Outrageously cool new hard drive!
DataSlide has come out of stealth mode with a very creative SSD replacement technology.
They call it a Hard Rectangular Disk or HRD.
Here’s DataSlide’s quick overview:
DataSlide applies technology in new, patented ways to achieve unprecedented high performance 160,000 IOPS & 500MB/sec and low power <4 Watts for a magnetic storage device:
1. A piezoelectric actuator keeps the rectangular media in precise motion
2. A diamond solid lubricant coating protects the surfaces for years of worry free service
3. A massively parallel 2D array of magnetic heads reads from or writes to up to 64 embedded heads at a time
It looks like this:
Hard Rectangular Drive
graphic courtesy of DataSlide
Shake, rattle & roll
But that’s not all. According to the redoubtable Chris Mellor at The Register device uses a
. . . 2-dimensional array of 64 read-write heads, operating in parallel, … positioned above an piezo-electric-driven oscillating rectangular recording surface. . . .
Here’s another diagram from DataSlide showing how the data and sectors are oriented:
graphic courtesy of DataSlide
500 MB/s divided by 64 seems doable for each head. No word on writes.
Chris also reports that Oracle’s Embedded Global Business Unit is working with DataSlide to incorporate a database to create a “smart” storage device for use in I/O intensive “multiple concurrent stream” applications.
The company says the drive is at the prototype stage and uses existing high-volume production technologies, including perpendicular recording media, semicondutor lithographic heads and LCD glass treatments.
The Storage Bits take
DataSlide has taken from IBM’s Millipede [ http://www.zurich.ibm.com/st/storage/concept.html ] concept and reimagined it using common technologies. While much remains to be done to productize the prototype, the fact of such architectural creativity should spur new thinking at the hard drive companies.
Of course, just like SSDs, drives with such low latencies shouldn’t be stuck at the end of a long, complex, high-latency interconnect chain. PCI-e HRD card, anyone?
Also, the relatively low capacity - 36GB - of the prototype device suggests it may slot in between larger capacity SSDs and DRAM. Until we know the economics though that is almost baseless speculation.
Let’s hope they can get it to market in less than 3 years. And let the based speculation begin!
By Robin Harris - June 15th, 2009.
Source: http://blogs.zdnet.com/storage/?p=501&tag=nl.e539
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Hard Rectangular Drive May Replace Current Spinning Discs
HRD is capable of 160,000 IOPS according to developer
For many years now the main storage method used for computers have been hard drives that use spinning magnetic platters as the storage medium. Over the last few years, the solid-state drive has come to market with much faster performance and a much higher price tag.
A company called DataSlide has unveiled a prototype of a new storage device that may one day replace both HDDs and SSDs. The prototype technology is called Hard Rectangular Disk or HRD. DataSlide says that the technology is patented and can achieve 160,000 IOPS and 500MB/sec performance levels while consuming under 4 watts of power.
The device consists of a piezoelectric actuator that keeps the rectangular media in precise motion, a diamond solid lubricant to protect the surfaces (which are in direct contact) and a massively parallel 2D array of magnetic heads for reads and writes to up to 64 embedded heads at a time.
ZDNET reports that DataSlide is also working to incorporate the technology into a "smart" storage unit for use in I/O intensive multiple concurrent stream applications. The new device is at the prototype stage, but uses currently available production technology. The technologies used in the HRD include perpendicular recording media, semiconductor lithographic heads, and LCD glass treatments.
The concept for the HRD was taken from IBM's Millipede concept and then reworked with common and available technologies. The prototype has a long way to go before it reaches a final production stage and the company gives no idea as to how long it might take before the HRD comes to market. ZDNET reports that the HRD has a capacity of 36GB in its prototype stage.
By Shane McGlaun - June 18th, 2009.
Source: http://www.dailytech.com/Hard+Rectangular+Drive+May+Replace+C...
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DataSlide reinvents hard drive
64 parallel read-write heads
UK-based data storage start-up DataSlide has announced potentially revolutionary hard drive technology, and a Partnership Network agreement with Oracle for the Berkeley Data Base to be embedded into the device.
DataSlide's Hard Rectangular Drive (HRD) does not use read-write heads moving across the recording surface of a spinning hard disk drive (HDD). Instead an ultra-thin, 2-dimensional array of 64 read-write heads, operating in parallel, is positioned above an piezo-electric-driven oscillating rectangular recording surface, and delivers 160,000 random IOPS with a 500MB/sec transfer rate.
For comparison, a STEC ZEUSIOPS SSD, as used by EMC, IBM and others, with up to 320GB capacity, can provide 220MB/sec read bandwidth, 115MB/sec write bandwidth and 45,000 random IOPS. There is no read-write asymmetry, typically found with SSDs, with the HRD because it uses a standard hard disk drive recording medium and not flash memory.
Charles Barnes, DataSlide's CEO, said: "DataSlide's Massively Parallel architecture with 64 heads per surface could saturate a 32-lane PCI express bus. The Hard Rectangular Drive has the industry reliability and cost advantages of Hard Disk Drives with superior performance and lower power then Solid State Drives.
"The HRD uses over 60 per cent lower power than HDDs and during idle the media has zero power dissipation making it the green storage winner."
The technology is also more shock-resistant than hard drives. This could be described as a solid-state drive with none of the well-known NAND flash problems, such as read-write asymmetry and write endurance.
Oracle's Embedded Global Business Unit stated: "DataSlide provides a high bandwidth, low latency, magnetic storage device whose architecture lends itself to vastly improved database throughput and latency reduction."
There is a description of the DataSlide technology here (PowerPoint deck pdf) [ [ http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=2&url=htt... ]. Literally, it is non-revolutionary, using oscillations to move the magnetised bits to and fro underneath the read-write heads so that they can use magnetism value changes at the bit edge just as a read-write head on a spinning hard drive does, but where the recording layer passes continuously under the heads. There is no seek time access delay with the HRD.
The Embedded Global Business Unit at Oracle has an OEM charter and Data Slide meets its requirements by incorporating the Berkeley DB into the actual storage device to make what it calls a 'smart' storage device. It says potential applications are many and varied. Examples include TCP/IP-based systems and video applications requiring multiple concurrent streams. The company says media indexing, fast positioning, forward, back, skip, and scene/track operations will have significant performance improvements with its technology.
DataSlide is a privately-held company with locations in the United Kingdom, France and United States. It has affiliations with academia from Carnegie Mellon University/DSSC, and the Universities of Cambridge, Exeter, Sussex, Sheffield and Brighton in the UK, and Paris-Sud in France, and is backed by angel investors. It has a management team with experience from companies such as Seagate, Connor, Quantum, Maxtor and HP.
The technology is proven in a research and prototype sense, and the company emphasises that it uses standards-based mature process technologies from LCD, HDD and semiconductor manufacture. There is no need to design and tool-up a new manufacturing process.
DataSlide is currently in discussion with a number of storage and system OEMs and can provide more details under a non-disclosure agreement. It will be holding private meetings at the Santa Clara Hyatt Regency from June 22-25 during the Memcon 2009 conference.
By Chris Mellor - 15th June 2009.
Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/06/15/dataslide_berkeleydb/
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More information: http://www.dataslide.com/
Founded by computer industry veterans from Cambridge, DataSlide is focused on delivering break-though performance, low power storage for performance hungry applications that are now pressing the limits of enterprise Tier 0 and Tier 1 storage. DataSlide has drawn from LCD, HDD, and semiconductor standards based mature manufacturing process technologies to invent a truly revolutionary new high performance storage technology: the innovative Hard Rectangular Drive™ (HRD™). The HRD employs DataSlide’s patented Massively Parallel 2-D Array storage technology to achieve 160,000 IOPS and 500MB/sec transfer rates while reading from and writing to magnetic media. The HRD’s highly efficient piezoelectric actuator system oscillates rectangular media along one axis between a fixed array of millions of read/write heads on a single substrate of low expansion glass. In the first generation, any 64 of these heads may be active in reads and writes at the same time. Total power consumption for the HRD? Less than 4 Watts. That’s 1/3 the power of a 15,000 RPM hard disk drive and 1/2 the power consumed by a typical Solid State Drive. The Hard Rectangular Drive will serve as a key building block for the high performance, low carbon footprint datacenter of the future.
Technology:
http://www.dataslide.com/technology.html
http://www.dataslide.com/images/tech_graph.jpg
http://www.dataslide.com/images/Market-Opportunity.jpg
http://www.dataslide.com/images/Sector-and-Data-Organizatio.j...
http://www.dataslide.com/images/Silicon-and-Software.jpg
http://www.dataslide.com/images/Blazing-Performance.jpg
http://www.dataslide.com/images/Oracle-Embedded-Berkeley-Da.j...
http://www.dataslide.com/images/oracle-embedded.jpg
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Notis: är det är kanske intressant som ett till alternativt lagringsmedium (istället för mekaniska diskar, Flash/SSD diskar/enheter) för framtiden?
/Saint25
