Texas Memory Systems' builds freakin' fast RamSan storage
Do you want a high-end disk to go with your ultra-fast InfiniBand setup? (We do.) Texas Memory Systems has just built some super-speedy solid state storage that can operate in pure InfiniBand (that's an extremely fast serial data connection) and mixed-InfiniBand environments, and due to its low latency and high speed, the company claims that its disk is the fastest storage in the world. The RamSan drive has seriously ludicrous access times -- usually in the neighborhood of 15 microseconds, 250 times faster than your garden-variety hard drive for mere mortals. Further, it's got up to 50,000 random I/Os per second per single-ported controller, which is more than 100 times quicker than regular off-the-shelf drives. We're not sure how much this will cost, but you can bet that it'll be a lot more than the under-a-dollar per gigabyte trend that we've been seeing lately, and will be used only by very particular businesses for very particular needs. Like ours, for, um, whatever the heck we want.[Via TechWorld; thanks, Evan]
Filed under: Storage
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
steve @ Nov 21st 2006 12:37PM
This is really the future of computers. Of corse, right now it's going to be extremely expensive, but in time it will drop. Mass storage is the one last component of the PC that hasn't caught up with the rest of the technological evolution. We have insanely fast video cards, cpu's and memory, yet the one thing slowing everything down is the hard drive. Once this type of technology is cheaply available, we will see a HUGE boost in performance for EVERYDAY COMPUTING. The will no longer be loading times. Mark my word, it will happen.
rodney @ Nov 21st 2006 12:46PM
your word sire, has been marked.
Chris @ Nov 21st 2006 12:50PM
Y'know, EVE Online is forever plugging these guys for this exact product line. Go figure, since EVE apparently doesn't understand the concept of a runtime variable, and insists on storing everything (literally) in the database. But hey, if you mass storage IS ram (via ramsan), whats the difference, eh?
Rex @ Nov 21st 2006 1:42PM
You mean it actually operates at ludicrous speed!
Null Space @ Nov 21st 2006 1:48PM
The title of this story should read:
Texas Memory Systems builds freakin' fast RamSan storage
or
Texas Memory Systems' freakin' fast RamSan storage
Jason Temple @ Nov 21st 2006 2:32PM
A 128G system will run you around $150,000, fyi - I talked to their ceo about their products last week at a convention.
Dave Pevsner @ Nov 21st 2006 7:29PM
you realize that solid-state memory as fast as DRAM could mean the computer would start up instantly. but if the price quote is serious, this is a thousand dollars per gigabyte....if it was priced like DRAM, i'd get a 2GB RamSan kit to replace my RAM memory.......and kiss my gentoo LiveCD goodbye.
Mr. Ugly @ Nov 21st 2006 10:41PM
Basically it is just a custome appliance with lots of DRAM and prices for products in this niche space range from $900-$1500 per GB. When the price gets down to below $10 per GB it will get interesting and hard disk drives will become the new tape or archive media.