Slashdot Mirror
IBM Developing Lego-like Storage Brick
AaronW writes "According to this story at EE Times IBM is developing a 32TB storage system built around blocks that can be stacked like Lego bricks. Apparently they will be connected in a 3x3x3 mesh using capacitive coupling and will be water cooled."
This is just a marketing ploy so they can sell storage Clusters shaped like Castles, Pirate Ships and the Millenium Falcon!
"IBM's Ice Cube project aims to define a way for end users to easily maintain increasing amounts of data, while also plowing ground for a similar approach to computing systems."
Ice Cube? Lemme guess: They sell a bandwidth package for Internet hosting called "Ice T"
Their bandwidth monitoring and packet sniffer is called "Snoop Dog."
Oh wait...IBM's PS/2 had the MCA bus. Maybe that was a Beastie Boys reference. Maybe IBM has been into Rap and the like for a long time...
Am I wrong in thinking that this design may lead to a new approach to servers farm, where each cube offers some kind of power (processing, storage, networking, moka brewing), and the whole assembly keeps itself in shape?
/., the assertion "Imagine a cluster of these!" takes its full meaning: storage might be the first step, and only the bandwidth of the couplers is a limit to the usability of CPU cubes or networking cubes.
For the first time in the history of
More, the software part will certainly bring some huge advances in clustering, as the challenge of virtualising all those cubes may help in building self-repairing (or should I say self-dumping?) clusters...
Oh, and by the way, here is the first step to assimilation.
--
Arkan
I'm not sure I follow. They say they want it to be easily stackable, and fault tolerant (they specifically mention leaving blocks in place if they fail), but how do you combine that with a water cooling system?
With a water cooling system, you need to make sure that the joints between cubes are water-tight, and maintain them over time, thus defeating their "no maitance" theory.
Or am I missing something? Perhaps they could use "disk blocks" and "cooling blocks" and just swap out the "cooling blocks" if there is a problem? Still takes more work than air cooling, but less than inegrating it into every block would.
What about just leaving air holes, and using it in a chilled room? Most server rooms are chilled anyway.
Just some ignorant thoughts.
Colin Davis
Colin Davis
2. Tinkertoy: storage structures too delicate, engineers kept losing fins for making "windmill" structure.
3: Play-Doh: kept getting stuck in carpet.
4. Erector Set: engineers spent too much time making jokes about name.
See Robert Morris's presentation (6+MB PDF) from the USENIX File and Storage Technologies conference. The videos of the invited talks are also worth watching (if you can afford the b/width to get them).
...do you end up having to pull em apart with your teeth? I'd rather not, I'm sure they get really hot.
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
I'm glad they finally announced this project I've been dying to talk about it. I talked to a researcher on this project while I was at IBM's Almaden Research Center.
I was blown away when they described it to me. I have to say that IBM is by far the greatest computer techonology research company. They take the top minds give them boat loads of money, ten years later they blow your mind with the completely innovative technology. I mean come on, cube storage?!?!
Too bad, they just can't make any inroads in the client side market. They invented the harddrive years ago and today they aren't going to even make any more client models.
Anyhow, I just wanted to talk about cube failures. Ice cube uses a 3x3x3 array of 27 cubes. But, the question is what happens if a cube goes bad. Essentially, you can never turn off Ice Cube. It's meant to be continuously running. If a single cube failure occurs the system just routes around it. To compensate you can stick more cubes on the outside. Of course, throughput will be hampered.
I asked the researcher what happens if say all the middle cubes burn out or when the throughput gets too damaged. He responds, "Well, given the failure rate, it probably won't be an issue until about ten years have passed, and by then we'll have much more powerful storage technology."
Finally, anything that is water-cooled is nifty in my book.
They seem to use smaller 2.5" hard drives, like the ones in notebooks. It does mean smaller power consumption and less noise, but what does that do to performance is yet to be seen. Maybe they are betting on time to make them faster and technologicaly more advanced. Yet, after i read an article at TomsHardware about doing raid with 2.5" disks, i am a believer! Not! :)
/Pedro
/Pedro