Not for the home computer, but interesting techy update on where SSD's are heading.

New Texas Memory SSD Screams with Speed
Texas Memory Systems' RamSan-440 reportedly sustains a record 600,000 IOPS and quadruples capacity for RAM-based solid-state disks.

SanDisk, Seagate Technology, Western Digital, Samsung, Toshiba and Fujitsu have been making most of the solid-state disk headlines lately. They now have some company from an old, familiar face.

Texas Memory Systems, 30 years old this year, introduced a new SSD July 22 with what it claims is record performance and record capacity for a RAM-based system.

The RamSan-440 is the world's first nonvolatile RAM-based SSD to sustain up to 600,000 IOPS (input/outputs per second) and deliver up to 512GB of storage capacity in a 4U rack-mount chassis, the Houston-based company claims.

It's also the first SSD to use RAIDed NAND flash memory modules for data backup and the first system to incorporate Texas Memory Systems' own patented IOČ (Instant-On Input-Output) "secret sauce" technology. The feature improves system availability by making user- or application-requested data instantly accessible after the system is powered on, the company said.

Solid-state flash drives use enterprise-class flash memory to store and retrieve data, enabling read/write response times that are about 30 times faster than the current highest-quality hard disk drives. Because they have no moving parts, SSDs require much less power to run, and breakdowns are rare.

RamSan solid-state disks are used in the financial, telecom, e-commerce and online gaming industries, as well as in government, military and research organizations for online transaction processing, data warehousing and batch processing, the company said.

The RamSan-440 uses DDR2 (double-data-rate) RAM to deliver 600,000 sustained random IOPS and 4G bps of sustained random read or write bandwidth, with latency of less than 15 microseconds. It is available in 256GB and 512GB configurations in a 4U chassis. The system can be SAN-attached or direct-attached through as many as eight 4G-bps Fibre Channel ports, the company said.

The RamSan-440 uses RAID protected flash memory modules to back up the RAM-based data and ensure nonvolatility for the system. In Active Backup mode, the RamSan-440 continuously backs up data to the internal redundant flash modules with little impact on system performance, the company claims.

The RamSan-440 is available now.

Source: http://snipurl.com/34bun

"4G bps of sustained random read or write bandwidth"
That's impressive at around (500 MB/s) but what is the actually read/write performance?


"with latency of less than 15 microseconds."
Why so slow?


"256GB and 512GB configurations in a 4U chassis."
That's a lot of capacity but 4U is huge.

They have some downloadable PDF spec sheets over on the TMS site.
http://www.superssd.com/products/ramsan-440/indexb.htm

This isn't actually a SSD per se, but a hybrid of RAMDISK with SSD writeback, incorporating a full duplex dual FiberChannel Interface, thus the high speeds, as well as the large chassis.
I was working on systems that supported this type of functionality back in the late 1980s in a VAX 11/785 cluster. Of course that subsystem was much more limitted and cost around $4M, and took an entire 40U rack, but the same basic technology.

Ford,
The latency is due to the limitations of the switched FiberChannel mesh infrastructure, not the actual DRAM access.

Edit to add: Heck, it may have been a Texas Memory system then....I can't recall the OEM.

Wow Gerrit. What the hell do you do for a living? Sounds interesting

Meats,
I've just been blessed with being in the right place at the right time and loving what I do.
I've been an IT professional since about 1980, and was into electronics and computers starting in the early 70s.
I've worked on some of the most antiquated as well as some of the most cutting edge systems over a period of decades, so I have a broad perspective on technology in general.
So when something "NEW" comes around, I have the depth of experience to remember when it was actually NEW vs. just smaller and cheaper.

Ahh I see that's very cool. I wish an opportunity like that comes by me someday.

I always was a little curious since your posts always seems to go more in-depth kind of way with the technology of PC's.

one thing to remember is that a microsecond (μs) is less than a milisecond (ms)

and apperently this forum does not allow the symbol for mu...

Oh crap. I should of caught that but I was PUI (Posting Under the Influence). Yeah, that is pretty impressive then. I just wish they gave actual figures for read/write performance (need bit width to calculate from I/O) instead of just bandwidth.

GS059 said: This forum doesn't allow a lot of things.
(<a href="WTF?.com">Huh?</a>)
(<img src=" http://angryhippy.net/images/TurnOffTheLights2.gif " />)
Hint, hint!