flash replacing hard disks?

[Keith R. Williams]

Not flash, of course, considering the write-cycles-to-wear-out problem in a
caching application ;-)

It was ultra-low power Sony static rams, kept alive with an on-board 3v coin
cell, all mounted on a PCI card and plugged into an PCI slot. If a system
totally died and had to be replaced, you could literally pull the card from
the failed box and stick it in the replacement, and the file system manager
would scarf any unwritten data and commit it to the disks. With the coin cell,
data hold time was measured in multiple weeks, even at the highest capacity
configuration.

Neat! I wouldn't have expected SRAM to be powered for any significant time by
a coin cell. IME batteries are not well liked in mainframe applications
though. I did manage to get a few SLAC 'D'-size cells in one application
though. ;-)

Which led to an unintended application: our bios and firmware coders would use
the card to migrate their code between systems (systems that couldn't boot to
any io device in their current state), and system reliability testers used
hundreds of these cards to beat the snot out of their IO systems (think of a
TurboLaser maxed out at 192 PCI slots, and how do you do worst-case testing?)
because any single instance could consume the peak throughput of any bus it
was plugged into.

And it all started as a "midnite project"

The best ones are (at least the most fun ones . Midnight engineering and
midnight requisition were my trademarks in the '70s and '80s. ;-)

 

[Rob Stow]

Breathing some life back into this thread is a new article linked
to by AnandTech:

"Samsung expects to take 20% of desktop storage market with NAND
flash based drives by 2008"
http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20051020A5024.html

 

[Yousuf Khan]

Breathing some life back into this thread is a new article linked to by
AnandTech:

"Samsung expects to take 20% of desktop storage market with NAND flash
based drives by 2008"
http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20051020A5024.html

Assuming that anti-trust cops don't have other things to say.

Samsung Profit Slumps on Price-Fixing Fine
http://www.heraldnewsdaily.com/stories/news-0087258.html

Yousuf Khan

 

[Rob Stow]

Assuming that anti-trust cops don't have other things to say.

Samsung Profit Slumps on Price-Fixing Fine
http://www.heraldnewsdaily.com/stories/news-0087258.html

I wonder how much this antitrust fuss is to blame for the surge
in RAM prices.

Two weeks ago, 2 GB or PC3200 ECC Reg from Crucial was $400 (USD)
Two days ago, it was $600
Yesterday is was $660.
Today they have split it up:
128 Meg x 72 = $475
256 Meg x 72 = $660

Prices for 1 GB PC3200 ECC Reg are also up, but only by about 20%.

Interestingly enough, at the same time the price for 4 GB PC2100
ECC Reg has drive from $3999 to $3519. The price drop is
possibly a response to the new Corsair 4 GB PC2700 ECC Reg DIMMs
that were going for about $3300 a few days ago.

 

[daytripper]

I wonder how much this antitrust fuss is to blame for the surge
in RAM prices.

Two weeks ago, 2 GB or PC3200 ECC Reg from Crucial was $400 (USD)
Two days ago, it was $600
Yesterday is was $660.
Today they have split it up:
128 Meg x 72 = $475
256 Meg x 72 = $660

Prices for 1 GB PC3200 ECC Reg are also up, but only by about 20%.

Interestingly enough, at the same time the price for 4 GB PC2100
ECC Reg has drive from $3999 to $3519. The price drop is
possibly a response to the new Corsair 4 GB PC2700 ECC Reg DIMMs
that were going for about $3300 a few days ago.

Bookings for pre-holiday builds. Happens every year about this time...

/daytripper

 

[keith]

Bookings for pre-holiday builds. Happens every year about this time...

These prices are for the spot market though. Wouldn't the "holiday
bookings" be contracted long ago? Of course futures have to come due
sometime...

 

[daytripper]

These prices are for the spot market though. Wouldn't the "holiday
bookings" be contracted long ago? Of course futures have to come due
sometime...

You were right on top of it.

When most of production is already booked, wouldn't you expect the spot market
to reflect the commensurate tightness on the remainder?

It'll get over itself by February...

 

[Rob Stow]

Bookings for pre-holiday builds. Happens every year about this time...

I can see that for the desktop and notebook markets, but I was
talking about ECC Reg there. Servers and workstations are not
commonly found under the tree on Christmas morning.

 

[daytripper]

I can see that for the desktop and notebook markets, but I was
talking about ECC Reg there. Servers and workstations are not
commonly found under the tree on Christmas morning.

They all use the same commodity components, the supply/demand "law" has yet to
be repealed, and low-volume users will always take the worst hit when
commodities get tight...