Something to think about

[Hellboy]

Something to think about.........

Now ram has been cheap for a while now, so why is it that the maximum cache for a hard disk is at 16mb ( that i have seen )....

Now how about this then...

Why hasn't motherboard manufacture's put a slot on the motherboard for someone to put ram in ( a 1gb laptop ram stick slot is not to big ) as a hard disk cache... Hard disks are the biggest bottlenecks in computing and putting in a 1,2 or even higher stick of ram on the controller to boost performance - forget turboboost, this would really improve speed..

A 256mb stick of ram increased performance on an adaptec scsi controller so why not on a sata controller.....

PCI express 2 is comming out, ddr3 and so are 8 core processors - yes they will be here soon, and the hard disk has not got Sata 3 announced.....


There was talk of putting Windows files on a chip a while a go but nothing came of it....

 

[mi1ez]

Hmmmmm...

I like it!

 

[blashyrkh]

The memory on the controller and the 16Mb cache on the HDD are two different things. Try googling for comparison between the same HDD with 8Megs and 16Megs of cache and you'll see the performance diff is minimal (something like 2-3%). Now, a hybrid drive that has 10-20Gb or even less od SS ram and another 200-500Gb of conventional hdd on one 3,5 package so that it can buffer OS and progs on that Ram rather than the system ram...Now that's a thought!!!

 

[Slobogob]

There are SATA controller cards for that. There is no good reason why a MB manufacturer would want to increase his product price by about 200$ for just including some memory to speed up HDD access. It's not economical. If a customer wants that, the MB manufacturer already included something far more useful - a PCI slot.
It's not only the RAM that makes the price as there are other components involved as well.

 

[Hellboy]

There are SATA controller cards for that. There is no good reason why a MB manufacturer would want to increase his product price by about 200$ for just including some memory to speed up HDD access. It's not economical. If a customer wants that, the MB manufacturer already included something far more useful - a PCI slot.
It's not only the RAM that makes the price as there are other components involved as well.

Yeah, I understand that but as enthusiasts have a no matter how much for that extra performance attitude, then an extra 20 - 40 dollars for a controller that does this on the board will not add that much extra the final price....

I bought and EVGA 680 i board for a 160 in the trade price a year and a half ago so and extra 30 quid wont make much difference.....

 

[Hellboy]

Oooops ill re-word my thread a little

Any way what I am trying to get at is why dont they put more cache on hard disks, the difference between 8 and 16mb is marginal, so why not 32mb or more.....

On the motherboard, I can't see why not either.......

Most motherboards have Sata raid controllers - the best ones anyway, so why not get us something for a performance boost....

A laptop 1GB ram costs around £20-30 and as a cached controller would increase speed.....

USB 2 Turboboost keys are all well and good but a direct connection through the controller should be faster, surely....

I know some SATA controllers have ram banks on them as a separate controller, but im not looking for a card when all intense and purposes this could be done on a full size ATX board....with a ram slot like those in a laptop for the cache memory to be put in......

Im sure one of the controller manufacturers could partnership with enthusiasts manufacturers motherboard - EVGA , DFI, Asus, Gigabyte or Abit anyone

 

[firc_ops_gordo]

Don't Seagate do a 500gig Barracuda with 32mb cache ? Actually, don't Hitachi and Samsung also do 32mb cache on some of the HDD's ?

http://www.overclock.co.uk/product/Seagate-Barracuda-7200.11-500GB-7200RPM-SATA-3Gb-32MB-Cache-OEM_5227.html

 

[Slobogob]

Yeah, I understand that but as enthusiasts have a no matter how much for that extra performance attitude, then an extra 20 - 40 dollars for a controller that does this on the board will not add that much extra the final price....

I bought and EVGA 680 i board for a 160 in the trade price a year and a half ago so and extra 30 quid wont make much difference.....

We are not talking about 30 pounds. Just look what a real controller with memory costs. Those with 256mb start at around 160€. Now even if they are massproduced and, for some odd reason, are cheaper to deploy on a MB, i still doubt you'll get below 100€ extra.
If i recall it correctly some of the older Xeon server boards had extra memory slots onboard for their SCSI RAIDs.

I'm all for it though, it's just not economical right now. Once the controllers get cheaper, it will happen.

 

[Hellboy]

Don't Seagate do a 500gig Barracuda with 32mb cache ? Actually, don't Hitachi and Samsung also do 32mb cache on some of the HDD's ?

http://www.overclock.co.uk/product/Seagate-Barracuda-7200.11-500GB-7200RPM-SATA-3Gb-32MB-Cache-OEM_5227.html

Only 32mb why not 64 or more

 

[bombasschicken]

I think thats the whole idea behind solid state drives.. the new upgrade for harddrives... forget all the moving parts.. all the heat and the noise.. just pure speed..

 

[Smoked Turkey]

I don't think a HDD can utilize that much more memory. It would be pointless as the HDD can't keep up with the latency/read/write times VS memory speed. We're talking about mechanics here as far as limitations.

SSD is where it's at.

 

[techgeek]

One thing to think about when using large buffers. This data must be written to disk sometime (in the event of a shutdown), the larger the cache, the longer it will take to flush and shutdown. There was even an update to Win98 to remedy Windows shutting down before the cache had been written to the disk. Now lets take this one step further, what happens if an unscheduled shutdown occurs: hard locks, or heaven forbid someone not using a UPS when their power goes out. With a smaller cache, the chances are smaller that something important will be lost. One way around that would to have some sort of battery backup for that bit of cache so that data can be recovered in these types of events. Of course now we are talking about a much more complicated system. It seems to me that cache sizes will/should grow proportionately with speed advances.

There is also hybrid drives to consider. These have non-volatile flash on them as a buffer, although whether that can be considered a performance enhancing feature or not is debatable. This is due to the fact that flash is still slower during sustained data transfers. If lots of smaller files are in the flash, the hybrid drive will outperform a regular drive because of it's non-existent access times. If there are large files being read from the flash, the access advantage is emoliated by it's slower sustained transfer rates. Although flash memory should reduce the risk of data loss due to unexpected events.

 

[Hellboy]

One thing to think about when using large buffers. This data must be written to disk sometime (in the event of a shutdown), the larger the cache, the longer it will take to flush and shutdown. There was even an update to Win98 to remedy Windows shutting down before the cache had been written to the disk. Now lets take this one step further, what happens if an unscheduled shutdown occurs: hard locks, or heaven forbid someone not using a UPS when their power goes out. With a smaller cache, the chances are smaller that something important will be lost. One way around that would to have some sort of battery backup for that bit of cache so that data can be recovered in these types of events. Of course now we are talking about a much more complicated system. It seems to me that cache sizes will/should grow proportionately with speed advances.

There is also hybrid drives to consider. These have non-volatile flash on them as a buffer, although whether that can be considered a performance enhancing feature or not is debatable. This is due to the fact that flash is still slower during sustained data transfers. If lots of smaller files are in the flash, the hybrid drive will outperform a regular drive because of it's non-existent access times. If there are large files being read from the flash, the access advantage is emoliated by it's slower sustained transfer rates. Although flash memory should reduce the risk of data loss due to unexpected events.

Yeah points taken on board but those solid state drives still have limited size limitations and are very very expensive....

But if the did these with some sort of suspend mode which had some memory / battery backup facility then we could be in for some great performance gains...

Imagine when some one invented the telephone..... Back then they wouldnt have thought they got this far in a 100 years or less so all it needs is to be thought out and perfected as SSDs still seem someway off yet and how many times has a pendrive lost data..... quite a few times.....

Its away to kill a bottleneck..... 4ghz was a bottle neck for the Prescott but not for the Core 2 duo with the sufficiant cooler. And back then 4ghz was even unthinkable by Moores Law. So, all im saying is its something that someone could work on and we get rewards thats all, the rest of the computers advancing, so why not the way we talk to the hard disk and not the hard disk it self......

 

[Thanatos421]

I mentioned this about a month ago when they announced that 640GB SSD array that could transfer 4 DVDs of information in 40 seconds. It will only be a matter of time before you see SSD arrays embedded in motherboards. Who cares if it costs a little (alot) more, you won't need a hard drive. Imagine what you could do with that extra case space.

 

[surrealdeal]

Solid state breaks after like a million writes. That sucks. And in this post 9/11 world that we are entering in daily, people now, more than ever are looking for the reliable.

 

[Smoked Turkey]

Solid state breaks after like a million writes. That sucks. And in this post 9/11 world that we are entering in daily, people now, more than ever are looking for the reliable.

Uh, Do you have a source on that?

 

[surrealdeal]

ctrl + f:
"Flash memory also has another disadvantage. In contrast to RAM and like all types of EEPROMs, it wears out after a certain number of write and erase cycles."
http://www.linfo.org/flash_memory.html
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/login.jsp?url=/iel5/9728/30706/01421068.pdf?arnumber=1421068

The latter is much harder to document. It has to do with people associating death with the family and wanting to breed more / become closer.

http://www.reuters.com/article/bondsNews/idUSN2957150320080129

Hey, durable goods are up

 

[Thanatos421]

SSD does break after a specified number of writes, but you're only talking about blocks at a time. The serious SSD drives that are out now already have that in mind. They reserve blocks for "backup" purposes. If one block becomes unwritable, then it simply readjusts the file system and incorporates one of the backup blocks. It will take far longer to break an SSD drive than you think. 1 million writes for a typical desktop user should last several years.

Also, it's not like hard drives ever break. /sarcasm