An alternative to SSDs

[King Wookie]

I was just sent this article by a friend.

Makes for interesting reading:

http://techreport.com/articles.x/16255/1

 

[Woody112]

I don't see that working to great for costal states. One hurricane and power is out for days, but on the other hand I like the idea of instant boot. No load times the system merely go straight to the state it was in when the system was shut off. I have read many times of companies working on this idea but have never seen anything put into production. I would love to be able to shut my computer completely off at night turn it back on in the morning and 2 seconds later I'm up and running. Good read though

 

[iamollie]

leave it sleep?

thanks interesting stuff

 

[iamollie]

No load times the system merely go straight to the state it was in when the system was shut off.

have you seen the boot times when benched !!! slower than raptor and flash! crazy

 

[kysg]

I don't see that working to great for costal states. One hurricane and power is out for days, but on the other hand I like the idea of instant boot. No load times the system merely go straight to the state it was in when the system was shut off. I have read many times of companies working on this idea but have never seen anything put into production. I would love to be able to shut my computer completely off at night turn it back on in the morning and 2 seconds later I'm up and running. Good read though

aren't some mobo manufacturers going this route anyways by integrating that type of stuff into the bios??? I thought asus was working on an instant on function for their boards???

Other than that I am skeptical on this thing. Seems very costly.

 

[AphexDreamer]

Well if your Gamer buy it. If your business man stick with SSD's/HDD's. There is different hardware for different needs.

 

[LAN_deRf_HA]

This is identical to the benches we saw years ago for these things, still doesn't perform nearly as fast as it should. My guess is really half-assed controllers are being used. In general nobody takes this seriously. As cheap as ram is it's still not cheap enough to make this compete with the most recent SSDs, in cost per gig or performance.

 

[kysg]

This is identical to the benches we saw years ago for these things, still doesn't perform nearly as fast as it should. My guess is really half-assed controllers are being used. In general nobody takes this seriously. As cheap as ram is it's still not cheap enough to make this compete with the most recent SSDs, in cost per gig or performance.

Controllers would solve most of the issue. Still SSD's are out now, and those will only get better.

 

[Woody112]

have you seen the boot times when benched !!! slower than raptor and flash! crazy

No I havn't did any research on these at the moment.

aren't some mobo manufacturers going this route anyways by integrating that type of stuff into the bios??? I thought asus was working on an instant on function for their boards???

Other than that I am skeptical on this thing. Seems very costly.

I've heard the same thing but the only products I've seen is where you can go straight to the web or watch a dvd with out booting up the computer.

Controllers would solve most of the issue. Still SSD's are out now, and those will only get better.

SSD's still do not provide the instant desktop on function with all your work just as the way you left it. I seen something on the internet about a year ago, that intel or one of those big companies was working on this but have never heard of or seen anything since. Sleep mode works good but still if power is lost your booting up again. Hybernate dumps the memory to the HDD. But this was suppose to enable the memory to retain its state. It was suppose to work in much the same way as an SSD does. So even if power was lost for a day, days or weeks you could turn the computer back on and everthing is the way it was when it went off. I don't know but with technology getting like it is anything is possible. I just find it weird that we still have to boot up a computer. Be nice to turn the shit on and go.

 

[kysg]

LOL, I've just gotten accustomed to leaving mine on all day. Me personally I got nothing against booting the sucker up. Just one little last remnants of the old days of pc's. booting the thing up waiting for you to log in. But I guess it will get that way eventually just like the standards we got nowadays and how computers are getting smaller, soon ITX will pave the way for smaller pc's for home use. 28 and 30 inch monitors will be a norm. And HTPC will get so much more better.

Here this is what I was talking about.
instant on feature.

http://www.asrock.com/feature/InstantBoot/index.asp

 

[Woody112]

LOL, I've just gotten accustomed to leaving mine on all day. Me personally I got nothing against booting the sucker up. Just one little last remnants of the old days of pc's. booting the thing up waiting for you to log in. But I guess it will get that way eventually just like the standards we got nowadays and how computers are getting smaller, soon ITX will pave the way for smaller pc's for home use. 28 and 30 inch monitors will be a norm. And HTPC will get so much more better.

Here this is what I was talking about.
instant on feature.

http://www.asrock.com/feature/InstantBoot/index.asp

Hum that's actually pretty cool.
The process I was speaking of is an actual memory module like you use now except instead of loosing all the information when the computer is powered down it retains it. I'll see what I can find and post back, IF I can manage to find it that is.

 

[Woody112]

Found it here it is, not the one I was referring to earlier but it's to the same effect> good read.
http://allyoufind.wordpress.com/200...te-as-fast-as-fundamental-speed-limits-allow/

 

[Disparia]

+1 to the controller issue. I remember (and this is from 8 years ago, so my memory might be a little hazy) the Platypus QikData / QikDrive / QikCache being able to produce better results with the technology available at the time. Now the QikCache was only 32bit PCI so your top speed was capped around 120MB/s, but it still could pump out the IOPS.

On a positive note, I like how Acard supports *real* capacities and trying to bring this level of tech to consumers.

Though with a $400 list price on their site, I'm more inclined to max out my machine's main memory and do a software RAM drive. Talking GB/s and 100,000+ IOPS Don't get to boot off it though... but you can back-up/restore to a hard drive automatically at shut-down/boot-up.

 

[lemonadesoda]

These drives are fantasic for virtual memory situations: where you need a lot more RAM (e.g. video editing, running VMware) that you can physically install. Then you get extremely fast virtual memory and paging files compared to HDD, or even SSD.

However, as a true storage medium it is plain silly. I dont want a boot time of 14 minutes or 24 minutes shut down, due to the need to store to the CF card. But as a temp drive, server database drive, virtual memory, then great!

 

[Sasqui]

I was hoping to see something like this come out after the whole iRam rollout.

The thing that bugs me about this:

• Power consumption
• 4 hour backup time
• Performance isn't as good as expected
• High CPU utilization
• Expensive for base unit

Like said previously, it's no doubt the controller. If done right, when in idle state, the voltage should dropped to save power.

With 8x2gb sticks (16GB ~ $200), you'd have a screaming fast primary partition for windows.

 

[sno.lcn]

I my ACARD 9010

 

[Deleted member 3]

Those gigabyte things were actually quite nice. The high CPU utlization is caused by the high throughput. (possibly fixed by using a SAS controller?) As far as I know they never made DDR2 variants though and used SATA 150, seriously bottlenecking them and keeping them expensive due to DDR prices compared to DDR2. This is quite a better product, too expensive though

 

[ktr]

How about this guy: http://www.fusionio.com/Products.aspx

Able to achieving 500mb/s read and 500mb/s write. Sadly, 80gb cost $3k and 320gb cost $15k...and it currently not bootable...

check the review: http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/16...fusion_io_iodrive_pcie_solid_state/index.html

 

[Disparia]

I wouldn't mind having four of those on an Asus P6T6 (once bootable).

Also nice - if Acard would come out with a RAM to PCIe controller