24 SSD's in RAID 0...just in case anybody hasn't seen this...

YouTube - [Partner Spotlight] Samsung SSD Awesomeness

Gratuitous.

 

Gee, who can I call to get geek squad to build me a gigabyte monster like that? I've always wanted to open a gazillion programs all at once.

p.s. I don't get it?

 

But can it run Crysis?

 

it uses 2 1000watts of juice XD

 

What I want to know is, how can I get it in a laptop?

Seriously, how long do you think it will be before we actually get that kind of portable computer power? By 2020, you think?

That's what I was expecting to see.

 

Well, I hope the mortgage he put down on his house to get that setup was worth it to him.

 

I think samsung paid them to do it

 

see this ago but really its still AWESOME!

 

if you look back 10 years ago to the 500 MHz Pentium 2 laptops with 64mb RAM and compare them to the i7's today, I think the performance jump has been a lot more than 24 fold.

I'm thinking we'll have that in 5 years.

 

They posted that video May 7, 2009. This is all comparing their rig to what is currently possible on a laptop of today. Everything stock, no overclocking.

1. They have 2 QX9775 processors, which are Core 2 quads at 3.2Ghz. A single i7 980X is a six core nehalem at 3.33Ghz, so laptop capable processing power is like 85 or more % of the way there.

2. They have two HD4870X2's in crossfire. The best we have today are HD5870's (mobile) in crossfire. So we are just under half way there on that front.

3. They have only 4GB of 800Mhz DDR2. Needless to say, we are far beyond that in today's laptops.

4. The last performance parts are the drives. 24 Samsung drives in RAID 0 on a really big and expensive Adaptec controller netting them 2GB/s reads. That isn't very good per drive, at only 83MB/s, so they have definitely surpassed the controller card chipset's capabilities by a long shot. They probably would have had the same performance with 10 or maybe less of those SSD's in RAID 0. There are some obstacles to that kind of performance on a laptop today. It would require the space for 10 SSD's and a good controller. Intel matrix raid is good, but (i don't remember exactly, but I think) it only scales up to about 5 or 6 drives in RAID 0. That would be plenty for pretty much anyone. I doubt people could feel a real difference most of the time using today's software and tasks. I don't know, but maybe some desktop replacements have space for 4 drives? That coupled with the fastest of today's SSD's would show like what, about half of their recorded performance of 2GB/s reads?

Needless to say, we are actually not too far off in the mobile department from the rig they built almost a year and a half ago. We are very close with the processor, even though they had a dual processor setup, and we easily surpass that with memory. Video cards and storage are lacking but almost half way there. I give it a couple of years before we have the capability to beat that rig with a laptop in every department.

 

The next generation SF controllers are claimed to be able to saturate (or get close to saturating) the SATA III interface. That's 6.0Gb/s. That's more than one third of that 2GByte/s already.

 

I was tempted to come to the same conclusion. But then I realized that the transition to higher computing capability may not be a linear one. Beside, manufacturers tend to hold back innovation when it does not equate to a substantial enough profit fro them. Not to mention that there are other limitation to improving laptop efficiency. Most notably, the power supply.

On the other hand, getting that type of performance in the next replacement laptop--or two--would be nice.

 

I remember seeing that video originally when it came out and thought 'one day'...

Like a couple of posters said: we're appreciablity closer today (already)!

As soon as Light Peak (or whatever the next gen interconnect will be) is mainstream, I am expecting this kind of performance from a single SSD.

We're not moving forward as fast as is technically possible - we're moving forward as fast as (tech) manufacturers allow us to. But first, they have to make their money too.