On 6/17/07, Greg Smith <gsmith@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> 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 mature. I would love to get reliable writes that use the drive's cache for instant fsyncs, instead of right now where you have to push all that to the controller level.
I don't think flash is the answer here...you should be looking at 'PRAM', i think. Solid state disks are coming very soon but flash is barely faster than traditional disks for random writes. (much faster for random reads however). Maybe this will change...flash is improving all the time. Already, the write cycle problem has been all but eliminated for the higher grade flash devices. That being said, it's pretty clear to me we are in the last days of the disk drive. When solid state drives become prevalent in server environments, database development will enter a new era...physical considerations will play less and less a role in how systems are engineered. So, to answer the OP, my answer would be to 'get rid of the spinning disk!' :-) merlin
