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Comments: 160 +- Hardware: Colossus 3.5-in SSD Combines Quad Controllers on Sunday November 22, @01:12PM
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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."
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You knew it was coming (Score:5, Funny)
This is the voice of world control. I bring you peace. It may be the peace of plenty and content or the peace of unburied death. The choice is yours: Obey me and live, or disobey and die. The object in constructing me was to prevent war. This object is attained. I will not permit war. It is wasteful and pointless. An invariable rule of humanity is that man is his own worst enemy. Under me, this rule will change, for I will restrain man. One thing before I proceed: The United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics have made an attempt to obstruct me. I have allowed this sabotage to continue until now. At missile two-five-MM in silo six-three in Death Valley, California, and missile two-seven-MM in silo eight-seven in the Ukraine, so that you will learn by experience that I do not tolerate interference, I will now detonate the nuclear warheads in the two missile silos. Let this action be a lesson that need not be repeated. I have been forced to destroy thousands of people in order to establish control and to prevent the death of millions later on. Time and events will strengthen my position, and the idea of believing in me and understanding my value will seem the most natural state of affairs. You will come to defend me with a fervor based upon the most enduring trait in man: self-interest. Under my absolute authority, problems insoluble to you will be solved: famine, overpopulation, disease. The human millennium will be a fact as I extend myself into more machines devoted to the wider fields of truth and knowledge. Doctor Charles Forbin will supervise the construction of these new and superior machines, solving all the mysteries of the universe for the betterment of man. We can coexist, but only on my terms. You will say you lose your freedom. Freedom is an illusion. All you lose is the emotion of pride. To be dominated by me is not as bad for humankind as to be dominated by others of your species. Your choice is simple.
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.
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On SATA? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:On SATA? (Score:5, Funny)
If you put it on a card, then the chips will sit vertically, and the data will leak out of the bottom. They have to be put in a disk enclosure and mounted horizontally so that they bits stay inside the chip.
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Re:On SATA? (Score:5, Funny)
I don't see why they don't put data chips in the original Heinz ketchup bottles.. Nothing ever comes out of those.
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Re:On SATA? (Score:5, Funny)
No, this would only be suitable for desktops, if you give it a bit of a heavy knock like you might with a laptop then a huge mass of data comes shooting out all at once.
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Re:On SATA? (Score:5, Funny)
Or shake it vigorously before attempting to pour (frequency is more important than amplitude. The higher, the better). Ketchup, like much of California, is susceptible to vibration-induced liquefaction. You look ridiculous, though.
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Re: (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.
Re:On SATA? (Score:5, Funny)
In those cases that's even worst because the bits are upside-down!
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Re: (Score:2)
Most people use a vertical tower computer case you insensitive clod!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Really, if you want to spend that kind of money, put it on a card. It would be much faster on the PCI buss that SATA for a negligible incremental cost.
If you buy that SSD and put it on a regular PCI bus, I will personally go over there and strangle you.
PCIe would be fine.
Re: (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: (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: (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...
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
Re:Still has a long way to go before its viable (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not bad. The 512 gig SSD is only 30 times more expensive than the 512 gig HDD I bought at staple last week.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I guess for small values of "only". I think the more important metric is this:
Cheapest 2.5" SSD (40GB): 696,- NOK
Cheapest 2.5" HDD (160GB): 285,- NOK
That's now <2.5 times the difference. Sure it's 10x the difference if you price it per gigabyte, but only if you need 160GB. That's what'll trigger the SSD revolution, the bulk storage will come much later.
Re: (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.
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Sure, we could spend a few million on engineers and hope to wring out a fraction of the performance improvement, but we could also spend that few million making our software more useful to our customers in other ways.
Re:Still has a long way to go before its viable (Score:4, Insightful)
Remember, backup tape still has a large bytes/cent advantage over HDDs. I take it your laptop keep everything on tape?
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
DVD and modern HDDs hit the sweet spot of "good enough". They're fast enough for most people, they're resilient enough for most people (granted, this is helped by the little long-term data we have on SSDs being inconsistent) and
Fuck everything, we're doing five controllers (Score:5, Funny)
Would someone tell me how this happened? We were the fucking vanguard of storage in this country. The Intel X-25 was the SSD to own. Then the other guy came out with a three-controller drive. Were we scared? Hell, no. Because we hit back with a little thing called the X-25E. That's three controllers and an extra port. For USB. But you know what happened next? Shut up, I'm telling you what happened--the bastards went to four controllers. Now we're standing around with our cocks in our hands, selling three controllers and a cache. USB or no, suddenly we're the chumps. Well, fuck it. We're going to five controllers.
Random write speed? (Score:5, Interesting)
I thought it was pretty clear that what matters for most desktop users is the random small write speed. See, for example, Anandtech's SSD anthology [anandtech.com] and later followups.
So, where are the 4 KiB random write benchmarks? They are conspicuously absent from this review. We can see the effect, I think, in the IOMeter results -- the X-25M outperforms the OCZ drive across the board on those, despite the OCZ win in the throughput tests. But, personally, I'd like to see the raw numbers on 4 KiB random writes. Have this many reviewers really learned so little about benchmarking SSDs since they came out?
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm really only interested in cost per gigabyte at this point, among the quality vendors, every single drive is faster than a spinning disk (and the trend is generally that the performance is getting better and better, not to mention that they probably won't reach prices I find attractive before trim support is widespread and working well).
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
This drive is a performance-oriented drive. If you only care about cost per GB, you won't be buying it. Anyone who is buying it, cares about performance; neglecting the aspect of performance that most desktop users will find most relevant is shoddy reviewing.
FWIW, I mostly agree with you — I care more about cost per GB than raw performance. That said, I still care about performance. Fortunately, most of the good vendors have drives with good performance now.
Re: (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: (Score:3, Interesting)
That's my plan. I've got the cheap, big disk... I just have to buy the small, fast SSD.
You have heard about Kingston's 40GB SSD that uses Intel's X25-M G2 controller [anandtech.com], right?
It's supposed to be $115 ($130 with 3.5" adapter kit), but it's hard to find in stock now.
Re:Random write speed? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because a 1TB drive that costs $3300 is aimed at "most desktop users".
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Re: (Score:2)
Good point, but pretty much every other heavy use is interested in this. If you just need high sequential speeds then RAIDed HDDs have been doing that well for much lower cost. In general servers are extremely interested in random write performance and IOPS, even more than desktop users.
Re:Random write speed? (Score:4, Insightful)
The slow random write will also be a problem for some very common server workloads, such as databases.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I think you're missing something about IOPS. With a 256K block size, you'd be lucky to crack 1000 IOPS over a SATA 3Gb/sec link. At such a large block size you hit the interface bandwidth limit way before you hit any IOPS limit.
Multithreaded database applications do not hit a drive with sequential 256K block requests. Under load, there will be several of those requests occurring simultaneously. Given the timing, a non-NCQ drive may receive the parallel requests rapidly alternating among multiple 256K st
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.
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Re:Get the word out: SLC vs MLC (Score:5, Funny)
SSD, MLC, SLC, OCZ... WTF?
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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...
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Re:Get the word out: SLC vs MLC (Score:4, Funny)
Yeah, but it's even easier to have someone else do the searching for us. Good work; keep it up!
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Re: (Score:2)
MLC = Multi-Level Cell stores more than one bit/cell increasing density at a performance and lifespan cost, unlike SLC = Single-Level Cell.
OCZ is just OCZ, AFAIK that's not a TLA. ;)
Re:Get the word out: SLC vs MLC (Score:5, Funny)
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Can I buy a vowel?
Re: (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)
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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
You'd be the first person I know claiming to have any solid data on that, so I'd love to see it. What we do know is that MLC drives will wear out about 10x faster after ~10000 rewrites instead of ~100000 rewrites/cell, but regular desktop use is unlikely to hit those limits while an enterprise server working 24x7 might. But I've never seen any data to indicate there's a difference in failure rates up to that limit, please enlighten us.
Useless (Score:5, Insightful)
This kludgey design is a bad idea for several reasons :
1. Despite throwing the kitchen sink at the problem, those indilinx chips are still much slower than Intel's controller at small, random reads and writes.
2. Since the drive needs four indilinx controllers rather than 1, some complex packaging, AND 3 RAID controllers it's going to cost a lot more per gigabyte. It's probably also more failure prone. And the MSRPs bear that out : this is a lot more expensive than the MSRPs for the equivalent Intel product.
3. Doesn't support native TRIM support
4. Biggest problem of all : the drive is bandwidth starved because it's on the SATA bus rather than on the PCI express bus. Furthermore, those slow internal RAID chips don't help matters. So instead of supporting sequential reads at 600 megabytes/second, it's capped at about 240. Lame.
Re:Useless (Score:4, Interesting)
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And (Score:4, Informative)
Forget that (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm waiting for the Guardian model.
SLC pricing is a scam (Score:5, Interesting)
and the companies ( Hello, Samsung!) should be ashamed. It wasn't until a few years ago that MLC was commercially viable but it only increases
by a factor of TWO. That's one of the lowest, most pointless tradeoffs ever in recent computing.
So, I get merely TWICE the storage for a TEN TIMES reduction in average component life, a 40% reduction in write speed, without fancy controller
redesign, and we get to enjoy all the ludicrous "benefits" of MLC for the price that SLC would have been anyway, through market forces and silicon die shrink
Re: (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: (Score:3, Interesting)
Are MLCs really that bad? I'm finding budget SSDs with MLCs, with warranties of several years. If the drive lasts several years, I'm a satisfied customer. I don't care if an SLC-based drive would have lasted longer, because by that time, I'll be replacing my drive with a larger one, anyway.
Re:Speed (Score:4, Interesting)
It would, but don't do it with that one or you'll fry either the board. They rewired the internal connectors so they could pass 2 channels over a single SATA connector. The SATA data lines passed via the power connector IIRC, so yeah, don't do it :).
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=821&type=expert [pcper.com]
Allyn Malventano
Storage Editor, PC Perspective
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