just posting to see what you guys thought about the new pci board gigabyte
have unveiled which lets you slot normal ddr ram into it and has a chip
which lets it function as a sata disk. the battery keeps the data on the
ram active for upto 16 hours and apparently the major bottleneck now is
the sata interface.

now i know you could do this in software without the ability to save when
the power goes off but its still cool.

ram prices are so cheap now that £100 would probably get you the adaptor
and 2 gigs or ram. while this may mean windows users need to keep their os
and program files on separate disks im certain i could fit a full gentoo
install with kde and all the bloatware and that would certainly speed up
the compile times.

link
http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/...spx?i=2431&p=5

"epaton" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news(E-Mail Removed)...
> just posting to see what you guys thought about the new pci board
> gigabyte
> have unveiled which lets you slot normal ddr ram into it and has a chip
> which lets it function as a sata disk. the battery keeps the data on
> the
> ram active for upto 16 hours and apparently the major bottleneck now is
> the sata interface.
>
> now i know you could do this in software without the ability to save
> when
> the power goes off but its still cool.
>
> ram prices are so cheap now that £100 would probably get you the
> adaptor
> and 2 gigs or ram. while this may mean windows users need to keep their
> os
> and program files on separate disks im certain i could fit a full
> gentoo
> install with kde and all the bloatware and that would certainly speed
> up
> the compile times.
>
> link
> http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/...spx?i=2431&p=5

All you need is battery backup for the system or "Continuously powered
mainstore" like on i-Series. This solution is not cool, it is stupid.
You have to remember to move the data around, or sometime you will kick
the plug out or power the system down for more than 16 hours, and then
you be crying.

del cecchi

It's better to use something like flash memory to do this storage, as
that requires no power whatsoever to keep the data intact. It's slower
than RAM, but it's probably faster than disk.

On Tue, 31 May 2005 16:13:22 GMT, epaton <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>just posting to see what you guys thought about the new pci board gigabyte
>have unveiled which lets you slot normal ddr ram into it and has a chip
>which lets it function as a sata disk. the battery keeps the data on the
>ram active for upto 16 hours and apparently the major bottleneck now is
>the sata interface.
>
>now i know you could do this in software without the ability to save when
>the power goes off but its still cool.
>
>ram prices are so cheap now that £100 would probably get you the adaptor
>and 2 gigs or ram. while this may mean windows users need to keep their os
>and program files on separate disks im certain i could fit a full gentoo
>install with kde and all the bloatware and that would certainly speed up
>the compile times.
>
>link
>http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/...spx?i=2431&p=5

I can see it being useful in some pretty limited situations where you
just don't care about keeping the data, ie basically temporary data
files. Of course, you're WAY better off here with properly programmed
software that can store said temporary files entirely in main memory,
but some software just isn't that bright. I certainly wouldn't want
to keep ANYTHING at all important on such a device though.

The problem with this disk is that data integrity is going to kinda
stink. Not only do you have to worry about things like a power outage
lasting more than 16 hours (which definitely CAN happen, even in big
cities and the like), but as the battery gets older it will begin to
fail faster and faster until eventually it'll just crap out within
minutes (seconds?) of a power loss. Of course, that's assuming that
the battery will even work at all, which is somewhat questionable.
Battery backups tend to be rather hit-and-miss when you're talking
about this sort of price-range.

In addition to that there is also the problem of random bit errors,
something that affects memory and not hard disks (or at least not in
the same way). Modern memory could well have a random bit error at
least once a month with 2GGB of memory. Now on normal desktop system
memory this usually doesn't matter since often the area of memory is
unused or it's going to get purged and we aren't super-concerned about
our data anyway. However on this device I can see it being a rather
bigger problem. Of course, the easy solution here is ECC memory,
though I don't see that listed as being an option.

Long story short, I wouldn't trust such a design with anything that
you wouldn't feel safe putting in a more traditional ramdisk.

-------------
Tony Hill
hilla <underscore> 20 <at> yahoo <dot> ca

According to Del Cecchi <(E-Mail Removed)>:
> "epaton" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
> news(E-Mail Removed)...
> > just posting to see what you guys thought about the new pci board
> > gigabyte have unveiled which lets you slot normal ddr ram into it
> > and has a chip which lets it function as a sata disk.

For US$50, I think it is worth trying.

> > the battery keeps the data on the ram active for upto 16 hours

I wonder if the card runs off +5Vsb, so that it can keep data indefinitely
when the PC is plugged in but not powered on? In that case, 16-hours seems
good enough.

> > and apparently the major bottleneck now is the sata interface.

I also wonder why they went the "emulate SATA disk" rather than the "emulate
ATA/SATA controller" route, if they went to the trouble of making this a PCI
card. I guess it is easier to verify (no driver issues) in the former case.

> All you need is battery backup for the system or "Continuously powered
> mainstore" like on i-Series. This solution is not cool, it is stupid.

I disagree. This lets you add 4 DIMM slots (a scarce resource for desktop
motherboards) per card for US$50. Okay, it will not be as fast as main
memory, but the price is reasonable in terms of fast storage.

Another advantage is its OS-independence. Being able to have some storage
that survives an OS reboot (without having to resort to dumping it out to
disk) can be valuable.

> You have to remember to move the data around, or sometime you will kick
> the plug out or power the system down for more than 16 hours, and then
> you be crying.

True. I don't see why you cannot have a separate AC-adaptor (another hated
wall wart ) for the card to solve the 16-hour limit, even though that
will not help the kicking-out-plug problem

Stephen

On 5/31/2005 16:07, YKhan wrote:
> It's better to use something like flash memory to do this storage, as
> that requires no power whatsoever to keep the data intact. It's slower
> than RAM, but it's probably faster than disk.

Tho, flash has a somewhat limited lifespan when there's a lot of writes
involved.

This type of thing seems like a great idea for a mail spool or HPC cluster
data maybe.

~Jason

--

On Tue, 31 May 2005 14:02:20 -0500, Del Cecchi wrote:

>
> "epaton" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
> news(E-Mail Removed)...
>> just posting to see what you guys thought about the new pci board
>> gigabyte
>> have unveiled which lets you slot normal ddr ram into it and has a chip
>> which lets it function as a sata disk. the battery keeps the data on
>> the
>> ram active for upto 16 hours and apparently the major bottleneck now is
>> the sata interface.
>>
>> now i know you could do this in software without the ability to save
>> when
>> the power goes off but its still cool.
>>
>> ram prices are so cheap now that £100 would probably get you the
>> adaptor
>> and 2 gigs or ram. while this may mean windows users need to keep their
>> os
>> and program files on separate disks im certain i could fit a full
>> gentoo
>> install with kde and all the bloatware and that would certainly speed
>> up
>> the compile times.
>>
>> link
>> http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/...spx?i=2431&p=5
>
> All you need is battery backup for the system or "Continuously powered
> mainstore" like on i-Series. This solution is not cool, it is stupid.
> You have to remember to move the data around, or sometime you will kick
> the plug out or power the system down for more than 16 hours, and then
> you be crying.

Next up, RAID RAM drives! Than all that's needed is TMR power.

--
Keith

On Tue, 31 May 2005 16:13:22 +0000, epaton wrote:

> just posting to see what you guys thought about the new pci board gigabyte
> have unveiled which lets you slot normal ddr ram into it and has a chip
> which lets it function as a sata disk. the battery keeps the data on the
> ram active for upto 16 hours and apparently the major bottleneck now is
> the sata interface.
>
> now i know you could do this in software without the ability to save when
> the power goes off but its still cool.
>
> ram prices are so cheap now that £100 would probably get you the adaptor
> and 2 gigs or ram. while this may mean windows users need to keep their os
> and program files on separate disks im certain i could fit a full gentoo
> install with kde and all the bloatware and that would certainly speed up
> the compile times.
>
> link
> http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/...spx?i=2431&p=5


with regards to byte errors would it be possible to build in a ecc unit
into the controler unit or does it have to be part of the ram.

my understanding is the ecc is just an added chip onto the ram so if it
were possible have a single chip outside slightly further away and this
thing is being charged while plugged in but not powered on i think they
are onto a winner. hell i can see people buying these just as an excuse to
upgrade their ram.

According to epaton <(E-Mail Removed)>:
>
> with regards to byte errors would it be possible to build in a ecc unit
> into the controler unit or does it have to be part of the ram.

Actually it has to be part of the controller. The DIMM sticks contain only
dumb DRAM chips (+buffers for registered RAM), there is no ECC unit on them.
With creative design of the controller one can even some up with something
like this.

http://searchstorage.techtarget.com/...895677,00.html

> my understanding is the ecc is just an added chip onto the ram so if it
> were possible have a single chip outside slightly further away and this
> thing is being charged while plugged in but not powered on i think they
> are onto a winner. hell i can see people buying these just as an excuse to
> upgrade their ram.

ECC does need an additional RAM chip on the module. The chip is no
different from the other chips on the same module, it just provides more
space to store redundant information (ecc) so errors can be detected. It is
up to the controller to calculate those information.

Stephen

"Stephen Lee -- post replies please" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in
message news:8vk9n2-(E-Mail Removed)...
> According to epaton <(E-Mail Removed)>:
>>
>> with regards to byte errors would it be possible to build in a ecc
>> unit
>> into the controler unit or does it have to be part of the ram.
>
> Actually it has to be part of the controller. The DIMM sticks contain
> only
> dumb DRAM chips (+buffers for registered RAM), there is no ECC unit on
> them.
> With creative design of the controller one can even some up with
> something
> like this.
>
> http://searchstorage.techtarget.com/...895677,00.html
>
>> my understanding is the ecc is just an added chip onto the ram so if
>> it
>> were possible have a single chip outside slightly further away and
>> this
>> thing is being charged while plugged in but not powered on i think
>> they
>> are onto a winner. hell i can see people buying these just as an
>> excuse to
>> upgrade their ram.
>
> ECC does need an additional RAM chip on the module. The chip is no
> different from the other chips on the same module, it just provides
> more
> space to store redundant information (ecc) so errors can be detected.
> It is
> up to the controller to calculate those information.
>
> Stephen

One could put in "chip kill" or "package codes" And one can even use
vanilla dimms, just need an extra or so. But PCI is so slow it shouldn't
be a big deal to do whatever you want.

del cecchi