Re: Ultra-cheap NVRAM device

Chris wrote:
> fbsd@drivefaster.net (Dan Harris) writes:
> > On Oct 3, 2005, at 5:02 AM, Steinar H. Gunderson wrote:
> >
> >> I thought this might be interesting, not the least due to the
> >> extremely low
> >> price ($150 + the price of regular DIMMs):
> >
> > Replying before my other post came through.. It looks like their
> > benchmarks are markedly improved since the last article I read on
> > this.  There may be more interest now..
>
> It still needs a few more generations worth of improvement.
>
> 1.  It's still limited to SATA speed
> 2.  It's not ECC smart

3. Another zero (or two) on the price tag :).  While it looks like a fun
toy to play with, for it to replace hard drives in server environments
they need to provide more emphasis and effort in assuring people their
drive is reliable.

If they really wanted it to be adopted in server environments, it would
have been packaged in a 3.5" drive, not a pci card, since that's what we
all hot swap (especially since it already uses SATA interface).  They
would also have allowed use of 2 and 4gb DIMS, and put in a small hard
drive that the memory paged to when powered off, and completely isolated
the power supply...hard to pack all that in 60$.

That said, we are in the last days of the hard disk.  I think it is only
a matter of months before we see a sub 1000$ part which have zero
latency in the 20-40 GB range.  Once that happens economies of scale
will kick in and hard drives will become basically a backup device.

Merlin