Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Thu, 23 Dec 1999 20:04:22 +0600 (NOVT)
From:      "Alexey N. Dokuchaev" <danfe@inet.ssc.nsu.ru>
To:        Kent Stewart <kstewart@3-cities.com>
Cc:        freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: when is it safe to use the 0xa0ffa0ff disk flags?
Message-ID:  <Pine.LNX.4.04.9912232003420.13730-100000@inet.ssc.nsu.ru>
In-Reply-To: <386182DA.660B55ED@3-cities.com>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Hi!

> CDC (now out of the business) had a hard drive called a Hydra. It was
> a full height 8" HD that ran 9.6MB/s in 1988. It was also very
> expensive at $250,000 US. Cray striped them together to create what
> they called a DD40. It had 16 Hydras and had a total of 20GB. By
> striping 4 together, Cray would get 20MB/s when they were hung on the
> 100MB/s data channel. When our benchnmark was run on a system with the
> Hydras for main storage, the throughput basically doubled. The Cray
> XM/P had 2x the throughput of the CDC-990. The 990 was a dinosaur and
> represented the end of big iron. It filled the room where as the Cray
> looked like the what was left of the volcano in "Close Encounters of
> the Third Kind". I think the 8" FH HD's were all replaced by HH 5.25"
> HD's, which looked pretty puny mounted in the center of the Hydra's
> bay. The cooling requirements probably dropped 10KVA :). The effect of
> the Hydra on the benchmark was enormous. This the benchmark that I
> told you about writing behind was so important. The benchmark ran
> almost twice as fast when write behind caching was used. I think
> SOFTUPDATES produce an imporovement that helps for similar reasons.

Is there anywhere where I can read more about it?

./danfe




To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message




Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?Pine.LNX.4.04.9912232003420.13730-100000>