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Sun To Include SSDs On Server Motherboards

Posted by timothy on from the smaller-canyon-shorter-echo dept.

snydeq writes "Sun has announced plans to integrate solid-state drives onto server motherboards to provide faster data access for I/O intensive applications. For now, the company is offering SSDs that customers can slide into their storage bays, but long term, Sun will locate SSDs closer to the server CPUs to cut the bottleneck that occurs when powerful, multicore CPUs have to wait for data to be delivered from hard drives, according to the company. The move could mark a change in how Sun servers are designed going forward, including the possibility of servers that have no hard drive, relying entirely on SSDs."

8 of 79 comments (clear)

  1. But won't it wear out quickly? by Onaga · · Score: 5, Informative

    No.

    Before anyone complains about ssd wearing out quickly, please read here.

  2. Re:But at what cost? by H0p313ss · · Score: 2, Informative

    Given that Sun design their boxes around their own custom hardware (Niagra, Sparc etc) who exactly are you buying the same specification from?

    You are correct, but incomplete. Sun also sells servers based on Intel and AMD as well as Intel based Workstations.

    --
    XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
  3. Re:But at what cost? by 0racle · · Score: 4, Informative

    We've only ever found Sun to be a few hundred more then IBM or HP when it was more expensive. The benefit being a Sun reseller actually returned our calls, HP didn't and IBM gave us a run around.

    --
    "I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
  4. Re:Missing... The... Point! by Cadallin · · Score: 2, Informative
    That's completely unworkable. For one, SSDs are at least an order of magnitude too slow, and two, while the number of read/write cycles for DRAM is effectively unlimited, the number of Read/Write cycles for even SLC flash is not.

    The ability of wear leveling currently to keep a Flash drive functional when used as Swap space is just barely there, use the flash as main memory and there is no hope. You'll constantly be killing cells.

  5. Re:Missing... The... Point! by negRo_slim · · Score: 3, Informative
    I wasn't aware of _many_ hard drives that can saturate current bus standards.

    Today's mechanical hard disk drives transfer data at a maximum of about 118 MB/s,[5], within the capabilities of even the older PATA/133 specification. However, high-performance flash drives transfer data at 250 MB/s.

    For mechanical hard drives, SATA/300's transfer rate is expected to satisfy drive throughput requirements for some time, as the fastest mechanical drives barely saturate a SATA/150 link. A SATA data cable rated for 1.5 Gbit/s will handle current mechanical drives without any loss of sustained and burst data transfer performance. However, high-performance flash drives are approaching SATA/300's transfer rate.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SATA

    --
    On the Oregon Cost born and raised, On the beach is where I spent most of my days
  6. Re:But at what cost? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    Look at Scalable Informatics for less expensive and faster hardware than thumper and thor. Their founder writes a blog and is talking about their own SSD based unit.

  7. Re:Wha ... ? SSDs are _SLOW_ by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820167013

    sequential read: 250MB/s
    sequential write: 170MB/s

  8. Re:Missing... The... Point! by BikeHelmet · · Score: 3, Informative

    I'm waiting for FusionIO ioDrives to become affordable.

    They run through PCIe 4x slots directly to the CPU, so you can skip a limiting SATA controller. I've seen benchmarks approaching 2GB/sec by RAIDing multiple of them. That's almost 1/10th the speed of DDR3.

    All I have to say is... bring it! I want it!