US Supercomputer Uses Flash Storage Drives 72
angry tapir writes "The San Diego Supercomputer Center has built a high-performance computer with solid-state drives, which the center says could help solve science problems faster than systems with traditional hard drives. The flash drives will provide faster data throughput, which should help the supercomputer analyze data an 'order of magnitude faster' than hard drive-based supercomputers, according to Allan Snavely, associate director at SDSC. SDSC intends to use the HPC system — called Dash — to develop new cures for diseases and to understand the development of Earth."
Re:Problems to solve with it: (Score:3, Informative)
You not been following that thread enough, you will note the new patriot SSD have a 10yr warranty, but of course a "supercomputer" wouldn't use those.
Other pci-e based SSD I have seen around give upto 50yr life span.
Damage.Inc here btw
Re:Problems to solve with it: (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Problems to solve with it: (Score:3, Informative)
But even if drives start to fail they'll just replace them like they do with any other supercomputer setup, so it's more a cost factor than a problem.
Re:Can they find a cure for wear levelling? (Score:2, Informative)
No, I'm Batman!
Re:BS (Score:2, Informative)
FLASH is about read access time. Throughput can be gotten far cheaper with conventional drives and RAID1.
You mean RAID0 [wikipedia.org]. Note that you could do RAID0 with Flash drives and have both.
Re:Cost savings? (Score:5, Informative)
Space requirements.
Biggest DDR3 SO-DIMM modules I could find were 4 GB. They are 30 mm x 66.7 mm [valueram.com] and the standard allows for [jedec.org]
You now have an absolute minimum size of 2,701.35 mm^3 (1.35 mm x 30 mm x 66.7 mm), or 675.3375 mm^3/GB. This is a very very idealized minimum by the way.
An Intel 2½" drive is 49,266.28 mm^3 (100.4 mm x 7 mm x 70.1 mm) [intel.com] and currently maxes out at 160 GB leaving you with 307.91425 mm^3/GB. That's 46% of the space that would be needed for DDR3 RAM. Add to that that Intel's 2nd generation SSDs are only using one side of the PCB, and you can expect the storage space requirements to be halved.
Then there's the fact that the SSDs are directly replaceable. In other words, they don't need to rebuild the computer, buy super special boards or anything like that - you can replace a harddrive with an SSD without having to spec out a new supercomputer.
In the end, if you wanted to replace the system with something that could provide 1 TB of RAM per node, they would need a VERY expensive system. Even with 8 GB modules, you would need to somehow fit 128 of them onto a board. I'd really love to see the mother- and daughter-boards involved with that.
In the end it doesn't just come down to raw price or speed of the storage device (RAM vs SSD vs HDD vs tape), but also all the other factors involved, such as space, power, heat and the stuff you need to use it (i.e. a brand new super computer that can support 1 TB RAM/node vs 48 GB at the moment.
Or to use a really bad car analogy, some company has found out that using a BMW M5 Touring Estate [bmw.co.uk] gives them faster deliveries than using a Ford Transit. Now you're suggesting that they should be delivering stuff via aeroplanes. Yes, it's much faster, but you need a brand new transportation structure built up around this, which you also need to factor into your cost assessments.