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Intel and Laptop RAID?

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the well-my-laptops-do-always-lose-hard-drives dept.

Might E. Mouse writes "The next version of Centrino, codenamed Napa, will support RAID. Intel is pushing it as a great way for business users to have added reliability and data backup on their work notebooks. Should boost gaming performance too. Anyone for 2.5GHz Pentium M, GeForce 7800 Go graphics and a 200GB RAID array? "

7 of 366 comments (clear)

  1. Work backups by kevin_conaway · · Score: 5, Insightful

    In a workplace environment, you should not trust your users (or their machines) with their own backups. I like the situation at my workplace:

    If we're plugged into the corporate network, we have software running that will periodically backup everything you place in your 'My Documents' folder or some other such folder. Users know that if they want something backed up, they put their data there.

    1. Re:Work backups by bombadillo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Raid is not for backups. Raid is intended to keep the machine running in the event of a hardware failure.

  2. Why do this? by dreold · · Score: 5, Insightful
    More weight, more things to break, less battery life...

    Nothing beats proper backup and/or syncing tools and procedure.

  3. I don't get it? ; onboard ; memory ; solid state? by PhYrE2k2 · · Score: 5, Insightful
    First off, RAID-1 (I imagine they won't have >2 drives in a notebook) will not increase speed, as it's just a mirror- a write takes the same time, writing to both drives equally. A read generally only pulls from one drive at a time. If they have >2 drives, you could get some increased speed from the drive to the controller.

    Second, won't this be bad for battery life having a second 4200RPM drive in your notebook? Not to mention weight?

    Third, any money says it'll use the onboard memory for its RAID controller or maybe even software RAID, meaning it, like onboard video will slow your computer down.

    For an argument for it, lets turn to my former partner:

    Any video card must keep the monitor refreshed. That means reading the entire video buffer at whatever the refresh frequency is.

    Let's say you're running 1024x768, 16bpp, 75Hz. This is quite conservative, obviously. Bandwidth consumption? Well the video buffer is 1024x768x2 bytes = 1.5MB. Read it 75 times per second and you are eating 112.5MB/s of your main memory bandwidth. You just lost 14MHz of your RAM clock speed.

    Picking some more realistic numbers: 1280x1024, 32bpp, 85Hz. This is a much more typical configuration. Bandwidth consumption here... video buffer is 5.0MB, read 85 times per second == 425MB/s. You've now lost about 53MHz of your RAM clock speed.

    These numbers assume that the video card is doing nothing but refreshing the screen. Obviously that's not realistic. If you're just typing a document then you're likely pushing about 10MB/s thru the video card. But as soon as you start scrolling the screen, running Flash applications or anything with any animation to it (and we know WinXP is FULL of CPU-hogging animations) the memory bandwidth loss skyrockets.


    This doesn't seem to make much sense. In an age of GBe and 10GBe ethernet, wi-max, storage of files across corporate networks over the Internet, why is RAID in a laptop useful?

    Personally, I'd like to see more money put into developing SOLID STATE hard drives that use less power, produce less heat, and have no moving parts- such as a flash drive, only bigger

    -M
    --

    when you see the word 'Linux', drink!
  4. Re:Works for me... but... by the_mighty_$ · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I think in the next 2 years we will be witnessing the death of desktop PC's and replacement with laptops in most circumstances as costs get closer and designs merge.

    I, for one, will not welcome our laptop overlords until laptop manufacturors come up with a single set of standards. I want to be able to customize my laptop the same way I can customize my whitebox PC.

    --
    VI VI VI - the editor of the beast!
  5. Re:WTF for? by chhupa_rustam · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It has nothing to do with RAID-on-laptops -- this is a strategic move because Intel's planning to use Centrino-like chips in servers pretty soon, as highlighted here (and in other, better articles): http://money.cnn.com/2005/08/12/technology/intel.r eut/

    Intel has a good chance of consolidating the underlying infrastructure across all their product lines, which would be a massive win and really benefit from economies of scale.

  6. I miss laptops. by Humorously_Inept · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Seems like desktops are becoming smaller, quieter and more efficient while notebooks are becoming larger, noisier and hungrier. Whatever happened to portability?

    --

    ~Someday, I hope to be an aspiring author.