18 December 2009

Fast Eddy Felson

When is fast not so fast? One of my pet sites, storagesearch, has a new article on SSD performance, with some historical background. Check it out.

Here is the money quote:

If repeat writes to the same small address range (same flash blocks) is interspersed with read operations (the play it again Sam scenario - which occurs in database tables) the performance outcome varies significantly between fat and skinny flash SSDs. A fat flash SSD may produce results which more closely follow the behavior seen in HDDs and RAM SSDs - as predicted by the write IOPS spec. But performance in most skinny flash SSD designs will collapse.


The meaning of skinny and fat is explained here. So, for the purposes of what this endeavor advocates, the fat should be on the fire.

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