24 Samsung SSDs get strung together for supercomputer fun

It wasn't all that long ago when a mere nine SSD drives in a RAID array was enough to cause most folks' jaws to drop, but the world of ridiculous technology exercises moves quickly, and we can only be thankful that a select few continually feel the need to one-up each other and share their results with all of us. This latest effort comes from a group enlisted by Samsung (in a not too thinly disguised marketing exercise), who paired up 24 SSDs in a RAID array totaling 6TB in size. Even more impressive than that, however, is the 2GB per second throughput speed they managed to achieve, which they naturally spared no expense in demonstrating -- as you can see in the video after the break.

[Via Reddit]

[Isaac @ Mar 9th 2009 12:46PM]

Cool

[sacapuntas @ Mar 9th 2009 12:48PM]

Actually, it is probably very,very HOT.

[BenJI @ Mar 9th 2009 1:22PM]

im glad they actually showed it can play crisis....
.....now someones gonna ask "does it blend"......

[OneLove @ Mar 9th 2009 2:54PM]

John Conner diary entry:

Mar 9th 2009 at 12:42PM :

Obtained parts list for the "The Turk":

26 SAMSUNG SSD 256GB MLC
4 KINGSTON 800MHZ FBDIMM 1GB
6 1" SAS -> 4" SATA SFF-8087
6 1 MOLEX -> 4"SATA POWER
2 BLU-RAY (RW) / HD-DVD COMBO
2 COSAIR HX1000W POWER SUPPLY
2 INTEL EXTREME QX9775 QUAD CORE
2 ZALMAN COOLERS(SAWN TO FIT)
2 RADEON HD 4870 X2 GRAPHICS
1 INTEL SKULL TRAIL D5400XS MOTHERBOARD
1 ADAPTEC S SERIES RAID (8 CHANNEL STOCK SETUP)
1 ARECA 1680ix-24 RAID (BETA FIRMWARE FROM ARECA FTP)
1 THERMALTAKE ARMOUR CASE

[wat up!!! @ Mar 9th 2009 3:59PM]

Anyone know the name of that application used to get the HDD speed??

[pablo renato @ Mar 10th 2009 4:42PM]

Wow what a dumbass he defragments an SSD....

[purezerg @ Mar 9th 2009 4:45PM]

the reason why it's so fast is because areca has got 2Gb cache onboard. even my single drive connected can do 2Gb per sec. that's because areca is caching all the data. he has to go above 2GB, like around 4GB and above to show the true speed. from what i know of areca, it's limited to 800MB/s after the 2GB cache is filled.

[suicycle.com @ Mar 9th 2009 6:08PM]

Agreed. There is nothing like extreme computing speed.

[Phil @ Mar 9th 2009 6:43PM]

@ purezerg

They copied a movie from one place to another. DVDs are typically more than 4gig. It still took about a second. If you pause the movie you can see that they split the drives between the Areca (10), Adaptec (8) and Sata (6) connectors on the Mobo. They also had to remove one of the Vid cards because two were generating too much traffic and thus holding the rig back from it's true potential.

It's fast. Accept it.

That said, it is also impractical. The heat would be phenomenal, it's likely $12K in drives, AND it dosen't fit in the case. (I do give them points for the CD Rack 'hack')

[Ridgecity @ Mar 9th 2009 7:18PM]

I want that machine to play The Sims 2.

[Flaystus @ Mar 9th 2009 12:48PM]

2 please!

[obfub @ Mar 9th 2009 3:45PM]

That'll get you about 440 MB/s

[Templarian @ Mar 9th 2009 12:50PM]

What a good video. This is why the marketing guys make the big $$$.

[Mic2000 @ Mar 9th 2009 6:17PM]

And where was the marketing about?

[skyblaze @ Mar 9th 2009 12:51PM]

gives me a chubby

[Shattered Ice @ Mar 9th 2009 12:52PM]

Jizzed in my pants.

[haX0r @ Mar 9th 2009 1:01PM]

I jizzed my screen Di Novo and my pants!

[Zac @ Mar 9th 2009 2:52PM]

I can't believe I'm on a boat!

[Bobs @ Mar 9th 2009 7:28PM]

What is jizzed?

[chansthename @ Mar 10th 2009 3:01AM]

jizzed is to jizz

[CubeGuy @ Mar 11th 2009 11:49PM]

When browsing Engadget I often
JIZZ IN MY PANTS

[Danny @ Mar 9th 2009 12:53PM]

CD rack holding the SSDs lol


SHOW US BOOT UP TIME!

[Vinnie @ Mar 9th 2009 12:59PM]

YES!!! I would love to see how fast that bad boy boots!

[yoshi1080 @ Mar 9th 2009 5:07PM]

Since they used hardware RAID controllers, I guess boot up time should not be very extraordinary.

[Indyaner @ Mar 10th 2009 1:32PM]

As from Reddit hey says:
_______________

The Skulltrail motherboard has a notoriously long startup time - about a minute before it'll attempt to boot to any operating system.

Once the motherboard was done initialising, it'd get to a fully usable desktop in about 5 or 6 seconds.
_______________

http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/836i6/hey_reddit_samsung_gave_me_24_new_ssd_drives_to/c084cbo

[jack @ Mar 9th 2009 12:54PM]

wait..didn't WD come out with hdd at 6gb/s ? (i'll prolly get flamed for this noob question)

[Nailbunny @ Mar 9th 2009 1:02PM]

We're talking about 2 gigaBYTES a second, or roughly 16 gigabits a second.

[Forrest @ Mar 9th 2009 1:04PM]

Seagate's new drive has a 'little' b I think, while this one has a 'big' B.

6Gb ~ .75GB < 2 GB

[Rudolphe @ Mar 9th 2009 1:05PM]

Your half right, it was actually seagate that came out with it.

I don't know if WD did as well.

[Ryan @ Mar 9th 2009 1:05PM]

No flaming here, but there's a huge, huge difference between 6gb/sec and 2GB/sec. Like, orders of magnitude.

[kkl1014 @ Mar 9th 2009 1:08PM]

6Gb/s isn't anywhere close to 2GB/s

[Daniel @ Mar 9th 2009 1:36PM]

2GB/s / 24 = ~85MB/s... Pretty crappy speeds as per SSD standards...

[r3loaded @ Mar 9th 2009 1:36PM]

@Daniel

That's not how RAID works, it doesn't scale linearly (though it scales much better with SSDs than HDDs). Awesome vid nonetheless.

[dotAaron @ Mar 9th 2009 12:58PM]

*mind explodes* :O

[Leo Z. @ Mar 9th 2009 1:05PM]

I have that PC case! It's huge! That picture makes it look tiny!

[bill cant fart @ Mar 9th 2009 1:12PM]

Maybe you're just really tiny.

[Leo Z. @ Mar 9th 2009 1:20PM]

That's not very nice sir. I was simply commenting that this case is larger than the average PC case, and that 24 SSDs make it look a lot smaller than it seems. There was no need to insult me.

[Tony C @ Mar 9th 2009 1:41PM]

Remember that most SSDs are for notebooks, so they're 2.5" hard drive form factor, not the 3.5" you're used to seeing plugged into desktop PCs. That said, the case they used was only a mid-sized desktop Thermaltake Armor.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811133021

[Itsuru @ Mar 9th 2009 1:46PM]

This raises the question; how tall are you?

[bill cant fart @ Mar 9th 2009 3:38PM]

Hey, I could've said that you're morbidly obese.

[UHUH @ Mar 9th 2009 5:08PM]

Some things seem bigger when you can fondle them with your own hand

[DiGiC @ Mar 9th 2009 1:05PM]

EPIC WANT!!!

[whowhatme @ Mar 9th 2009 1:10PM]

i'll take 2 kkthxbai

[Diamamet @ Mar 9th 2009 2:09PM]

So that's the solution to running Vista at a usable speed!

[d889 @ Mar 9th 2009 1:07PM]

lol thats awesome how he just grabs the phatty cable and shakes the drives and everything still works.

i would kill for 6TBs at this speed for editing HD

[joe23521 @ Mar 9th 2009 1:12PM]

That day is coming, my friend. Yes, it is.

[cao_boy @ Mar 9th 2009 1:14PM]

the bigger prolem with that is how tightly those sata cables connect xD mine like falls out with the slightest touch ;_;

[Jon Acheson @ Mar 9th 2009 2:00PM]

I've seen cables secured for shipping by gluing them in place with hot melt glue. If it's really a problem, that might be a cheap solution.

[Derek @ Mar 9th 2009 1:10PM]

DO WANT.

[joe23521 @ Mar 9th 2009 1:11PM]

I've always secretly wished to have a pc that could run Hearts decently...

Seriously though, that was awesome.