anyone see the gigabyte pci ramdisk with battery

[epaton]

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/showdoc.aspx?i=2431&p=5

 

[Del Cecchi]

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/showdoc.aspx?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

 

[YKhan]

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.

 

[Tony Hill]

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/showdoc.aspx?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.

 

[Stephen Lee -- post replies please]

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

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.

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

 

[Jason Gurtz]

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

--

 

[keith]

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.

 

[epaton]

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/showdoc.aspx?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.

 

[Stephen Lee -- post replies please]

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/whitepaperPage/0,293857,sid5_gci895677,00.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

 

[Del Cecchi]

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/whitepaperPage/0,293857,sid5_gci895677,00.html


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