Samsung SSD Awesomeness

Can a single post make you smarter? This was an awesome description of why log file systems match with SSD (as long as TRIM is part of the picture). It also covers how flash based memories work in practice (small reads, but block writes). Very fascinating stuff for a guy that only does simulations software, but was once super curious about electronics in junior lab physics (nand gates, opamps, feedback circuits). Great SSD video (the 24 raid 0 setup) ▶ this video

Good times... Also in the same light: Samsung SSD Raid (while we are at the RAID topic) ▶ this video (it's a Samsung backed video, but still awesome)

Samsung has a funny and impressive "viral" ad video showing 24 SSD drives in a RAID array. Sign me up for one of these: ▶ this video

Fuck yes. This isn't about GB/$. This is about IOPS/($ x density) and Throughput/($ x density). Databases and datastores used to be limited by iops, and SSD's are altering the balance of where that bottleneck occurs: we've already seen absurd 9x SSD systems[1] and 24x SSD systems[2] running off three or four SATA/SCSI cards; this offers those levels of performance in a single package. 3GBps is 24Gbps. A mere two of these will max out the IO Hub on a Nehalem, which is good for 40Gbps[3]. As for getting that data into the CPU, the top of the line MP Xeon offers four QPI links good for 25.6Gbps a piece. That's 100Gbps, which four of these could provide, and it stands as a fixed upper bound for how much data an SMP (4-way in this case) system can be fed (and thus crunch) at once (and uses expensive 4-way cpus to do it). The throughput limit is now (erm, will be) the platform, not the IO storage. This is huge. Wait, no, strike that, it's incomprehensibly small, small and fast. References: [1] "Battleship mtron" link [2] "Samsung SSD Awesomeness" ▶ this video [3] "Building a Single Box 100Gbps Router" via link