Re: [GENERAL] What O/S or hardware feature would be useful for databases?

2007-07-04 Thread Tom Lane
"Andrej Ricnik-Bay" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > On 7/4/07, Ron Johnson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> "Enterprise-level" tapes can sit in storage for 7-15 years and then >> still be readable. Can a disk drive sit un-used for 7 years? Would >> the motor freeze up? Will we still be able to connec

Re: [GENERAL] What O/S or hardware feature would be useful for databases?

2007-07-04 Thread Ron Johnson
On 07/04/07 16:00, Andrej Ricnik-Bay wrote: On 7/4/07, Ron Johnson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: "Enterprise-level" tapes can sit in storage for 7-15 years and then still be readable. Can a disk drive sit un-used for 7 years? Would the motor freeze up? Will we still be able to connect SATA driv

Re: [GENERAL] What O/S or hardware feature would be useful for databases?

2007-07-04 Thread Andrej Ricnik-Bay
On 7/4/07, Ron Johnson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: "Enterprise-level" tapes can sit in storage for 7-15 years and then still be readable. Can a disk drive sit un-used for 7 years? Would the motor freeze up? Will we still be able to connect SATA drives in 7 years? Same with a tape-drive, no?

Re: [GENERAL] What O/S or hardware feature would be useful for databases?

2007-07-03 Thread Ron Johnson
On 07/03/07 13:03, Merlin Moncure wrote: On 7/2/07, Ron Johnson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: On 06/18/07 08:05, Merlin Moncure wrote: [snip] > > That being said, it's pretty clear to me we are in the last days of > the disk drive. Oh, puhleeze. Seagate, Hitachi, Fuji and WD aren't sitting around

Re: [GENERAL] What O/S or hardware feature would be useful for databases?

2007-07-03 Thread Merlin Moncure
On 7/2/07, Ron Johnson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: On 06/18/07 08:05, Merlin Moncure wrote: [snip] > > That being said, it's pretty clear to me we are in the last days of > the disk drive. Oh, puhleeze. Seagate, Hitachi, Fuji and WD aren't sitting around with their thumbs up their arses.In 3

Re: [GENERAL] What O/S or hardware feature would be useful for databases?

2007-07-02 Thread Ron Johnson
On 06/18/07 08:05, Merlin Moncure wrote: [snip] That being said, it's pretty clear to me we are in the last days of the disk drive. Oh, puhleeze. Seagate, Hitachi, Fuji and WD aren't sitting around with their thumbs up their arses.In 3-4 years, large companies and spooky TLAs will be st

Re: [GENERAL] What O/S or hardware feature would be useful for databases?

2007-06-18 Thread Merlin Moncure
On 6/17/07, Greg Smith <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: On Sat, 16 Jun 2007, Ron Johnson wrote: > Anyway... databases are always(?) IO bound. I'd try to figure out how to > make a bigger hose (or more hoses) between the spindles and the mobo. What I keep waiting for is the drives with flash memory b

Re: [GENERAL] What O/S or hardware feature would be useful for databases?

2007-06-17 Thread Ron Johnson
On 06/17/07 00:19, Greg Smith wrote: On Sat, 16 Jun 2007, Ron Johnson wrote: Anyway... databases are always(?) IO bound. I'd try to figure out how to make a bigger hose (or more hoses) between the spindles and the mobo. What I keep waiting for is the drives with flash memory built-in to mat

Re: [GENERAL] What O/S or hardware feature would be useful for databases?

2007-06-16 Thread Greg Smith
On Sat, 16 Jun 2007, Ron Johnson wrote: Anyway... databases are always(?) IO bound. I'd try to figure out how to make a bigger hose (or more hoses) between the spindles and the mobo. What I keep waiting for is the drives with flash memory built-in to mature. I would love to get reliable wri

Re: [GENERAL] What O/S or hardware feature would be useful for databases?

2007-06-16 Thread Alexander Staubo
On 6/17/07, Ron Johnson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: On 06/16/07 17:05, Alexander Staubo wrote: > On 6/16/07, Ron Johnson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> > Hardware acceleration for quickly counting the number of >> > set/unset/matching bits? >> >> x86 doesn't already do that? > > I don't think so. T

Re: [GENERAL] What O/S or hardware feature would be useful for databases?

2007-06-16 Thread Ron Johnson
On 06/16/07 17:05, Alexander Staubo wrote: On 6/16/07, Ron Johnson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hardware acceleration for quickly counting the number of > set/unset/matching bits? x86 doesn't already do that? I don't think so. The fastest way, I believe, is to use precomputed lookup tables. S

Re: [GENERAL] What O/S or hardware feature would be useful for databases?

2007-06-16 Thread Alexander Staubo
On 6/16/07, Ron Johnson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hardware acceleration for quickly counting the number of > set/unset/matching bits? x86 doesn't already do that? I don't think so. The fastest way, I believe, is to use precomputed lookup tables. Same for finding the least/most significant s

Re: [GENERAL] What O/S or hardware feature would be useful for databases?

2007-06-16 Thread Ron Johnson
On 06/16/07 10:47, Lincoln Yeoh wrote: Hi, I've been wondering, what O/S or hardware feature would be useful for databases? If Postgresql developers could get the CPU and O/S makers to do things that would make certain things easier/faster (and in the long term) what would they be? By lon

Re: [GENERAL] What O/S or hardware feature would be useful for databases?

2007-06-16 Thread PFC
Seems CPU makers currently have more transistors than they know what to do with, so they're adding cores and doing a lot of boring stuff like SSE2, SSE3, SSE4, etc. SSE(n) isn't useless since it speeds up stuff like video encoding by, say, a few times. For databases, I'd say scatter/g

[GENERAL] What O/S or hardware feature would be useful for databases?

2007-06-16 Thread Lincoln Yeoh
Hi, I've been wondering, what O/S or hardware feature would be useful for databases? If Postgresql developers could get the CPU and O/S makers to do things that would make certain things easier/faster (and in the long term) what would they be? By long term I mean it's not something that's