new tech rave.... Was: rsync and fP - never mind. *sigh*

[GCC Consulting]

Bill wrote:
 
> Storage is getting bigger and cheaper.
> 
> Apple, who has never been now for low prices, is selling a 
> 5.6 Terabyte RAID array - with 2Gb fiber channel connections 
> for at least a 400MB second data transfer rate - for $12,995.
> 
> That's a 3RU that is essentially plug and play.
> 
> The 400GB external drives that are on the market now are 
> running from about $375 up.
> 
> The problem is that users want/need more and more speed as 
> the applications grow, and more ways of handling data are found.
> 
> Just two years ago Sears re-evaluated their data and found 
> they could mine it more efficiently to increase sales to it 
> meant their 7 Terabyte storage requirements would increase to 
> in excess of 70 Terabytes.
> 
> But the problems we have are the I/O devices.
> 
> SCSI has always been the performer, but for many the IDE and 
> EIDE have been good if the OS doesn't need to do a lot of 
> multi-tasking.
> 
> But we are limited by the interfaces there.  You may have 
> noticed that the top IDE speed is the UDMA-6, aka UDMA-133.
> 
> Current drives are approaching that interface limit.  The 
> fastest of the ATA/SATA drives I've seen are the the little 
> Samsung units being able to transfer data from the disk to 
> the internal buffer at 80MB/sec.  That's not too far away 
> from the ATA-100 in most devices.
> 
> SATA - at 150Mhz - not that much faster than the 133Mhz UDMA 
> and only 50% faster than the 100MHz - won't be a great step 
> as the internal speed of the drives increase.
> 
> The PCI bus runs at 33MHz and is 32 bits for for 132MB/sec 
> transfer rate.  The data transfer rate internally on my P4 
> 2.4GHZ with dual DDR chips on a 400MHZ FSB is close to 
> 8GB/sec, so you can see much performance of today's machines 
> is limited by the bus structures.
> 
> PCI-66 moves the bus twice as fast and there for doubles the 
> data rate.  And PCI-X is 64 Bits wide at 133MHz, so it's 
> about 8 times as fast as the standard 32 bit wide 33Mhz PCI.
> 
> Don't expect anything to replace rotating magnetic media for 
> density and price in the foreseeable future. 
> 
> A paragraph heading in this months issue of Infostor reads 
> "Todays' 2 Gbps Fibre Channel technology is sufficient for 
> most SAN applications".
> 
> Note the key word most.  Describing current video needs  
> current HDTV transfer rates are 165MB/sec [approx 1.3Gb/sec]. 
>  The next generation of HD acquisition devices will be at 
> 240MB/sec which means a move to 4Gb fibre channel.
> 
> What we have today would have seemed like fantasy just 10 
> years ago. Who knows what the future holds.
> 
The Shadow do :)

Richard Kreiss
GCC Consulting