristics of hard disks that make them better suited to particular use cases than (modern, current) SSD? You don't have to worry about doing too many writes to the same track. Caveat: I don't guaranty that there will be an equivalent issue with newer SSD technology. - mercury delay line memory; That was volatile main memory, not nonvolatile auxilliary storage. - data cell drives (i.e. the IBM 2321); A fascinating device but way before my time. It was more recent than the mercury delay line! Probably more reliable, hard though that may be to believe. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz, SysProg and JOAT ISO position; see http://patriot.net/~shmuel/resume/brief.html We don't care. We don't have to care, we're Congress. (S877: The Shut up and Eat Your spam act of 2003) -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Death of spinning disk?
On Wed, 26 Nov 2014 07:14:05 -0600, John McKown john.archie.mck...@gmail.com wrote: Well, maybe, according to: http://www.itworld.com/article/2851057/intel-and-micron-are-going-to-kill-the-hard-disk-drive.html Well, at the individual client (PC) level, absolutely. I won't buy spinning disk for anything other than archival/backup storage now. SSD price/GB is relatively high compared to spinning disk, but for many use cases, you don't need multiple TBs of storage on a PC. On the server side, SSD makes a lot of sense today too. Although cost can be a larger concern because the scale is so much larger, I'm not sure that the cost is a huge concern compared to the other costs in a large enterprise environment. For performance-sensitive applications that are I/O-bound, it makes a lot of sense. As for completely replacing spinning disk, I suspect that transition will kind of be like the transition of disk replacing tape. Tape still has some characteristics that spinning disks can't quite match for particular use cases. It's just that the use cases are becoming more niche as disk storage prices continue to decline. Now if they can reduce flash price/GB 10x, then sure, *maybe* it will replace everything. I'm sure that sort of price decline will happen in time, just because flash is being used in so many more places than spinning disk. But that time frame is not going to be next year. Disk storage will undoubtedly get cheaper over that time frame as well. -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Death of spinning disk?
Well, maybe, according to: http://www.itworld.com/article/2851057/intel-and-micron-are-going-to-kill-the-hard-disk-drive.html According to this, Intel is thinking that 10Tb SSDs will be available in a couple of years. From what I have read, despite the wearing problem, with SSDs, one which is properly configured (extra memory to dynamically replace worn-out memory and load balancing) can last as long, or longer, than the traditional spinning HD. Of course, I also remember how bubble memory was going to destroy the HD market too. -- The temperature of the aqueous content of an unremittingly ogled culinary vessel will not achieve 100 degrees on the Celsius scale. Maranatha! John McKown -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Death of spinning disk?
-Original Message- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On Behalf Of John McKown Sent: 26 November, 2014 14:14 To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU Subject: Death of spinning disk? Well, maybe, according to: http://www.itworld.com/article/2851057/intel-and-micron-are-going-to-kill-the-hard-disk-drive.html According to this, Intel is thinking that 10Tb SSDs will be available in a couple of years. From what I have read, despite the wearing problem, with SSDs, one which is properly configured (extra memory to dynamically replace worn-out memory and load balancing) can last as long, or longer, than the traditional spinning HD. Of course, I also remember how bubble memory was going to destroy the HD market too. Well, I can buy a 1TB SSD now for the price of a 40GB spinning disk 10 years ago. Plus, flash memory in CPUs comes with a minimal quantity, that you dare not dream about for real memory. I think this is going to work. Kees. For information, services and offers, please visit our web site: http://www.klm.com. This e-mail and any attachment may contain confidential and privileged material intended for the addressee only. If you are not the addressee, you are notified that no part of the e-mail or any attachment may be disclosed, copied or distributed, and that any other action related to this e-mail or attachment is strictly prohibited, and may be unlawful. If you have received this e-mail by error, please notify the sender immediately by return e-mail, and delete this message. Koninklijke Luchtvaart Maatschappij NV (KLM), its subsidiaries and/or its employees shall not be liable for the incorrect or incomplete transmission of this e-mail or any attachments, nor responsible for any delay in receipt. Koninklijke Luchtvaart Maatschappij N.V. (also known as KLM Royal Dutch Airlines) is registered in Amstelveen, The Netherlands, with registered number 33014286 -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
