Erik Trimble wrote: > Brian Hechinger wrote: > >> On Fri, Jun 27, 2008 at 03:02:43PM -0700, Erik Trimble wrote: >> >> >>> Unfortunately, we need to be careful here with our terminology. >>> >>> >> You are completely and 100% correct, Erik. I've been throwing the >> term SSD around, but in the context of what I'm thinking, by SSD I >> mean this new-fangled flash based SSD. >> >> >> >>> In this case, I think we want the DRAM SSDs. >>> >>> >> Yes, yes you do. I know I say this all the time, and I'm sure you're all >> getting tired of me, but I *really* wish Gigabyte (or *ANYONE ELSE*, ahem, >> Sun, *cough*) would produce something similar to the iRAM, but with 3.0Gpbs >> SATA/SAS and possibly more space, or at least newer, easier to find RAM. >> >> That would make me *extremely* happy. ;) >> >> I wish I had the money to bankroll something like that. But sadly, I don't. >> >> -brian >> >> > > There's a small laundry list of things that I really wish I could find > some VC capital for (not much, either, may $1m at most), much of which > exists right now, but very feature poor/horribly overpriced: > > * PCI-card based RAM disk (ala iRAM), with 6-8 slots, NiCad battery, and > SATA II interface >
Batteries are bad news. As Jonathan says, "The better SSDs combine * Flash* with *DRAM* and a *supercapacitor* to buffer synchronous writes." http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan/entry/not_a_*flash*_in_the > * 3.5" LP disk form-factor RAM disk, SCSI Hotswap or SATA2 interface > Parallel SCSI is dead. The hot swappable SAS/SATA interfaces are good and inexpensive. > * 5.25" CDROM-form-factor RAM disk, as above > CD-ROMs are dead. With the size of slim DVDs today, you wouldn't be able to put much space in them. > * 3.5" LP disk form factor, SCSI hotswap/SATA2 and 4-8 Compact Flash > card slots > * Huge RAM drive in a 1U small case (ala Cisco 2500-series routers), > with SAS or FC attachment. > * 2.5" (or 1.8") drive on a PCI-card > > And, of course, the holy grail: a socket 940 Opteron with AMD-V > hardware extensions. :-) > > This week, Verident announced a system using Spansion EcoRAMs (DRAM + NOR Flash on a DIMM form factor) for main memory. This is almost getting there, but seems to require some special OS support, which is not surprising. The holy grail is fast, non-volatile main memory -- and we can forget all about "disks" :-) -- richard _______________________________________________ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
