Hyperdrive 4 Redefines Solid State Storage

LondonGoneWild · Nov 7, 2007 at 7:21 PM

From Tom's Hardware

005 was the year of the RAM drive. Gigabyte and a smaller company called HyperOS released their storage products, which were both meant to replace the conventional hard drive with blazing fast SDRAM. Both provided an exciting look to the future of performance storage products, as they blow away any other hard drive. Gigabyte's i-RAM was the faster solution, thanks to its SATA/150 interface, while the HyperDrive III was limited to UltraATA/100, but supported more memory. HyperOS wants to adjust the ranking with its fourth generation HyperDrive, which offers both SATA/150 and UltraATA/133 interfaces. HyperOS even calls its HyperDrive 4 the fastest internal hard disk in the world.

Memory is typically divided into volatile and permanent storage: your system memory or random access memory (RAM) is volatile, as the DRAM transistor states are lost when the power is gone, so any data stored goes as well. Flash memory, optical storage and hard drives, together with variations such as magneto-optical drives (MO) are considered non-volatile or permanent storage, because they preserve their contents even when they're shut down. It is possible to convert volatile DRAM from its original use and turn it into a -------permanent storage device. All you need is appropriate core logic and an energy source to feed power continuously; the result is referred to as a solid state disk.

While Flash memory is increasingly used for solid state disk products, it does have its downsides. It can compete with DRAM when it comes to read performance, and it excels conventional hard drives at random read operations. But its write latency still is horribly long - Flash SSDs still abandon the random write benchmark field to quick conventional hard drives. In this light, DRAM cells not only allow for quicker write performance, they often provide a lower cost per stored bit as well.

Bitmicro has been addressing the solid state market with various products during the last several years; most of them are designed for ----- use. The two other products I've referred to, namely Gigabyte's i-RAM and the HyperDrive III by HyperOS Systems, target the upper mainstream, as well as ----- users. The Gigabyte solution is powered by a PCI expansion slot and a buffer battery to maintain the memory contents of the four DDR1 memory modules for up to 16 hours. HyperOS puts its product into a 5.25" form factor, and hence supports eight memory modules for up to 16 GB of storage. The power supply, which consists of a small backup battery and an external PSU, doesn't protect against long power outages. Again, Bitmicro has been the one to offer solid state drives with permanent backup storage included.

The HyperDrive 4 now comes with a combination of both Serial ATA/150 and UltraATA/133, eight instead of six memory sockets, a more powerful backup battery, and optional backup storage by means of a 2.5" UltraATA drive.

at and its capabilities of accessing data randomly are limited. The reason can be found in the read/write heads, which have to be moved using mechanical arms to access the required sectors on the rotating discs. There is nothing wrong with hard drives for long-term permanent storage, but enthusiasts and workstation users appreciate better performance of their system storage subsystem, which is where Flash and RAM drives enter the stage.

Hard drives made of Flash memory make a lot of sense, as Flash memory densities have reached levels where it is affordable to create drives with up to 32 GB. We're still talking about several hundred dollars, which will get you a 32 GB drive or a one terabyte conventional hard drive, but the performance benefits are noticeable. Flash memory has low read latency and can be considered robust today despite its limited number of write cycles. Wear leveling algorithms on modern Flash SDDs (solid state drives) make sure that all cells are used evenly. However, Flash drives are even less suitable than hard drives if frequent random write access is required. This is not really an issue in the desktop, as only the user and certain software services ask for random writes. Server environments, however, depend on their storage solutions to deliver a sufficiently high number of I/O operations per second, which can be demanded by databases or by multiple users accessing a storage solution. In such a case, Flash SSDs are even slower than fast conventional hard drives.

RAM-based SSDs are susceptible to power outages, and they are even more expensive. The ideal SDRAM-based SSD has to support an acceptable storage capacity to be suitable as the system drive (8 GB or more today), and requires both a short-term power backup as well as a long-term permanent additional storage solution to backup memory content in the event of a power outage. At capacities of 16 GB and more, you're looking at a four-digit cost for such a solution, but the advantages are incontrovertible: SDRAM offers minimal read and write latencies and high throughput of hundreds of megabytes per second. In theory, SDRAM SSDs are even more reliable, as they're mechanically tolerant against shock and vibration. And finally, you can forget everything you know about defragmentation.[/b]
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Discuss this, I personally think that this is a great idea. True, the Gigabyte i-Ram has been around for a while, but this HP4 sure takes the cake with the amount of RAM to be added within.

xlink · Nov 7, 2007 at 8:43 PM

I'd rather have 10 of these in RAID0
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3064&p=7

Bl00dFox · Nov 8, 2007 at 3:36 PM

I'd rather have 10 of these in RAID0
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3064&p=7[/b]
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Id rather have 10 hyperdrives in RAID0

xlink · Nov 8, 2007 at 6:04 PM

you have more money than I...

Bl00dFox · Nov 8, 2007 at 6:17 PM

you have more money than I...[/b]
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LOL probably not, because I dont work yet... Too young

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Hyperdrive 4 Redefines Solid State Storage

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Hyperdrive 4 Redefines Solid State Storage

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