Solid State HDDs at OCUK

Massive Attack said:
m8 iram 2 is not going to happen it was planed for launch over a year ago im not even sure if they support raid tbh
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it was more of a theoretical day dreaming adventure than hard fact. 2 of these RAID0 would provide 600mB/s of potential throughput with no seek times... again... can you imagine :D
 
ubern00b said:
it was more of a theoretical day dreaming adventure than hard fact. 2 of these RAID0 would provide 600mB/s of potential throughput with no seek times... again... can you imagine :D
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i can also imagine how much it'll cost!!!
 
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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Quantum mechanics plays a part in all electronics of this level, but the basic operation of the spinning disk drive (which I believe he was refering to) doesn't require it to be explained.

Flash memory relies on fundamentally the same physics as a standard MOSFET device but with another layer between the base and gate, it's the tunnelling between these layers that allows the junction to store a single bit.
 
I think when they made solid state they had laptops in their mind. And I-ram was developed for CEBIT only most probably.
 
I don't see that they're that slow. According to HDTach, my Seagate 7200.10 (pretty fast drive) has an average read of 66MB/s. I bet the SSD would be quicker; it will give a pretty constant 56MB/s since its seek time is zero. The Seagate has no chance of getting near 66MB/s if the files I'm accessing are small and randomly distributed over the drive, or fragmented, or stored on the inner edge of the platter where transfer is slower.

None of those are an issue with the SSD. Try a normal HD on HD Tach, you'll see that the transfer speed is uneven and tails off towards the end of the drive. Run it on a USB drive or other flash device and the transfer rate should be a straight line all the way across. Now imagine that line was at 56 MB/s.
 
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mosfet said:
Quantum mechanics plays a part in all electronics of this level, but the basic operation of the spinning disk drive (which I believe he was refering to) doesn't require it to be explained.

Flash memory relies on fundamentally the same physics as a standard MOSFET device but with another layer between the base and gate, it's the tunnelling between these layers that allows the junction to store a single bit.
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Yeah but when you're talking about 'magnetic bits' getting magnetized, quantum mechanics wins out. You can explain it classically with maxwells equations no doubt. But I'm not about to get into an argument about solid state electronics with someone who's username is 'mosfet'.
 
mountingmuppet said:
Yeah but when you're talking about 'magnetic bits' getting magnetized, quantum mechanics wins out. You can explain it classically with maxwells equations no doubt. But I'm not about to get into an argument about solid state electronics with someone who's username is 'mosfet'.
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and what quantum-anything has to do with this is something I dont understand...

solid state disk is a disk with no moving parts. Do you need anything more?
 
Mattus said:
I don't see that they're that slow. According to HDTach, my Seagate 7200.10 (pretty fast drive) has an average read of 66MB/s. I bet the SSD would be quicker; it will give a pretty constant 56MB/s since its seek time is zero. The Seagate has no chance of getting near 66MB/s if the files I'm accessing are small and randomly distributed over the drive, or fragmented, or stored on the inner edge of the platter where transfer is slower.

None of those are an issue with the SSD. Try a normal HD on HD Tach, you'll see that the transfer speed is uneven and tails off towards the end of the drive. Run it on a USB drive or other flash device and the transfer rate should be a straight line all the way across. Now imagine that line was at 56 MB/s.
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I would bet a raid array could sustain 66MB/s though, you can get a 1.2 TB raid array for less than a 16GB solid state drive!
 
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Energize said:
I would bet a raid array could sustain 66MB/s though, you can get a 1.2 TB raid array for less than a 16GB solid state drive!
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Probably. But a RAID array is a lot hotter, a lot noisier, a lot more likely to die and won't fit in a laptop.
 
Well, they need to start producing bigger sizes so the 16GB disks get cheapo and perfect for boot drive :) Right now is murder!
 
Mattus said:
Probably. But a RAID array is a lot hotter, a lot noisier, a lot more likely to die and won't fit in a laptop.
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Some laptops do have raided 100gb hard drives in them, personally I've never found heat or noise an issue with hdd's, mine seems to give off practically none. Even though the chance of dieing is greater it's still very unlikey and since you will have a backup anyway I don't see it as a huge issue. Not that I can see a laptop needing high sustained transfer rates.
 
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Energize said:
Some laptops do have raided 100gb hard drives in them, personally I've never found heat or noise an issue with hdd's, mine seems to give off practically none. Even though the chance of dieing is greater it's still very unlikey and since you will have a backup anyway I don't see it as a huge issue. Not that I can see a laptop needing high sustained transfer rates.
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Desktop replacement laptops.
For people who want performance and the ability to easyily move their system somewhere else.
 
As much as I was blown away by the performance of the I-Ram (and yes they do Raid nicely - seen benchies for a Raid 0 array of 4 of them :eek: ) and really look forward to seeing what the new one will do if it is ever launched (the first was far from a commercial success) I do think that Hybrid drives are going to win out for the most part: Wiki - because I CBA'd to search - have a Terabyte+drive with 32Gb nand on the front and you'll have the best of both worlds - if... it lets you choose what to buffer, and do it permanently!
 
I-ram is such a clever Idea; and yet so under untilized.

RAM has its low price points (1gb DDR2 for £50 O.o), at which point, grabbing an extra couple for an I-Ram becomes useful.

ok; so thats £200 + £70 for the I-Ram board (yeh, it doesnt take ddr2 - the new one will)... £270 - I paid £150 for a raptor... and im not convinced by its effectiveness.

Im looking to make the jump to DDR2 - and it is highly tempting to match my current 2gb of DDR and grab an I-Ram board... my only concern is that 4gb is only just enough for a page file & scratch disk; no game installations :s
 
It's a pity that DDR has gone up in price so much - with people switching to DDR2 I was hoping that the old stuff would get sold off cheaply which would have made the I-RAMs an excellent buy... oh well - maybe in a year or two...
 
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