J.C. Roberts wrote: ... > On a the lower and fundamental levels, solid state storage does not have > the limitations or organization of rotating storage (disks), but none > the less, in current products the new tech has been (intentionally) > impaired and implemented with the old ideas to provide ass-backwards > compatibility. At present, the Solid State (storage) Disks/Devices > (SSD's) currently available have been designed for the sake of selling > into existing markets where being ass-backwards compatibility is, > unfortunately, a requirement.
eh, that's just this generation. They've been available in some seriously kick-butt (for the day) formats for literally decades on various platforms...but the price was high, the issues were complex, and therefore, sales were low and prices stayed high. (back in the mid 1980s, I used a mainframe at school with a Solid State Disk system for swap, as a way around limited physical RAM capabilities in the system. I hate to say this, but I think it was a whopping 16M in size (though there may have been several of them).) (side trip: anyone under 40 remember bubble memory? don't answer that on list, please...) The new generation of stuff is mindless and simple...and sells like hotcakes, and the price has therefore dropped to the point where it sells like hotcakes...on sale. YES, it loses much of the point to have a disk with no moving parts that interfaces like a disk with moving parts. But then, it makes no sense to have a disk with variable geometry being treated as a drive with fixed geometry. But we've had it for 25 years...and don't wait up for the change...If it greases the wheels and lets things happen, great....it beats not happening at all. > Though my employers would shoot me for violating an NDA, and Theo > would shoot me for signing an NDA in the first place, for me it's tough > to make a living with out them, so I have to be vague and leave out > important details. > > There are efforts afoot to abandon the limitations and organization of > rotational storage, so both existing "disk layout" tools such as fdisk > and disklabel, and even file systems, will eventually need to change to > benefit from new technology. actually, more file systems and boot loaders than disk layout tools. The disk tools are pretty much a "bunch of sectors" thing, and have been for quite some time now. > The whole concept of sectors, 512 byte or otherwise, on solid state > storage systems/devices is really just a sad kludge. The concept of a > "disk controller" is already out dated and will soon be abandoned. well..flash memory still has pages or similar that have to be cleared and rewritten, at least according to my (non-ECC) memory...So, kinda sector-ish. Really, I'd think the idea of "sectors" has been more of an OS construct than a hardware construct for a long time. Back in the Amiga days (again from non-ECC personal memory), they were loading entire tracks from the floppy into RAM at a time, rather than sector-by-sector, in large parts because once you got over 100k of RAM or so..you could. I don't think you will see OSs allocating disk space on one-byte boundaries any time soon. I could be wrong...but I've seen some OSs that managed to handle data on subdivided blocks...and eventually they decided it wasn't worth the effort. As disk size has grown, trying to save a few K here and there through added complexity is highly questionable... > The following is publicly available information, is nearly two years > old, is still using ass-backwards compatibility, and is obviously quite > a few redesign revisions behind reality, but it should give you > an idea of where the storage world is headed: > http://www.tgdaily.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=34065 Former employer could have used some of those for a poorly written app they seemed to be stuck with. At one point, we were looking at some $250,000 battery-backed RAM disks. Cost was the killer, but it wasn't a "quarter million? HAHAHHAA! NO FREAKING WAY", much more "hm. don't think we can justify that now". However, the guy who fired me sunk many times that into some very bad solutions to the problem. Another problem all there will be with going in a "new direction" is that it is a multi-prong problem -- storage HW, computer HW and OS all have to support whatever is done. The fact that you are signing NDAs causes me to believe it is going to be a specialty combination of HW and SW for some time... 'course, I spent about 20 years hoping that One Day the IBM XT/AT abomination that we've been stuck with would be replaced. I think I've given up. Nick.
