New Network Design Exploits Cheap, Power-Efficient Flash Memory

jan_jes writes: The researchers at MIT were able to make a network of flash-based servers competitive with a network of RAM-based servers by moving a little computational power off of the servers and onto the chips that control the flash drives. Each server connected to a FPGA and each FPGA, in turn, was connected to flash chips and to the two FPGAs nearest it in the server rack. As it is connected to each other, they created a very fast network that allowed any server to retrieve data from any flash drive. Finally, the FPGAs executed the algorithms that preprocessed the data stored on the flash drives.

Comments

FPGA is just gimmicked flash

[Tough Love]

FPGA is just gimmicked flash sandbagged with a liberal topping of patents. The fundamental patents are getting long in the tooth, keep an eye on those expiry dates. See the obvious connection with OP.