Exciting technology

[LiamC]

Sorry for so many options

I've been reading the "Systems that sell" thread and it seems to have morphed into this question "What up and coming tech has your interest?", so I thought I'd poll you people.

Do people really care about any of the new tech that's on the horizon or have we really reached a plateau as somebody said?

For me, the 3D card is the current bottleneck, but Hammer promises cheap dual processing, but it's not due until next year...

http://www.theinquirer.net/08050216.htm

This article seems to think that 256MB is enough for the avg. consumer, so what else is there to drive the upgrade?

[Cliptin]

SATA and all forms of solid state.

[Buck]

Serial ATA. I'm interested in seeing how these new devices will work as alternative products in a server environment.

My second pick would be Clawhammer or is it Opteron? Either way, new technology will lower the cost of present, but satisfactorially performing, hardware.

[LiamC]

Damn, forgot about SATA - but then I don't see it as offering any performance improvements over current PATA so it's not on my horizon.

FWIW I use a Promise card as well as the onboard so only one device is connected to any one IDE port.

[Tea]

10K IDE. 'nuff said.

[Mercutio]

Serial ATA. Particularly if, as SAN_guy eluded on SR, bridged U320 SCSI to SATA enclosures become available.

Floppy replacements, if anyone is listening to me (CF, dammit!)

Anything that improves PC I/O (PCI X, HyperTransport, whatever).

A sound card with native support for DPLII.

Smallish, portable USB storage. Those keychain things are decent, but they don't hold enough data.

Reasonably priced gigabit switching. Particularly if it comes from Cisco and fits in a Catalyst 5005.

[i]

Floppy replacements, if anyone is listening to me (CF, dammit!)


How do you mean "floppy replacement"? Flash memory technology is already well established ... doesn't that qualify?

[Mercutio]

Yeah, but readers aren't standard equipment yet, and I still see floppy interfaces on motherboards.

[CougTek]

Matrox Millenium G1000. Thats the thing that'll have the biggest influence on the user experience when he'll be sitting in front of his screen. All the others you mentioned improve raw performances, but except for the geeks, people won't notice all that much.

You forgot one thing that I would like to see coming on the computer market : UXGA LCD (or OLEd or FED or any technology that could be used to make flat and thin screens) at low prices. With high contrast ratio, fast response time and accurate color reproduction to top that. Want it or not, computers are mainly visual tools. Nothing improves more your experience than image quality enhancements.

[Handruin]

I would have to agree with 10K EIDE in an SATA format. :) I also like the suggestion of GigE switched being affordable, possible in a fibre connection. (OK I'm dreaming)

[Groltz]

That damned 100X CD-Rom/25X DVD-Rom drive that was supposed to have been released by Afreey LAST YEAR...

[Handruin]

That damned 100X CD-Rom/25X DVD-Rom drive that was supposed to have been released by Afreey LAST YEAR...

I wonder what kind of noise that drive would produce? :sqnt:

[i]

Yeah, but readers aren't standard equipment yet...

But as a system builder, you're one of the people who can actually start fixing that problem! Seriously!


...and I still see floppy interfaces on motherboards.

Not on that Abit MAX motherboard. :wink:

I agree with you though. Floppy drives are well overdue for a final disappearing act. Along those lines, at my former place of employment I considered seizing the bull by the horns and start replacing floppy drives with CF units.

Those USB CF readers are dead common, and very cheap. But what the dim-witted manufacturers don't seem to understand is that I don't need anothering stupid item hanging around on my desk! Geez. I've got this huge tower case right here with all these free drive bays ... why the hell do I want an external reader?

After ages of searching, I found these two items:

http://www.psism.com/psiiic.htm

http://www.mydigitaldiscount.com/display_product.cfm?product_id=25

Both attach as IDE devices, but it's clear that the second (cheap) option is not as convenient as most would like it to be. Unless, perhaps, you're using Linux, in which case the system might handle the disappearing/reappearing CF cards. Regardless, that first option looks the most tempting. If I had the money I'd love to try one out.

[Groltz]

That damned 100X CD-Rom/25X DVD-Rom drive that was supposed to have been released by Afreey LAST YEAR...

I wonder what kind of noise that drive would produce? :sqnt:

It is/was to be based on True-X technology, so fairly quiet. I have a 52X Kenwood True-X Cd-rom and it is barely audible.

[Groltz]

More on it:


Afreey in Cebit 2001 presented their latest DVD-ROM "9025E" which supports 25x DVD-ROM/100x CD-ROM reading and uses "Raptor" chipset from Infineon:

"...Raptor, is Infineon Technology's first single-chip, high- performance DVD-ROM controller. It uses Zen Research's MultiBeam "TrueX" single-beam DVD, and CD drives. Raptor sets an industry speed record of 25x DVD, and 100x CD read rates, when deployed with a MultiBeam optical pickup (from Sanyo). The MultiBeam technology allows DVD and CD drives to achieve peak performance across the entire face of the disk, and not just when reading from the outer disk edge. Disk spindle rates are correspondingly lower than on single-beam drives, reducing vibration, noise, power consumption and heat dissipation.."

Key features:

- MultiBeam 25x/100x CD single chip solution
- Integrated ATAPI interface (supports all data transfer modes up to UltraDMA 66)
- DVD/CD decoder including CSS, ECC
- Support of system configurations of: DVD-ROM, DVD-combo (with external CD-RW controller)
- Disc-read support of: Dual-layer DVD, DVD-R/ROM/RW, CD, CD-R/ RW/ROM/Enhanced
- DVD Audio support

[Handruin]

Ah makes sense. I was figuring that a 100X CR-ROM without something like a multi-beam would have to spin at 15K RPM or more. We would then see people liquid cooling their CD-R/DVD drives and wearing noise cancellation earphones.

[timwhit]

There was an article on Slashdot a few weeks back about the stress that a CD can take before it blows up. It happened to most CDs at about 28K RPM. A 100x drive would certainly be very close to this especially on the inner tracks.

A drive with multiple laster is the obvious answer to this.

I tried to find the article on slashdot, but I gave up.

[Mercutio]

Matrox Millenium G1000. Thats the thing that'll have the biggest influence on the user experience when he'll be sitting in front of his screen.

I disagree somewhat. Matrox has been at the limit of 2D quality for quite some time. The other players are just starting to get there (ATI's new cards look good, supposedly nvidia's do too, and 3dfx was just a notch behind when it was devoured).

But since quality is there in the hardware, I think that the place where change needs to happen is with the display itself. The $100 17" display is a real boon to integrators. The $100 19" monitor will be even more of one. I don't feel bad at all about selling an "underpowered" budget machine with a big monitor. Big monitors mean more to a user's satisfaction than just about anything, except the magic words "deep discount".

[Buck]

I don't feel bad at all about selling an "underpowered" budget machine with a big monitor. Big monitors mean more to a user's satisfaction than just about anything, except the magic words "deep discount".

Quite right Mercutio. An average video card with a 17 or 19 inch display causes customers to drool. A really high performing video card with a 15 inch display has little appeal.

[CougTek]

Mercutio,

I meant that the graphic card was the thing that would have the biggest impact for the user among the list of choices i gave. What you said about the monitor is true and the second paragraph of my previous post draws to the same conclusion.

My personal priority these days would push me more to wish for more powerful processors though, as I need more crunching power for the Genome@home project. A 64bit (or even 128bit when we're at it!) CPU running at P4 frequencies and selling at Duron prices would be nice :) (I guess I'll have to wait another ten years before it happens)

[Mercutio]

It'll probably be longer than that before mainstream computing needs 128-bits. 64bits represents an awful lot of data (18446744073709551616 is the largest number you can represent. Obviously that's quite a large number.). 128 bits gets you 3.4x10^38. There you're getting in to "as many particles as there are in the universe" levels.

[Tannin]

A 64bit (or even 128bit when we're at it!) CPU running at P4 frequencies and selling at Duron prices would be nice :) (I guess I'll have to wait another ten years before it happens)

Nowhere near that long, Coug. Let's see if we can nut it out. Clawhammer debuts later this year, right?

Let's give Clawhammer about 6 to 12 months as a premium part before the Duron disappears completely, the Athlon XP becomes the Duron equivalent, and Clawhammer becomes the Athlon equivalent. Now another 6 to 12 months for there to be a new version of Clawhammer (smaller process, different interconnect technology, whatever) that takes the high-end over, and there we have it: 64-bit, Duron prices, and it will have long since passed current Pentium 4 clockspeeds.

Estimated time of arrival: two years.

[jtr1962]

There was an article on Slashdot a few weeks back about the stress that a CD can take before it blows up. It happened to most CDs at about 28K RPM. A 100x drive would certainly be very close to this especially on the inner tracks.


28K RPM means that the outer edge of the CD is moving at 392 mph-only about 150 mph less than a jetliner. No wonder the thing blows up! To be honest, I'm amazed they can even do 12K RPM in a 56X drive(=168 mph at outer rim, or bullet train speed).

Multibeam is the only way to go, or hopefully someone will find a way of focusing a laser with an electronically-controlled lens arrangement on the tracks of a stationary CD, and then speeds will be (theoretically) unlimited.

BTW, my vote goes for solid state storage. Forget 10K IDE, serial ATA, and so on. I want to get rid of the last moving part(besides cooling fans) and major bottleneck in PCs, namely the mechanical hard drive. Solid state will have speed and reliability several orders of magnitude above mechanical disks.

[Tea]

Don't hold your breath, JTR, it won't happen anytime soon.

For me, I'm mostly interested in affordable, deliverable performance. In the sort of thing that I can expect to sell plenty of, and see people really benefit from.

And in computing, that means faster storage. The performance improvement of the storage sub-system has lagged way behind almost everything else.

10K IDE drives with seek times in the 7ms range are long, long overdue.

[Sol]

Let's give Clawhammer about 6 to 12 months as a premium part before the Duron disappears completely, the Athlon XP becomes the Duron equivalent, and Clawhammer becomes the Athlon equivalent. Now another 6 to 12 months for there to be a new version of Clawhammer (smaller process, different interconnect technology, whatever) that takes the high-end over, and there we have it: 64-bit, Duron prices, and it will have long since passed current Pentium 4 clockspeeds.


Actually AMD just recently announced that the current Durons would be phased out near the end of this year about when the clawhammer is released. The then current Athlon chip will apparently take on the Duron name and become the budget AMD chip.

With 3GIO, serial ATA and other technologies not too far away AMD may need to release new CPUs and chipsets to support these advances sooner than may otherwise be the case.

So maybe Tannins prediction could come to pass even sooner.

[Platform]

. .

Damn, forgot about SATA - but then I don't see it as offering any performance improvements over current PATA so it's not on my horizon...

SATA will notch up channel bandwidth AND real-world performance significantly, not to mention reduce overall equipement cost slightly once fully deployed by industry. SSCSI will do the same in a couple of years when it shows up.


. .

[Tea]

How will SATA improve performance?

[Platform]

. .
SATA will *start off* as a faster channel than any existing Parallel ATA technology. SATA's speed will initially be 150 MB/s over a thin, easy-to-manage, easy-to-deal-with cable. Speeds will ramp up significantly over the medium term.

Except for Maxtor's proprietary dead-end ATA specification, parallel ATA technology is limited to 128 GB capacity, whereas SATA has huge addressing capability.

The SATA command set is enhanced to provide SCSI-like capabilities. So, even at an equivalent channel speed SATA will still provide more real-world throughput because of its efficiency.

And, just as important as anything mentioned, SATA controllers will not require new operating system drivers as the existing ATA drivers are fully compatible.

Many SATA RAID host adaptors will be available once SATA hard drives finally start to be produced. There should also be 2-way SATA/PATA convertors available fairly early on, too. There will be SATA CD-ROM readers, floppy, CD-R/W, DVD-xx, tape, and Zip drives as well.

Basically speaking, SATA will both evolutionise and revolutionise common storage as we know it, and do so rather swiftly. Once people experience how good SATA technology will be, I'm sure nobody in their right mind will want to go back to crappy stuck-in-first-gear Parallel ATA technology and its cursed broad grey airflow killing cabling.


. .

[Cliptin]

The reason I grouped my choices the way I did, SATA and solid state storage together, was for two reasons.

These two technologies are interesting enough by themselves. When combined, I see a progression toward smaller fast computers.

PS Platform, Are the two white dots at the end of your message supposed to mean something?

[Groltz]

Are the two white dots at the end of your message supposed to mean something?


And you're now breaking in at least your 4th new user name???

Gary...Man of Mystery...

[Bozo]

At the moment, we're going fast enough for most PC users. We have gobs of storage. We also have lickity-split memory, and plenty of it. How about the manufacturers work on quality and compatibility?

Maybe the chipset makers could take a break with being the firstest with the mostest, and concentrate on compatability. Like being able to use ALL the memory slots, no matter what brand/size they are. Or maybe making the AGP slot work with all the video cards, no matter what OS or processor is being used. Maybe even designing the motherboard layout so you physically install any add on card.

How about chipsets that are stable. Wouldn't that be novel.

Maybe not having to release a new BIOS or chipset drivers every week or two, to fix another, and another, and another problem.

How about hard drive manufacturers making hard drives 8gb and under for replacements in older computers or in a situation where you don't need 120gb.

How about all manufacturers being accountable for the junk they produce, and make it right with the customer.

How about warenties that mean something. And return "shipping & handling" charges that don't cost more than the device being returned.

How about software that works as advertise.

How about software that's compatable with someone elses software. (did you know that XP will not 'see' anything running Samba by design?)

How about hardware manufacturers supplying drivers for new operating systems, when the hardware is only a year old.

That's my wish list for the near future.

Bozo :D

[Barry K. Nathan]

. .
SATA will *start off* as a faster channel than any existing Parallel ATA technology. SATA's speed will initially be 150 MB/s over a thin, easy-to-manage, easy-to-deal-with cable. Speeds will ramp up significantly over the medium term.

Of course, nobody is going to have ATA drives with STRs anywhere near that fast anytime soon, and PCI cards are going to be of little help on this front because most people still have 32-bit 33MHz, 133MB/s (if you're lucky -- some chipsets have bugs that cripple the speed to various limits like 75MB/s or 90MB/s) buses.


Except for Maxtor's proprietary dead-end ATA specification, parallel ATA technology is limited to 128 GB capacity, whereas SATA has huge addressing capability.

48-bit LBA addressing is at least a proposed standard, if not an approved one (I don't feel like checking www.t13.org to see which it is). It's not proprietary. I have no idea if ATA133 is proprietary or not, however.

And that brings me to an important point that people keep missing for whatever reason: 48-bit LBA and ATA 133 are unrelated issues, no matter what anyone imagines Maxtor's marketing department is implying. While ATA 133 data transfer speeds require an ATA 133 controller, 48-bit LBA capacities only require support in your operating system's driver. To use Linux as an example since I'm familiar with it, very recent kernels (2.4.19 prereleases, or the enhanced 2.4.18 that comes with Red Hat 7.3) can access the entire 160GB capacity of a Maxtor 160GB drive on most ATA controllers (the only exceptions I'm aware of are ALI chipsets, due to hardware bugs, and some Promise controllers with old BIOSes).


The SATA command set is enhanced to provide SCSI-like capabilities. So, even at an equivalent channel speed SATA will still provide more real-world throughput because of its efficiency.

What do you mean by this? If you're talking about Tagged Command Queueing, then IBM (75GXP and later) and Western Digital (some WD1200BB's, and possibly other models) PATA drives already support this, and it's just driver support in Windows, Linux, etc. that's lacking. (BTW, there's an experimental patch that adds support to Linux for TCQ on these drives.)


And, just as important as anything mentioned, SATA controllers will not require new operating system drivers as the existing ATA drivers are fully compatible.

I think you're going to need new drivers for the "SCSI-like capabilities" you mention above, though. At a minimum, if you want TCQ or MMIO, you'll need new drivers. (IOW, the existing drivers should work but the speed increase won't be as good as if you have newer drivers -- unless your old drivers happen to support things like TCQ and MMIO on PATA too.)


Many SATA RAID host adaptors will be available once SATA hard drives finally start to be produced. There should also be 2-way SATA/PATA convertors available fairly early on, too. There will be SATA CD-ROM readers, floppy, CD-R/W, DVD-xx, tape, and Zip drives as well.

Are these SATA RAID host adaptors going to be the RAID equivalent of WinModems, like most previous ATA RAID host adaptors, or are they going to mostly be real RAID cards?


Basically speaking, SATA will both evolutionise and revolutionise common storage as we know it, and do so rather swiftly. Once people experience how good SATA technology will be, I'm sure nobody in their right mind will want to go back to crappy stuck-in-first-gear Parallel ATA technology and its cursed broad grey airflow killing cabling.


. .
No argument there; the SATA cables would be revolutionary [perhaps that's the wrong word, but hopefully the meaning gets across] enough even if it was otherwise unmodified PATA running on them. In fact, that's what I see as the biggest advantage of SATA. (Unless there's other stuff that I'm unaware of, especially regarding SCSI-like capabilities, the other aspects of SATA don't seem particularly important to me based on my current knowledge of them.)

[Barry K. Nathan]

Sorry for so many options
Er, what do you mean? My main problem with the poll was that the Big 3 Graphics options weren't split into three separate options of their own; that is, I thought there weren't enough options. :)

I would have considered G1000 if it had been an option of its own, but (for the moment) I couldn't care less what NVidia and ATI have coming up (in particular, if NVidia can't eliminate their stupid Linux-related intellectual property issues that Matrox and ATI somehow don't have, so that we can finally have stable NVidia drivers for Linux, then I don't care about NVidia's next not-yet-released card unless it can do something really cool, such as biomedical research in the background whwnever the drivers crash).

I am so uninterested (right now anyway) in ATI's and NVidia's next offerings that I gave up on any possibility of choosing G1000, and I chose ClawHammer instead. It's going to be really neat when a single computer can (a) address more than 4GB of RAM without idiotic segmentation bottlenecks and (b) run x86 programs at full native speed without emulation!

Also, why are 'Duallies" on the list as an up-and-coming tech? Both dual AMDs and dual P4 Xeons (which are essentially P4's by another name and therefore are still P4's) have been around for a while now... Neither is really new at all, as far as I can tell.

[LiamC]

Platform:

150MB/s over a point to point cable - Can you point me in the direction of an ATA drive that can deliver that? This will in the forseeable future mean absolutely Jack. The drives have to catch up first and the interface is no panacea.

Barry, it was an either/or choice, not an inclusive one but I didn't know how to make it obvious. I was interested in seeing what got peoples motor running without getting into the nitty-gritty. As for duallies, the way I see it is that with Intel HT (Hyperthreading) you can get psuedo dual processing with a single chip.

With AMD HT (Hyper Transport) links everywhere, the problems of designing and building dual processor capable motherboards become much simpler. Instead of a 100% price premium over a premium single chip board, it may drop as low as 50% over a high-mid range. If it becomes that cheap, I'd certainly consider it.

<pimpage>
If you want to see why some people have no business working in the tech industry, check out my homepage. 4GHz Athlon notebook. I'd like to see that! Who am I kidding, I'd like to own one. :)
</pimpage>

[Handruin]

150MB/s over a point to point cable - Can you point me in the direction of an ATA drive that can deliver that? This will in the forseeable future mean absolutely Jack. The drives have to catch up first and the interface is no panacea.


I think the thin cables alone would sell me on the new interface. ;) I hate those big clunky EIDE cables that don’t flex worth a damn. (I know there are rounded cables, but I don't want to buy them) Is there anything in the SATA spec that might increase the communication speed?

[Tea]

Nice one Bill. :)

For those who missed it before, LiamC's excellent little site can be found here: http://www.users.bigpond.net.au/liamc/

[Sol]

(I know there are rounded cables, but I don't want to buy them)


So get a pocket knife and some electrical tape and make them.
If the knife make you edgy just the tape will do nearly as good a job.

[Bartender]

(I know there are rounded cables, but I don't want to buy them)


So get a pocket knife and some electrical tape and make them.
If the knife make you edgy just the tape will do nearly as good a job.

The cables only cost a few dollars to buy, but they are still a bit clumsy - certainly nothing like a serial cable.

[LiamC]

Thanks Tony,

it makes me ill seeing some of the cr*p in cattledogs that the uninformed consumer gets force fed - not that this is, this appears to be a simple typo. But I really wish people would buy from experts if they don't have the knowledge - but I guess glitzy marketing keeps the big boys in business...

[LiamC]

Handruin,

I agree with you about the cables - should be a definite improvement, but I don't see any more speed coming done the pike.

..."I saw this movie about a bus that had to SPEED around the city, keeping its SPEED over 50. And if the SPEED dropped it would explode. I think it was called, the bus that couldn't slow down."...

[timwhit]

That was the great American novel that Skinner was going to write...I do believe.

[timwhit]

Damn, that wasn't the quote I was thinking about.

Here is the exact quote:
I saw this in a movie about a bus that had to _speed_ around the city,
keeping its _speed_ over fifty. And if its _speed_ dropped, the bus
would explode! I think it was called... "The bus that couldn't slow
down."
-- So close, yet so far, Homer, "The Springfield Files"

Here is what I was thinking of:
Skinner: Well...maybe it was for the best. Now I...I finally have time
to do what I've always wanted: write the great American novel.
Mine is about a futuristic amusement park where dinosaurs are
brought to life through advanced cloning techniques. I call
it "Billy and the Cloneasaurus."

[Platform]

. . · .

The reason I grouped my choices the way I did, SATA and solid state storage together, was for two reasons.

Solid State: Don't expect a lot anytime soon in this department (i.e. -- something affordable for the masses). There simply isn't anything on the horizon to push these technologies beyond just periodic refinement of small low-power storage devices for portable use. Exotic solid-state devices such as a sugar-cube-sized device based on optical technology remain a laboratory experiment. One of the strangest high-capacity storage technologies ever to come along was protein-based (a.k.a. -- "organic storage"). That also is still pie-in-the-sky technology.


One storage technology that is finally beginning to creep out the doors of a few companies very very painfully slowly now is multi-layer fluorescent optical disc and tape technology -- also called by various other names such as holographic storage technology or 3-D optical storage technology. Both of these WORM media will eventually extreme data capacity and high data read rates with excellent archival qualities. The disc product will start off with well over 100 GB capacity, maybe as much as 200 GB initially, and have a read speed of around 40 MB/s. The tape product will have the highest volumetric data capacity of any medium available, starting off with 1 TB or a bit more storage capacity per 8mm/AIT-sized optical tape cartridge with a read speed of 40 MB/s.


HD-ROM is another WORM (disc) technology that could be released now if the company (Norsam) had the cash to perfect a commercial digital product, though IBM has been an investor for a while now. The data capacity of HD-ROM will be pretty high -- equal to or slightly greater than first-generation holographic disc storage technology -- but the medium's archival quality will be next to none, as in having a potential million or more years of stable shelf life and/or fireproof storage of data. They currently offer an analogue product called HD-Rosetta using the same ion beam writer technology that HD-ROM uses, where incredible numbers of monochrome images can be stored on a CD-ROM-sized disc -- essentially a replacement for microfilm. HD-Rosetta data is read with an electron microscope. HD-ROM will use a conventional-looking CD-like reader.


Blue-laser DVD will emerge next year with 20 ~ 25 GB capacity.


These two technologies are interesting enough by themselves. When combined, I see a progression toward smaller fast computers.

Back to SATA: One thing else is that there will be an introduction in lower operating voltages with SATA. Computer system makers want to reduce power and voltage requirements so as to reduce power supply sizes. SATA will help them do this.



PS Platform, Are the two white dots at the end of your message supposed to mean something?

I'm signaling certain people across the world.

. . · .

[Platform]

. . · .

...We also have lickity-split memory, and plenty of it.

I'll agree with "plenty of it," however I disagree with the preceding "lickity-split" part. Primary memory is now lagging WAY behind in the speed department as far as integration goes and it continues to trail ever further as new faster processors come out monthly. Processor speed has kept marching away from primary memory speed for over 2 decades now.


Back in the dark ages of computing (where I come from) we had "fast" static electronic memory in mainframes and mini-computers. In fact, the whole damn system ran at the same clock rate as the processor -- primary memory and data channels included. Secondary and tertiary storage (external) was, of course, designed to operate independently of the processor clock. By the way, I'm well aware WHY we are where we are today with primary memory speeds, it's just too bad we ended up running out of economical solutions. Nobody but supercomputer users are going to be able to afford wide and deeply-interleaved primary memory subsystems and/or high-capacity memory systems built to use static RAM.


Even with the widening disparity of RAM speed - to - processor speeds, PC makers are doing an excellent job in value engineering. We are now seeing the front-side bus speed finally break the half-gigahertz mark (533 MHz). Memory devices will be available in less than a year to operate at 75% of the newest front-side bus speed.


Anything on the horizon to alleviate our current problems? Yes: Magnetic RAM. M-RAM is a bit of a throwback to core memory, where a tiny magnetic donut stored a bit. The upcoming (2005/6?) M-RAM will allegedly be pretty fast and dense.



...Maybe not having to release a new BIOS or chipset drivers every week or two, to fix another, and another, and another problem...

I don't experience that, since I'm running systems based on Supermicro mobos. :^)




. . · .

[Platform]

. . · .

Of course, nobody is going to have ATA drives with STRs anywhere near that fast anytime soon, and PCI cards are going to be of little help on this front because most people still have 32-bit 33MHz, 133MB/s (if you're lucky -- some chipsets have bugs that cripple the speed to various limits like 75MB/s or 90MB/s) buses. Channel bandwidth is not just about data, there is also command overhead not to mention the small bits of time where nothing happens during command and data transmissions -- all of this figures into the total bandwidth of the channel. On the outer tracks, platter media rates can now saturate an ATA-66 interface, so we are getting there. If IBM's "Pixie Dust" platters ever become a reality, we would be able to saturate an ATA-133 channel.



48-bit LBA addressing is at least a proposed standard, if not an approved one (I don't feel like checking www.t13.org to see which it is). It's not proprietary. I have no idea if ATA133 is proprietary or not, however.

ATA133 is Maxtor's proprietary standard. Even though the Maxtor interface's 133 MB/s channel bandwidth is a bit of snake oil in respect to current ATA hard drives, it's just part of the marketing attempt to woo people over with high capacity needs -- as in up to 160 GB worth of capacity. At least cache and buffer performance will be enhanced with ATA133.


48-bit LBA addressing has long since been approved by ANSI as the "next" standard for addressing numbers of sectors, it's just that the overall standard ATA/ATAPI-6 standard has not approved quite yet.




===============================================
The SATA command set is enhanced to provide SCSI-like capabilities. So, even at an equivalent channel speed SATA will still provide more real-world throughput because of its efficiency.
===============================================
What do you mean by this? If you're talking about Tagged Command Queueing, then IBM (75GXP and later) and Western Digital (some WD1200BB's, and possibly other models) PATA drives already support this, and it's just driver support in Windows, Linux, etc. that's lacking. (BTW, there's an experimental patch that adds support to Linux for TCQ on these drives.)

Yes I'm talking about the same thing you are (tagged command queuing, et al), except that SATA has official documented support for these advanced capabilities. I believe the IBM 34GXP was the first ATA hard drive that supported tagged command queuing.



...I think you're going to need new drivers for the "SCSI-like capabilities" you mention above, though... True, if you want to take full advantage of the advanced capabilities that SATA will offer, but you will not need to change operating system drivers to use a SATA device. There will be a new ATA BIOS with SATA controllers that will take care of interfacing SATA storage devices to the system. Your existing ATA device driver will work with the new ATA BIOS.



...Are these SATA RAID host adaptors going to be the RAID equivalent of WinModems, like most previous ATA RAID host adaptors, or are they going to mostly be real RAID cards?

All I can tell you is that the data channel will change. The quality and functionality of a RAID controller -- SCSI or ATA -- depends on the manufacturer's design capability. I'll venture to guess that we'll see an explosion of RAID devices that use SATA hard drives. These will be host adaptors and external devices that are attached via Fibre Channel, SCSI, and iSCSI. SATA won't be able to grab much at all of the higher-end of the RAID market, because it may take a while before 10kRPM and 15kRPM SATA hard drive mechanisms show up (don't discount the possibility of 12kRPM drives). But, high capacity RAID boxes using SATA hard drive mechanisms WILL BE A GIVEN.




===============================================
Basically speaking, SATA will both evolutionise and revolutionise common storage as we know it, and do so rather swiftly. Once people experience how good SATA technology will be, I'm sure nobody in their right mind will want to go back to crappy stuck-in-first-gear Parallel ATA technology and its cursed broad grey airflow killing cabling.
===============================================
No argument there; the SATA cables would be revolutionary [perhaps that's the wrong word, but hopefully the meaning gets across] enough even if it was otherwise unmodified PATA running on them. In fact, that's what I see as the biggest advantage of SATA. (Unless there's other stuff that I'm unaware of, especially regarding SCSI-like capabilities, the other aspects of SATA don't seem particularly important to me based on my current knowledge of them.)

SATA cabling will be evolutionary, since you will have a SINGLE thin cable supplying both the data connection and the power to the SATA device.

The revolutionary aspect of SATA is that it will kill off PATA (or PiTA PATA) technology in any new system rolling off the assembly line several months from now.


. . · .

[Barry K. Nathan]

. . · .

Of course, nobody is going to have ATA drives with STRs anywhere near that fast anytime soon, and PCI cards are going to be of little help on this front because most people still have 32-bit 33MHz, 133MB/s (if you're lucky -- some chipsets have bugs that cripple the speed to various limits like 75MB/s or 90MB/s) buses. Channel bandwidth is not just about data, there is also command overhead not to mention the small bits of time where nothing happens during command and data transmissions -- all of this figures into the total bandwidth of the channel.I'm fully aware of this, and BTW it applies to the PCI bus as well as to the ATA channel; that's another thing I meant to allude to with the phrase "if you're lucky."


On the outer tracks, platter media rates can now saturate an ATA-66 interface, so we are getting there. If IBM's "Pixie Dust" platters ever become a reality, we would be able to saturate an ATA-133 channel.The 120GXP uses those "Pixie Dust" platters already, according to IBM's web site, and the STR is nowhere near maxing out ATA-100 -- never mind ATA-133.

That is not to say that ATA-100 won't be maxed out in the (somewhat) near future, just that Pixie Dust alone is not sufficient.

[James]

How about software that's compatable with someone elses software. (did you know that XP will not 'see' anything running Samba by design?)

Well, I got it working at home. I have 2 XP desktops, an XP laptop, an Turtle Beach Audiotron, and a Win95 web tablet that all talk fine to a Samba server I have running on a P166 FreeBSD box (Samba 2.2.3a). It was working fine under Solaris on an Ultra 5 (Samba 2.2.2) too.

The Samba box even shares different partitions depending on who it is that logs in.

[Cliptin]

Are the two white dots at the end of your message supposed to mean something?


And you're now breaking in at least your 4th new user name???

Gary...Man of Mystery...

If I read Gary's message correctly, he is up to five.

[Mercutio]

Well, I got it working at home. I have 2 XP desktops, an XP laptop, an Turtle Beach Audiotron, and a Win95 web tablet that all talk fine to a Samba server I have running on a P166 FreeBSD box (Samba 2.2.3a). It was working fine under Solaris on an Ultra 5 (Samba 2.2.2) too.

The Samba box even shares different partitions depending on who it is that logs in.


James, I'd still like to know what you did that I didn't. I tried precompiled. I tried rolling my own. I used a default smb.conf and one I made by hand. I tried three different versions of samba even. I never got so much as a connection.

[Cliptin]

There is no technical reason not ot increase an ATA drives disk cache to 64M or 128M really. If they can write firmware algorithms to take advantage then a highbandwidth interface becomes more important.

[i]

There is no technical reason not ot increase an ATA drives disk cache to 64M or 128M really. If they can write firmware algorithms to take advantage then a highbandwidth interface becomes more important.

I don't understand much about the internal workings of hard disks, so here goes: wouldn't increasing the on-disk buffer to something that high increase the chances of serious data loss after a power failure?

You say, "not really ... the operating system could just as easily be caching 64 Mb worth of data." To which I reply, "but what about a journaling file system?" If it's the OS that's doing the caching, at least it has the chance to manage the journal information such that data loss will be minimized. But if you put that cache on the brainless disk, well ... you're screwed.

Am I close?

[Bozo]

James, I would also like the details of how you got XP to talk to a Samba box.

Bozo :D

[Cliptin]

wouldn't increasing the on-disk buffer to something that high increase the chances of serious data loss after a power failure?


On the purely hardware side, It depends on how much is dedicated to reads versus writes. If you only use as much for writes as is used currently, then the chance is no greater.

[James]

I'm famous! :mrgrn:

It must have been something that I did to the XP side, since as I said I have just changed both Samba versions and indeed server system architectures and I didn't have to change anything on the server end.

Once I get home and I'm in front of my notes (I keep a journal when I do computer work, so I can see what I have and haven't tried), I'll post a full explanation.

[James]

wouldn't increasing the on-disk buffer to something that high increase the chances of serious data loss after a power failure?


On the purely hardware side, It depends on how much is dedicated to reads versus writes. If you only use as much for writes as is used currently, then the chance is no greater.
Hard drive buffers are always read, never write. Loss of power wouldn't affect anything; the OS caches are usually read as well, except for certain applications (like databases) which have write caches as well. In this case the write is usually done through a three phase commit, so there's very little chance of data loss there.

The only other bit of cache in the disk subsystem tends to be the write cache on the RAID controller. Because loss of power in that case does have a strong chance of buggering up your file system, the write cache is almost always backed up by a battery (flash RAM isn't used because it's more expensive and slower to write to). When power is restored, the cache writes all the pending data to the disks before any further operations are allowed on the array.

[Cliptin]

Hard drive buffers are always read, never write.

I don't think that is true. Remember the win98 write cache/fast shutdown problems. Additionally, with journaling filesystems it would be stupid not to implement write caching in the OS. You get protection and some performance benefit.

[Bozo]

I agree Cliptin: When setting up a RAID controller, I have seen an option to enable or disable the write cache on the hard drive. There is a warning that the data could be lost if there is no UPS attached to the computer.

Also, in Win2k, there is a check box to disable write caching for a hard drive in Device Manager.

Bozo :D

[Pradeep]

I agree Cliptin: When setting up a RAID controller, I have seen an option to enable or disable the write cache on the hard drive. There is a warning that the data could be lost if there is no UPS attached to the computer.

Also, in Win2k, there is a check box to disable write caching for a hard drive in Device Manager.

Bozo :D

That write cache would be provided by win2k I imagine.

[Cliptin]

I agree Cliptin: When setting up a RAID controller, I have seen an option to enable or disable the write cache on the hard drive. There is a warning that the data could be lost if there is no UPS attached to the computer.

Also, in Win2k, there is a check box to disable write caching for a hard drive in Device Manager.

Bozo :D

Then again Bozo, Do you think that setting was being applied to the controller or to the drive itself.

In looking back over what I wrote in my last post, everything I said applies to the OS even though in my head I was thinking firmware.
Thanks Pradeep.

[Prof.Wizard]

IMO there's no more exciting news release than the release of a brand new processor... That's why I voted for the ClawHammer.

Let's bear it: computers were brought to calculate vast amounts of data that humans were unable to do in a reasonable amount of time. CougTek is right on this one. I believe that all other advancements are just mere subsystem upgrades: and this includes storage, memory, and video adapters.

ClawHammer will shake a lot the CPU waters if it'll deliver what the AMD guys preach... 64bit-computing while retaining compatibility for 32bit legacy applications is no small deal IMHO. This combined with a bunch of other nice techs provided by AMD shall boost the overall abilities of current PCs to much higher levels.

All other advances come next...

[Tea]

And what will its magnificent 64-bitness actually do? Oh sure, it will no doubt be faster for floating-point intensive stuff, about which I don't really care anyway, but overall, the majoe bottle necks in computing are on the I/O side, not the processing side anyway.

That's why I voted for 10,000 RPM IDE. More real-world significance to the average user.

[Mercutio]

64bit on the desktop is probably going to have to wait to find an application. I think I wrote something earlier in the thread about it. I'm sure Tannin remembers this clearly:
When OS/2, NT and Windows95 were released, it was with great fanfare and a promise of a "faster" computing; imagine actually using the 32bit CPU you've had for years with fully (OK, mostly) 32bit software.

Of course, the first thing just about every joe-average user said after installing OS/2 or Win95 is "Gee, my computer doesn't really seem faster." And if they installed NT they said "Gee, how come my computer is so slow all of a sudden."

And so it will be again.

10k IDE has been examined to death and it DOES matter. Slow memory hurts, too. Lack of I/O subsystem improvements are starving our PCs of data to actually USE the CPUs we have now. What's the P4 on now, a 15x multiplier? That's an awful lot of waiting around.

I think the technology that would excite me the most today (insert bad joke here) is probably widespread adoption of a reliable software environment. I won't say *nix on the desktop, but if I never have to reinstall Win98 or apply 16 IE security patches again I'll be much happier.

[Buck]

. . · .

48-bit LBA addressing is at least a proposed standard, if not an approved one (I don't feel like checking www.t13.org to see which it is). It's not proprietary. I have no idea if ATA133 is proprietary or not, however.

ATA133 is Maxtor's proprietary standard. Even though the Maxtor interface's 133 MB/s channel bandwidth is a bit of snake oil in respect to current ATA hard drives, it's just part of the marketing attempt to woo people over with high capacity needs -- as in up to 160 GB worth of capacity. At least cache and buffer performance will be enhanced with ATA133.


48-bit LBA addressing has long since been approved by ANSI as the "next" standard for addressing numbers of sectors, it's just that the overall standard ATA/ATAPI-6 standard has not approved quite yet.
. . · .

Neither ATA/ATAPI-6 (T13 Project 1410D (UDMA100)) or ATA/ATAPI-7 (T13 Project 1532D (UDMA133)) have been approved. However, both proposals address 48-bit LBA (E00101R6). Presently, ATA/ATAPI-6 is in draft 2b. The ATA/ATAPI-7 proposal may be delayed since the T13 Committee is in the process of taking over the Serial ATA 1.0 specification. It will be interesting to see how the industry transitions over into these soon to be established standards.

[Prof.Wizard]

64bit on the desktop is probably going to have to wait to find an application.
I doubt that. Due to marketing reasons most software houses will start providing 64bit versions of their programs even if the there's no big performance gain.

IMO: 64bit apps will reach our PCs much sooner than you think...

[cas]

64bit computing is really only of interest to applications with data sets greater than ~30bits. Recognize however, that you certainly don’t need 4GB of physical ram to enjoy benefits from a 64bit cpu.

As I mentioned on SR (http://forums.storagereview.net/viewtopic.php?p=33394#33394), programming the x86 was only a hassle when the data or code couldn’t be referenced from a single gpr. Writing a 64k program with a 16bit cpu is very clean. So too, a 4G program with a 32bit cpu, and so on. Since modern operating systems and processors slice the available address space in a number of ways, only 30-31bits are really available in most 32bit machines, and roughly 40bits in many 64bit machines.

I agree wholly with Mercutio’s suggestion that the move to 64bits will be like the move to 32bits. Just as before, some programs will actually be slower. After all, only half as many 64bit pointers will fit in the cache hierarchy.

For programs with inherently large datasets however, widespread 64bit computing is long overdue. Roughly seven years ago I developed an AVL system for tracking 18 wheelers and other vehicles within the US. Early versions of the display engine just memory mapped the street database. When we moved from state to country maps however, we had to remap views dynamically. This made the code larger, slower, and more error prone.

It’s no panacea, and it certainly won’t double the speed of your processor, but I am looking forward to a 64bit machine on my desk.

[cas]

Just to qualify my statement above, there are some applications that roughly double on a 64bit machine. Encryption is a good example, although some of these benefits may already has been realized with the x86 SIMD units.

Floating point is not. IEEE 754, 64bit floating point has been available since the introduction of the 8087.

[LiamC]

64-bit won't double the speed of your computer. In fact in a lot of cases, it might slow things down - as cas mentioned, if you start using a lot of 64-bit data constructs you can only fit half as many of them in cache - but then again, the cache of clawhammer is expected to double in size. Coincidence?

If-Then-Else, possibly the most widely used construct in programmes won't show any difference either way.

DB and string comparisons will benefit enormously - so your word processor will run faster - w00t!

Where hammer will shine though is that in 64-bit mode, there are an extra 8 GP registers to play with - which makes the compilers job of shuffling data around MUCH easier. If the compilers are any good, re-compiled code should show a significant gain.

[James]

If the compilers are any good, re-compiled code should show a significant gain.
That's always been Intel's area of expertise rather than AMD's.

[LiamC]

Somehow I can't see Intel's compilers supporting x86-64 just yet. :) I was specifically referring to MS and gcc...

[Bozo]

Cliptin: On the RAID setup, it was definately the hard drive that was being changed. I have since setup another server using two Seagate X15s. This adapter had an option to do "Write Through" or "Write Back". According to the help file, one (I forget which now) was not recomended as the data was stored in the hard drives memory and could be lost. Seagate also has a utility to change settings on their hard drives, but it doesn't work through a RAID card.

As far as Win2k is concerned; who knows? I did some searching for information, but never really found anything.

Bozo :D

[Splash]

. ..

And you're now breaking in at least your 4th new user name???

Correct. Not counting my inescapable "Ghost In The Machine" everpresence, there are only four of me galavanting about the virtual realm these days.

http://www.gary-hendershot.com/sr/corvair2.jpg http://www.gary-hendershot.com/sr/splash2.jpg http://www.gary-hendershot.com/sr/giant2.jpg http://www.gary-hendershot.com/sr/platform.gif
. .CORVAIR. . . . .SPLASH. . ... . .GIANT. . . . . PLATFORM


As for iGary®, he went down with the HMS StorageReview when it had that devastating collision
with an unseen iceberg on that fateful week back in December of 2001. :(



. ..

[Cliptin]

. ..
Correct. Not counting my inescapable "Ghost In The Machine" everpresence, there are only four of me galavanting about the virtual realm these days.
. ..

Hmm. Must do some more sluething.

. .. . .. --- ?

[James]

I'm famous! :mrgrn:

It must have been something that I did to the XP side, since as I said I have just changed both Samba versions and indeed server system architectures and I didn't have to change anything on the server end.

Once I get home and I'm in front of my notes (I keep a journal when I do computer work, so I can see what I have and haven't tried), I'll post a full explanation.
So I've been lazy.

I suspect the below won't help everyone, since my problem was more getting the XP box to remember the password to attach to the share, rather than it being a problem with XP specifically.

I've reviewed my notes, and it seems most of my problems came from the smb.conf file rather than anything else. I've since installed 2.2.3a's standard conf file and it all works fine, so nothing special there.

First I turned off encryption of passwords on the XP boxes. There's a registry flag to do this and it's identified in the Samba documentation.

I then tested attaching to the Samba share from the server itself (ie. my Sun box) with the smbclient program. That worked fine. Then I tried net use from the XP command line and that worked too.

Then I spent, according to my notes, four straight hours futzing around with the smb.conf, Solaris and XP in general trying to get the XP boxes to consistently attach to the shares without asking me for a password (XP seems to suffer from amnesia). Two days later I gave up on it and wrote a small DOS batch file and put it in the startup folder of each user :

net use g: \\server\share\dir password /USER=user /PERSISTENT=no

... because I'm stuffed if I'm going to bugger around in the GUI when a DOS script will do the job.

Admittedly, I now have a laptop running XP using a wireless connection which won't attach to the Samba shares - "this client does not have permission to connect" - which I need to investigate further.