Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Revisiting the Five-Minute Rule

Posted by Soulskill on from the more-things-change dept.

In 1987, a study published by Jim Gray and Gianfranco Putzolu evaluated the trade-offs between holding data in memory and storing it on a disk. Known widely as the "five-minute rule," their research was updated and expanded 10 years later. Now, as jamie points out, Communications of the ACM is running an article by Goetz Graefe with another decennial update, evaluating the rule using hardware and software typical of 2007, with an eye toward how flash memory will affect the situation. An excerpt from Graefe's conclusion: "The 20-year-old five-minute rule for RAM and disks still holds, but for ever-larger disk pages. Moreover, it should be augmented by two new five-minute rules: one for small pages moving between RAM and flash memory and one for large pages moving between flash memory and traditional disks. For small pages moving between RAM and disk, Gray and Putzolu were amazingly accurate in predicting a five-hour break-even point two decades into the future. Research into flash memory and its place in system architectures is urgent and important. Within a few years, flash memory will be used to fill the gap between traditional RAM and traditional disk drives in many operating systems, file systems, and database systems."

6 of 153 comments (clear)

  1. Not to be confused with by salahx · · Score: 5, Funny

    The more useful 5 second rule.

    1. Re:Not to be confused with by michaelhood · · Score: 4, Funny

      I'd rather be a disgusting American than a naive European with no sense of humor..

    2. Re:Not to be confused with by jweller · · Score: 2, Funny

      No silly, but if you catch it on the bounce, it's like it never happened

    3. Re:Not to be confused with by Millenniumman · · Score: 2, Funny

      Normal floors are probably safer than your hands. If it's in your own home and you just dropped it or something, I can't even really imagine why it would be mentally bothersome.

      It's not really an issue if you have a dog, though.

      --
      Stupidity is like nuclear power, it can be used for good or evil. And you don't want to get any on you.
  2. I thought you were referring to the 5 second rule by vaporland · · Score: 3, Funny

    five minutes is an awful long time for food to remain on the floor before you pick it up to eat it...

    --
    Ask Me About... The 80's!
  3. Re:What article? by causality · · Score: 1, Funny

    Wow...almost nothing but offtopic and redundant posts so far.

    Well, this is /. What do you expect?

    Natalie Portman and hot grits.

    --
    It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein