A year or two ago, SSDs had the following very bad properties (HD = Hard disk, i.e. a traditional magnetic platter style device)
A. While random-read times were orders of magnitude faster than on HDs, which gives people a 'wow' factor to cling to: Bootup and starting complex apps like photoshop, or other fun tricks like opening 20 apps at the same time, are almost unbelievably fast. But a lot of day-to-day performance needs aren't random-read. B. sequential-read was actually slower on SSDs. C. After a few months of use, speed, particularly write speed, would drop precipitously (like, total time would DOUBLE), because of the on- board distributer algorithm, presumably (you can only write so many times to a flash cell, so there's a chip onboard that distributes writes evenly over the flash while still looking like a standard disk on the computer end). Intel had a really nice though somewhat expensive SSD out at the time (we're in the middle of 2008 or so) called the X25-M, which avoided many of these problems. Possibly (hopefully!) the market has learned from Intel's innovations in the X25-M, but I'd definitely do some research before diving in. Don't get blinded by the fact that an SSD can boot and then start 20 apps simultaneously in the blink of an eye. Then again, due to the nature of programming, SSDs in general are a good fit there. Lots of random reads! On Nov 22, 3:50 pm, Casper Bang <casper.b...@gmail.com> wrote: > Yeah, it's funny to see devs talk about their beefy 4-12 core machine, > when most of them would benefit much more from an SSD. Particular > interesting to Dave might be the new SATA2.0 (3 Gbit/s) Intel X25-M G2 > 120GB priced around US$250. Dumping price probably in preparation for > their next-gen SATA3.0 (6 Gbit/s) SSD's. > > On Nov 22, 3:26 pm, Steven Siebert <smsi...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > > > > > > > +1 SSD > > > Dropped my build times from over 4 min to 14 seconds on the same platform. > > Your results might vary, but it was well worth the investment. > > > S > > > On Mon, Nov 22, 2010 at 9:23 AM, Casper Bang <casper.b...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > Generally a bad time to buy new hardware, since Intel's next CPU > > > architecture (Sandy Bridge) is only 1-2 months away (as is their next > > > generation SSD drives). Whatever you get, be sure to opt for SSD - > > > makes everything faster while consuming less power while being > > > completely quiet. > > > > On Nov 22, 3:10 pm, Dave Patterson > > > <dave.patterson.bris...@googlemail.com> wrote: > > > > My workhorse PC has passed the end of it's upgrade life so I'm in the > > > > market for a new machine. I'm running ubuntu at the moment and I'd > > > > like to keep it that way. I consider myself a generalist but most of > > > > my day-to-day work is java and JEE. I don't mind doing a home build if > > > > that's going to get me some extra grunt but I'm way out of the loop on > > > > current thinking. Do the posse group folks have any opinions on the > > > > current sweet spots for CPU, disk and memory + any pitfalls or > > > > bargains I should look out for? > > > > > Thanks in advance. > > > > > Dave Patterson > > > > -- > > > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > > > "The Java Posse" group. > > > To post to this group, send email to javapo...@googlegroups.com. > > > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > > > javaposse+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com<javaposse%2bunsubscr...@googlegroups > > > .com> > > > . > > > For more options, visit this group at > > >http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to javapo...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to javaposse+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en.
