Samsung SSD Awesomeness
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN passed it around in 2009 as a funny, impressive demo of SSD speed despite its marketing origin.
What it is
A Samsung-backed viral demo that builds a fast computer from 24 256GB MLC SSDs in a RAID 0 array and shows the throughput results.
Recommended by 3 HN commenters across 3 different months, 2009 to 2011.
What Hacker News said
Recommends snprbob86 · 2009-03 · on “Samsung: Solid state will match hard drive price”
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]
Recommends dryicerx · 2009-05 · on “USB Floppy Disk Drive RAID”
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)
Recommends messel · 2009-10 · on “Log-structured file systems: There's one in every SSD”
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]
Cites rektide · 2011-06 · on “Micron Demos PCIe RealSSD P320h, Achieves Over 3GB/s Of Sustained Throughput”
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