[Info-vax] OT: Steve Wozniak

[David J Dachtera]

Neil Rieck wrote:
> 
> I, along with 700 others, just had breakfast with Steve Wozniac at a
> conference sponsored by Waterloo Ontario companies like RIM, Dalsa and
> Open Text.
> http://www.communitech.ca/en/
> 
> Boy, I thought I was an optimist but this guy's optimism is
> overflowing and infectious. Why would you OpenVMS people care about
> this? The Woz now works for a company called "fusion i/o"
> http://www.fusionio.com/
> and he mentioned that big companies, like HP and IBM, are using
> "fusion i/o" solid-state storage technology to set new TPC transaction
> records while beating fiber-connected storage arrays by 10 times or
> more (and costing a whole lot less)
> 
> http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9100218/HP_adding_solid_state_memory_to_its_servers
> 
> In their view, multi-core CPU processors will only get faster which
> means that magnetic storage will continue to starve them of data. They
> feel that solid-state storage will become the primary system memory
> while hard disks will be relegated to doing off-system backups.
> 
> Now let's see if their vision comes to fruition.

Hhhmmm... Sounds like we're talking about a new storage interconnect as
well, something akin to the Memory Channel, as I think it was called, so
data would transfer at near memory-bus speeds.

Think about it - how else could clusters share storage?

Unless you're totally stuck in the UN*X shared-nothing paradigm,
cluster-wide access to storage is what makes the clustered world go
around.

Even with the current generation of storage arrays (the common misnomer
is "SAN"), the interconnect is still the limiting factor. Until FC
speeds get up into the same range as memory bus speeds, this will remain
true.

Almost makes me wonder if the current serial paradigm of FC might
someday give way to a "parallel" paradigm where you have eight or more
FC cables per FC link rather than just one, or perhaps eight (or more)
parallel bit channels running over a single FC cable.

Where local SSD makes sense, it could indeed provide much better
performance than the status quo.

Where it doesn't make sense, it won't be real useful.

My $0.02...

D.J.D.