Colossus 3.5-in SSD Combines Quad Controllers 160
Posted
by
Soulskill
from the going-for-the-gusto dept.
from the going-for-the-gusto dept.
Vigile writes "The new Colossus SSD comes in capacities starting at 256GB and going all the way up to 1TB in a standard 3.5-in hard drive form factor. This larger size was required because the drive actually integrates not one but four Indilinx SSD controllers and three total RAID controllers in a nested RAID-0 array. All of this goodness combines to create an incredibly fast drive that beats most other options in terms of write speeds and is competitive in read tests as well. Using some custom 'garbage collection' firmware, the drive works around the fact that TRIM commands aren't supported in RAID configurations to maintain high speeds through the life of the SSD."
Still has a long way to go before its viable (Score:5, Informative)
128 GB $549.99
256 GB $1,014.99
512 GB $1,599.99
1024 GB $3,315.99
Get the word out: SLC vs MLC (Score:5, Informative)
People think all SSDs are the same. They aren't. Consumer SSDs are typically MLC and have a failure rate far above "enterprise" SSDs which are SLC. I wish you could buy consumer SLC SSDs
Re:Get the word out: SLC vs MLC (Score:4, Informative)
OCZ sells some in their Vertex line. They're still expensive as fuck.
Re:Get the word out: SLC vs MLC (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010150636+1749646482&QksAutoSuggestion=&ShowDeactivatedMark=False&Configurator=&Subcategory=636&description=&Ntk=&CFG=&SpeTabStoreType=&srchInDesc= [newegg.com]
There are plenty of options. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:On SATA? (Score:3, Informative)
Ok, so I got no sense of humor but the by far most common configuration is for the motherboard to be vertical and all the expansion cards to be *drumroll* horizontal. But yeah, that must be limiting the potential throughput, the Z-drive is already faster than SATA3.
And (Score:4, Informative)
Re:You knew it was coming (Score:5, Informative)
For those still wondering, it's a reference to Colossus: The Forbin Project [wikipedia.org], one of the best sci-fi classics involving computers-take-over-the-world scenario. Too bad Universal Studios botched the DVD release... not available in widescreen, the artwork on the DVD cover even gets the name of the movie wrong.
Re:Get the word out: SLC vs MLC (Score:5, Informative)
SSD - Solid-State-Drive - Type of hard drive - Solid State Drive [wikipedia.org]
MLC - Multi-level cell - Technology used in making SSDs - Multi-level Cell [wikipedia.org]
SLC - Single-level cell - Technology used in making SSDs - Single-level Cell [wikipedia.org]
A little search can go a long way...
Re:SLC pricing is a scam (Score:3, Informative)
MLC echos a design philosophy in computer engineering these days. Build stuff to work until exactly one day after the warranty expires. Even with adding myraid ways of error correction, it is like substituting road apples for apples for Thanksgiving pie, and pouring on the spices and sugar to minimize the poo taste.
MLC just needs to be shitcanned and the focus be on getting SLC technology better/faster/cheaper.
Re:On SATA? (Score:3, Informative)
WTH is with high-end hardware using the low-performance ATA standard instead of SCSI nowadays, anyways?
They are trying to turn the "I" in RAID back to inexpensive.
Re:Still has a long way to go before its viable (Score:3, Informative)
What about 4gb and 8gb SSDs? There are some you can get for under $200. You can find a 2 or 4gb SSD for under $100, if you look hard enough.
He quoted prices in Norwegian Kroner (1$US = 5.66NOK according to oanda.com). So he found a 40GB SSD for $123 (696NOK), presumably including the absurd Norwegian VAT, making a US equivalent price below $100.
Re:On SATA? (Score:3, Informative)
Yes, but if it was a PCI card, we couldn't plug these into external JBOD arrays that combine 24 drives and allows volumes/LUNs to be carved out and served up to various servers... Actually, it'd be nice if they made it SAS instead of SATA.
WTH is with high-end hardware using the low-performance ATA standard instead of SCSI nowadays, anyways?
If you take a look, they aren't all that far apart [webopedia.com].
Re:Random write speed? (Score:3, Informative)
Why not two drives....your performance drive, OS, shared libraries, commonly accessed software and files on super fast SSD.
Ok for desktop users but most laptops either can't accomodate two drives full stop or require some other significant component (often the optical drive afaict) to be sacrificed to get a second drive.
Re:On SATA? (Score:3, Informative)
An SDD attached to a PCI express slot could indeed beat an on-board SATA contoller. On my motherboard, the PCI express slots are linked to the motherboard via a 6.4GT/s QPI link, whereas the onboard SATA controllers have to go through the ICH10R and then via a x4 PCIe link (ESI) link to get to the 6.4GT/s link.
So, PCIe card could be up to 4 times faster than onboard...
Re:Random write speed? (Score:2, Informative)
The X-25M is an 160gb HDD, half the capacity. The IOPs of SSD drives are so large, that in fact, a 30 or 40% IOPs difference is basically irrelevent for DB apps; transfer throughputs for random reads/writes at various block sizes are the most telling factor.
Being able to quote 30000 IOPS is useless, if that number cannot be sustained with at least a 256K blocksize, commonly used for filesystems and database apps. Small random reads/writes are rare in the most demanding real-world apps.
And the Collossus showed to be quite superior to the X-25M in this regard.
We can see quite plainly the OCZ drive outperformed the X-25M on the file copy tests by a massive margin. And in the average write transfer speed compared to the X-25M.
The X-25M plain wasn't good at all with large writes.
The OCZ Colossus' random write capabilities were just plain impressive as shown in YAPT Random writes test [pcper.com]. 200 MB/s random writes, for 128Kb blocks/larger, VS 100 MB/s with the Intel X-25M
And even at 64K blocks, it was no worse than the X-25M