Solid State HDDs at OCUK

iram is useless, why couple such a fast memory access system with a restricted sata1 interface? its just plain stupidity. and for iram the sata 2 would deffo make a difference.
the benchmarks show that iram sustainted transfer rate saturates the sata1 interface easily.
 
Cyber-Mav said:
iram is useless, why couple such a fast memory access system with a restricted sata1 interface? its just plain stupidity. and for iram the sata 2 would deffo make a difference.
the benchmarks show that iram sustainted transfer rate saturates the sata1 interface easily.
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It's not useless, I haven't see any single hard drives with 150MB/s read speed with access times of <1ns, theoretically infinite lifespan and instant data destruction.

I would be much more pleased if they used the pci-e interface instead though. Possibly you can raid iram to use the full sata 2 bandwidth?
 
Energize said:
Well it's £40 for 1gb of ram, no idea on the i-ram module itself, but I'm pretty sure its less than £100. It's cheaper for a smaller capacity. ;) :p

I suppose those drives could be useful in laptops when the price drops by about 90%, but in pcs, if you want really fast speeds, i-ram is faster in all ways, and hard drives have a much bigger capacity and still better throughput. Sounds like readyboost would be better than flash drives tbh.
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it might be 40£ but thats for a 1gig stickright? to make this thing really useful it needs 2gig sticks. can you get those for 40£?
 
naro said:
hope i-Ram 2 will be out soon..

not too sure if i-Ram 2 will be make use of the SATA2 interface..
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it's been 'coming soon' since a year ago now hasnt it?

EDIT

yep, it has - http://www.dvhardware.net/article8744.html

Gigabyte is preparing i-RAM 2, VR Zone reports.

The original i-RAM used DDR memory modules but the new model will use DDR2 memory modules and the data transfer interface will be SATA 3Gb/s instead of SATA 1.5 Gb/s.

It will be externally housed with by means of an external case or fitted into the 5.25" bay with eSATA interfaces. The number of memory slots are expected to double to 8 and you can have up to 16GB max memory.

Availability is planned for February 2006.
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Energize said:
It's not useless, I haven't see any single hard drives with 150MB/s read speed with access times of <1ns, theoretically infinite lifespan and instant data destruction.

I would be much more pleased if they used the pci-e interface instead though. Possibly you can raid iram to use the full sata 2 bandwidth?
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why raid? unless there's a flaw in the design of the iram somewhere a single i-ram 2 should max out the bandwidth of sata 2 right? 300 MB/sec. if it was raised, it would stil be 300 megs/sec afaik
 
touch said:
quoted for thruth......


...



300px-IBM_old_hdd_corrected.jpg


:p
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I was up at the IBM research lab in San Jose recently and they have the first (I think) HD prototype on display. The thing was a monster, way bigger than the one in this picture. The disk platters were massive, possibly 50cm diameter and nearly 1cm thick.

The disks were coated in a paint based on that used to paint the SFO bridge!
 
The new HS21XM blade can take a 4Gb RAM disk so no moving parts on the whole server. At normal server read/write levels the disk will last 16 years - so will be obselete well before it runs out of read/write cycles.
 
tomos said:
why raid? unless there's a flaw in the design of the iram somewhere a single i-ram 2 should max out the bandwidth of sata 2 right? 300 MB/sec. if it was raised, it would stil be 300 megs/sec afaik
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Each channel should have 300MB/s dedicated bandwidth, obviously dependant on the bus that the controller uses. 2 drives therefore have a maximum of 600MB/s, 3 drives 900MB/s etc.

If the controller sits on a PCIe x1 channel then the whole system will be limited to 250MB/s, however.
 
mosfet said:
Each channel should have 300MB/s dedicated bandwidth, obviously dependant on the bus that the controller uses. 2 drives therefore have a maximum of 600MB/s, 3 drives 900MB/s etc.

If the controller sits on a PCIe x1 channel then the whole system will be limited to 250MB/s, however.
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Get a PCI-E x4 or x8 card, and those would be some VERY impressive transfer rates.
 
NeilFawcett said:
Wonder what the reliability are like of these compared to existing drives? With no moving parts logic dictates they've got to be better.

Current drives still amaze me! A lump of magnetic material roating at X thousand RPM with a little head floating a fraction of a milimeter off the surface, and generally NOTHING ever gets lost, or goes wrong! Stunning really!
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True, when you consider the quantum mechanics that goes into one of these though, it makes ure head bleed.
 
messiah khan said:
:confused: No quantum mechanics go into a hardrive. They do in quantum computers, but they are still only in experimental stages.
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... :confused:
The majority of Solid state physics is firmly in the quantum regime. You can use a few classical free electron models (like 'Drude's model) to explain conductivity but it breaks down all over the place.

You need to be entirely in the quantum regime to arrive at the Bloch theorem (conduction and valence bands n all that), and then you can use that to explain semiconductors and p-n junctions and all that malarky. But yeah, I'm pretty sure Flash memory requires some sort of quantum tunnelling to work.

So ... almost all modern technology needs quantum mechanics... :confused:
 
mountingmuppet said:
... :confused:
The majority of Solid state physics is firmly in the quantum regime. You can use a few classical free electron models (like 'Drude's model) to explain conductivity but it breaks down all over the place.

You need to be entirely in the quantum regime to arrive at the Bloch theorem (conduction and valence bands n all that), and then you can use that to explain semiconductors and p-n junctions and all that malarky. But yeah, I'm pretty sure Flash memory requires some sort of quantum tunnelling to work.

So ... almost all modern technology needs quantum mechanics... :confused:
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^^
What he said!

I've no idea what he said, but it sounded great!
 
interesting product i guess its use is like the 16gb raptors. just for the OS, swap files and maybe a few imp apps like fav games or graphical apps etc..

iRam is decent but like above posts said sata2 would be great and then your still looking at a lot of money for the ram which will give a few gigs of storage.

I've always thought if your gonna shell out 1-2k on a monster machine you gotta get a nice HD but i am a lil stuck to what to get now lol
 
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I-Ram is not a bad idea for a silent media server for OS and basic apps/players and is more cost effective than the likes of SSD devices in accomplishing that, OK it'd be better with 8 slots but that's not the end of the world. SSHD is the way forward but as with all emerging markets it's going to be a small number of people who buy the bleeding edge product in the smae way that an increasing number of people have purchased raptors or 15k SCSI drives for the same reason.
 
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