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New Device Puts SSD In a DIMM Slot
Vigile points out a new take on SSD from Viking Modular Solutions. The SATADIMM puts an SSD in the form factor of a memory module. "The unit itself actually uses a SandForce SSD controller and draws its power from the DIMM socket directly but still connects to the computer through a SATA connection — nothing fancy like using the memory bus, etc. Performance is actually identical to other SandForce-based SSDs though the benefits for 1U servers and motherboards with dozens of DIMM slots is interesting to say the least. Likely priced outside the realm for average consumers, the SATADIMM will likely stay put in the enterprise market but represents an indicator that companies are realizing SSDs don't need to be in traditional HDD form factors."
Why? If it's only drawing power from the DIMM slot, what benefit does that serve? Sure, in a 1U rack it *might* save a trivial amount of space. I just dont see a market for it.
So you don't have to run a molex or other power connector to the SSD, it's easier to put in, I suppose.
I wonder if there are significant gains to be had by inserting these in place of existing RAM?
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If your using a DIMM slot for power, and SATA for data transfer, why not use the power supply for power instead of losing a memory slot?
When i saw the headline, i was hoping that this would be a device that allowed an SSD to be connected to a RAM slot and used as RAM, rather than an SSD that takes up a RAM slot.
Additionally, if they can squeeze a 256GB into a DIMM form factor, why the are even 4GB sticks of RAM still expensive
I remember back before computers had onboard drive controllers and there was no such thing as a standard drive interface, they sold ISA hard drive cards, it was a drive & controller all in one. I dont see to much advantage running a drive on a ram slot, you can just dedicate a drive(s) to you work, swap or temp files. I typically do that when editing video, 1 drive holds the raw videos, one drive is a temp drive and one is what the final video files are outputted to when they are rendered. Much faster then using 1 drive or even a single raid to read/write large amounts of data at the same time.
Certainly putting things like swap space and database journal files on SSD would speed things up wonderfully, but how about an OS hack where an SSD drive is a sort of L3 cache between core and traditional disk for dirty disk buffers? Also, I'm wondering about the power requirements between SSD and DIMM RAM.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
From the article:
Final Thoughts: Taking power (and space) from free DIMM slots is certainly a novel idea, and is beneficial to overly cramped installations. I can easily see these being used for embedded and other custom systems where high storage performance is needed without the wasted space.
So the entire purpose of this hyper-expensive convoluted creation is to save a power cable...? The whole article reads more like an advertisement + some benchmarks. I see no benefit to this thing whatsoever. Unless I am missing something, it sounds more like Viking was trying to make a non-volatile memory chip (that would be kinda cool) and realized it wasn't going to work, so they had the engineers rip out everything novel about it and just use the DIMM slot to save a power cord.
it sounds as if the DIMM slot is simply the "Bay" holding the drive, which also provides the power. Otherwise it will function like an SATA SSD as it connects to the SATA Port for data transfer.
Correct me if I'm wrong but couldn't all of this be done with a PCIe RAID card?
The price of flash has nothing to do with the price of RAM. They are completely different constructions, and for different tasks. Flash is faster than magnetic storage but still dog slow compared to RAM. For flash you talk access time in 2-3 digits of microseconds. For RAM you talk access time in single digit nanoseconds. For flash transfer rates are in the 100s of MB/sec with anything over 200 being rather exceptional. For ram transfer rates are in the 10+GB/sec.
Same sort of transition again when talking DRAM (what you put in your system) to SRAM (what processor cache is made out of). Again the price goes up massively so instead of 8GB, you are talking maybe 12MB. However again the speed goes way up and access time way down.
Ok now if that's the case this doesn't seem as neat... I guess if you happen to have an empty dimm slot but that seems like a small niche. Why not just sell a tiny ssd drive that you could hook up to the molex power sockets and the sata cable? I'm not a server admin or anything though so maybe I'm missing something.
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Think Mac Minis or Nano-ITX boards. You could make a damn small box which for many (most?) people is more desirable than expansion room. The case could also be dead simple with the most complicated thing being the holes to attach the board.
It's aimed at 1U servers that have no free drive bays or PCI slots.
I try not to post about bad moderation but how the fuck is that a troll?
Do, or do not. There is no 'try.'
What one fool can do, another can. (Ancient Simian Proverb)
Actually I find this potentially quite cool. Not as much for the power source, but the size. Since most mATX boards don't come with mini PCIe slots, if you want to use an SSD drive you need a 2.5" drive or a PCIe card with a mini-slot on it. Both are much larger than a DIMM option.
And with 50gb, this would be very useful in a media box streaming from a server. Now only if the price could come down.
I can't recall a /. story that has this many ignorant replies.
Aside from the usual lack of RTFS and not reading TFA, I wonder if it's due to ignorance of hardware?
What one fool can do, another can. (Ancient Simian Proverb)
I think its a bit silly too. For one thing, there is ALREADY a suitable form factor: mini-PCIe. And two, DIMM slots change every year. Anyone buying this dimm-based SSD is basically buying a custom part with no resale value (because its form factor will become obsolete very quickly) and wasting a memory slot that they might actually want to use in the future. Bad news all around.
-Matt
You basically completely failed to look at the difference in size, or consider the type of case it is mounted in. Sure its unnecessary in a traditional Tower Case, where there are often 8 hard drive slots available. But in a small server rack where space is premium; this becomes very viable, especially as there are often few drive slots available; but probably there are unused RAM slots.
This device seems backwards with today's trends. With virtualizaion gaining ground fast, the ideal setup is to have as much RAM as possible with a SAN back end for storage - iSCSI, FC, whatever. Most local disks on servers today are RAID1 mirrors for the small hypervisor.
So, yes, this device wastes a valuable DIMM slot to give you a less-valuable SATA drive?
I can't think of any scenario where this would be useful unless you're talking about handheld devices - a MacBook Air or tablet of some sort.
Most folk'll never lose a toe, and then again some folk'll...
Rack? Who cares about racks. It's not like there's not enough room in 1U servers. What this is awesome for, though, is for small form factor PCs. With video on the mobo or cpu the only thing left that stuck out, was the harddrive or ssd. Not anymore. Awesome! :-) Now I can go get myself a proper 17x17x5cm quad core PC:-)
0x or or snor perron?!
I can see this in an environment when you need to stick a lot of 1U rack systems all over the place, and can't spread out over a larger footprint in any one location. But when else am I going to use this? Didn't we decide a long time ago that large amounts of internal storage wasn't really a good way to handle increasing storage needs?
I'd much rather see a big ol' SAN full of SDDs than put together something like this, unless someone else is seeing an advantage that I don't.
You're an idiot. It's in the summary AND the article, and if you looked even briefly at the actual photo of the device, you'd have seen that it has a sata port on it.
This isn't aimed at desktops dumbass, this is aimed at servers where iop/m^3 is important
Is it impossible for you to interact with others without insulting them?
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... into a different electronic orifice of the motherboard than what is customary?
This is exciting news, indeed!
I will join this game-changing revolution by using file descriptor 3 for standard output!
I guess you think a brain-dead one-liner comment like that is meaningful. Try again. I'm sure if you actually spend more than 5 seconds thinking about it you can come up with something better.
-Matt
We need a new standard form factor or two. Clearly making an SSD in the size of a pattered hard drive makes no sense, but this product makes no sense either. It's just a way to steal power from another sort of slot. In addition to the form factor, I'm not sure SATA even makes sense anymore, so it may be time for a higher level rethink.
I'm not sure the best way to go, but there are some semi-obvious starting points. What about MiniPCI for SSD's? One or two on the motherboard could work well. Maybe a modified SATA design with the cable suppling power for SSD's? They could look like mini-USB sticks and plug directly into the connectors. Maybe we need an entirely new bus interface just for SSD's, and then put them in a SIMM/DIMM type package; that may be the best option for performance and size.
It's not a very exciting use of non-volatile memory. It makes sense, though, to package non-volatile devices for vertical slots like DRAM, and have motherboards that have slots for them. But not DIMM slots - something that actually carries the drive data. The thing announced in the article still needs a drive cable; all it gets from the DIMM slot is power. This looks like an interim product until server motherboards go to that form factor and eliminate drive bays. The near future for server farms probably looks like that - onboard non-volatile storage in some kind of vertical slot, with rotating disks elsewhere in a storage array.
One of the challenges in computing is to figure out what to do with non-volatile memory besides pretending it is a "disk". Today, CPUs and operating systems understand two kinds of storage - "RAM" and "disk". Design has been locked into that model for decades. Nobody really knows what to do with something that has a 35us access time and no variable latency. Going through the operating system's file system drivers runs up the latency, but making big devices accessible as memory makes them too vulnerable. Some kind of intermediate form of access is needed. A tuple store? A database implemented in an FPGA? Something like that might make sense.
There's an interesting analysis over at the daily circuit that covers this and the new Toshiba form factor, comparing in terms of Gigabytes per gram with 640GB 2.5" and 3TB 3.5" drives.
I've had such things in the embedded world for over a decade.
What's next? NEW! small cards serve as memory devices!
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Ah, that makes sense, then.
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Adaptec's like of MaxIQ controllers are the cheapest I know of, Intel also has it on their high end rebadged LSI controllers though you have to pay extra to add the feature. The controllers use an SSD as an additional layer of cache (they also have a RAM cache) for the array to speed things up. Works quite well apparently, if a bit costly.
Think about the server room is what he was trying to tell you. 1U servers just about always have only two PCIe slots but tons of extra ram slots. Not everything is sold to the consumer market.
How many molex connectors are in the average machine?
:P)
there are 32 dimm slots on a modern 4 socket server board. memory comes up to 16GB/dimm densities, and few companies (well, few of the ones I sell to globally) have any need to max the boards. 8 slots gives you 128GB of RAM, leaving 24 slots available.
at 400GB usable densities per slot with this product, the machine can then host 9.6TB of SSD storage BEFORE connecting to a drive array. being that most cases will only allow 8XSSD's to be mounted, that allows for 8X64GB + 24X400GB = 12.1TB in a 1U box. at that same density, you could cram almost 40TB OF FLASH into the same size as a desktop computer mounted horizontally. (not really, but it gives you the idea.
the densest thing that I can think of for SSD's, would be a Super Micro SC-417. that's 72x64GB (the largest enterprise SSD's I've ever trusted are the 64GB intel x25-E) yielding a whopping 4.6TB in 4U.
personally: I see that as pretty awesome.
Let me get this straight, you want us to sacrifice valuable RAM slots, and more so, valuable RAM, to run an SSD device? What would make more sense would be to have a completely seperate 1U unit hooked up to the unit with nothing but SSD devices (or hard drives). Wait, don't they already have those?
Likely priced outside the realm for average consumers,
I also doubt the average consumer will want these. With most consumer motherboards only supporting two or four slots of RAM, I REALLY don't see sacrificing ram slots for SSD. Especially when they top out at, what, 128gig? I just bought a 2TB harddrive for $94. I mean, I guess I could put a single 4gig memory chip in my machine and three of these, but this gives me, what, like 378 gig of space?
If you have a molex connector you can easily split it into as many as you want. Flash drives use negligible power.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
His OP was (to use your words) "so blatantly stupid" that if he can't figure out why he got a bad mod, well, too bad. He should realize the moderation system is imperfect, as explained here. Specifically:
I found a comment that was unfairly moderated!
Lemme know and I'll look at it. Sometimes I might agree and revoke access to a moderator. Usually I disagree and let it go. Its difficult to be the judge on this stuff since it is so subjective.
His OP was (to use your words) "so blatantly stupid" that my response was too. Tough.
Your last paragraph is undeserving of comment.
What one fool can do, another can. (Ancient Simian Proverb)
I think you are misapprehending the density argument. These DIMM slot SSDs are NOT ultra-high-density items. A standard form factor 2.5" or 3.5" SSD is much higher density when you are talking about more than a few gigabytes worth of SSD. They can fit 1TB+ into a 3.5" form factor already. Also, 1U rack mount boxes have no trouble fitting a whole crapload of 2.5" or 3.5" front-loaded slots into the box. It is after all a fairly deep form factor.
In a server room these DIMM SSDs are the last thing you would ever want to use. Not hot swappable, low density, custom-fit hardware. I wouldn't touch these things with a ten-foot pole.
-Matt
You are either a clueless idiot with no social comprehension, or you are a pedantic idiot looking for something to be a pedant about and feel superior. Neither is very likable. I am going to go out on a limb and assume that you don't have many friends (if any) and most of your co-workers find you difficult to talk to and unapproachable.
1. Are you assuming that there is a direct correlation between my on-line, anonymous posts on an open forum and my face-to-face, interpersonal relationships? If so, citation needed. (Regardless, it isn't true in my case.)
2. (Directed to the OP) It's the Internet (in general; Slashdot in particular); if you don't have a sense of humor or are easily offended you shouldn't be on open forums.
3. I think your diatribe (and--ooooh, you used "pedantic," too!) makes you "feel superior" (your words). Remember, Paul, "When you point your finger, there are three pointing back at you."
What one fool can do, another can. (Ancient Simian Proverb)
Not sure why you think it would be viable. Small server racks still have very deep footprints and already have plenty of front-loaded 2.5" and/or 3.5" hot-swappable slots. You are advocating that this DIMM thingy would somehow be an improvement? It isn't hot-swappable, it still needs a separate mobo SATA connector (and cable), you actually have to PULL the freaking server out of the rack to change it out. It essentially can't be upgraded. It isn't commodity hardware. AND it is low density compared to what can be stuffed into a 2.5" or 3.5" SSD. Servers are the last place you would ever want to use one of these things.
The size argument only works if all you wanted was one of these things, and only if space were at a premium. Space is not at a premium in racked servers, not even for 1U. There is always going to be room for 6-8 front-loaded 2.5" standard form factor drives.
-Matt
Everything old, is new again. :) so it was used for caching the "metadata" of things like NFS, rather than direct storage. :-/
Sun did this in the sparc 10 &20 line, by enabling an optional NVRAMM SIMM in the primary memory slot.
A whopping 4 megabytes of RAM max, I think
But putting something directly in memory, and accessing it through the memory bus 'normally' like a basic RAMdisk) sounds a whole lot more efficient than just sucking power from the slot, but looping back around through the SATA bus, so you can then get the data... back into the memory area
http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/802-5670/6i9dnsnct?l=en&a=view
This isn't aimed at desktops dumbass, this is aimed at servers where iop/m^3 is important
In those environments your storage isn't in the local machine anyway, it's in the SAN.
No spindle noise too and it's not just the HDD that takes up a bunch of space, the bay itself can usually be quite chunky, and then there's the heat that they generate
If you don't risk failure you don't risk success.
You still need to use SATA cables. Notice how the picture in the article shows only one of those things in a slot? Guess why.
Also, for 1U, you usually slant the RAM at 45 degrees. Not possible with straigth nor with angled SATA connectors.
Also, the idea is ancient.
But all of this is irrelevant, anyway. People are already working to get the form factor Apple used in the new MacBook Air into other hardware. I am not sure if it's the perfect form factor, but it seems to work reasonably well, it's not a horribly broken crutch like the above and it exists. In 3-12 months, most 1U servers will have one or two of those slots on-board. Problem solved.
Here's your citation...
Posting on slashdot without a sense of humor or guits to post under your account.
it will cost you 40 karma points for your fine, Judge taco will take bribes to make it go away though.
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