back to article Hey - who wants 4.8 terabyte almost as fast as memory?

Chinese flash product supplier Memblaze has launched an almost memory-speed server flash card with a 14 microsecond latency - and up to 4.8TB capacity - for the hyperscale market and open compute project applications, according to a company statement. This is a variant of its existing PBlaze3 card. Speeds and feeds: 750,000 …

  1. MadMike

    Why not buy a 32TB SPARC server, then you have all the RAM you need. Next year the SPARC M7 will be 64TB RAM. :)

    1. Aitor 1

      Price?

      Maybe the price of your beloved 32TB server is a bit steep... and if it crashes, you lose the info...

    2. ToddR

      Erm, because you have to put up with Sparc?

      1. MadMike

        If we talk about TB sized RAM caches, what is better than real RAM (which is faster) and more of it than 4TB cache?

        "Put up with SPARC"? The SPARC M7 server released next year, will be at least twice as fast as anything else if we talk about cpu power. And 64TB RAM can store lot of data, so you dont have to go out to disk - which makes the M7 server even faster. A single cpu can make 120GB/sec SQL queries. Worlds fastest server it will be.

        1. Roo
          Windows

          "If we talk about TB sized RAM caches, what is better than real RAM (which is faster) and more of it than 4TB cache?"

          I'm sure people would talk about TB sized RAM caches if they had an application for them...

          OTOH there seems to be a lot of people who want to store lots of data and not pay the seek penalty, which is precisely what this card does...

          You are making the M7 vaporware look like a solution looking for a problem by trying to scare people off buying a PCI Express card in favour of a few tons of vaporware.

          1. MadMike

            @Roo

            Do you call SPARC M7 vaporware? Well, the M6 server today has 32TB RAM. The largest on the market, by far. The competitors largest servers has half of the memory, and half the number of sockets.

            1. Roo
              Windows

              "Do you call SPARC M7 vaporware?"

              Until it's shipping and Oracle have deigned to publish CINT & CFP for it, I call it vaporware because it is vaporware.

              "Well, the M6 server today has 32TB RAM. The largest on the market, by far. The competitors largest servers has half of the memory, and half the number of sockets."

              On the other hand you can fit several of these flash cards into a Xeon, for a fraction of the power budget, cost and space, which is handy if you are running a crowded datacentre... Oh and the card would add NON VOLATILE memory, which solves a lot of real problems that folks have right now. Of course the card may suck, and it is also vaporware (like the M7) until it's shipping...

              Who knows maybe the lead time will be so huge that the customers will have chosen to spunk $M on M6 & M7s instead of a $K on a few cards. Seems unlikely to me, given that they can slot in FLASH memory cards from other vendors into their Xeons and use several of them if they need more density (system bandwidth constraints are likely to bite)... ;)

              I would love the M7 to be a great product, but in my view, given the history of SPARC, the M7 won't be good enough bring in new customers. In other news I've seen some cute figures for unoptimised tight loops running on a POWER8, I think John Cocke would be very proud.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      "Why not buy a 32TB SPARC server"

      Because my yacht already has a perfectly serviceable anchor, and no one sane would by anything supported by Oracle...

  2. Lionel Baden
    Gimp

    I really worry what

    I might do for one of these.

    1. Bruce Hockin

      Re: I really worry what

      We'll hopefully you won't have to do much. The pricing I've seen is very aggressive.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Patents at the ready. Lawyers at dawn.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      FAIL

      Betcha whatever technologies are in play, they're patented in China. Oh, and the venue will be Chinese too no matter what another court says.

  4. Haku

    So how many kidneys do I have to sell to get one?

    1. TheOtherHobbes

      >So how many kidneys do I have to sell to get one?

      Three. And a spare ARM.

    2. Bruce Hockin

      You won't have too :-)

      Pricing is super aggressive. It certainly won't break the bank unless you were planning to throw the 4.8TB version in a Mac Pro. Everything is relative after all.

  5. SteIMG

    Nearly as fast as memory?

    Someone has missed a decimal point or three...

  6. Pete 2 Silver badge

    Memories are made of this

    Sounds promising. Give me a call when it hits $100.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @theregister please buy a sample and publish a review for us

  8. Mephistro
    Meh

    The data bandwith...

    ... doesn't seem something to write home about. On the other hand if the price is right...

  9. razorfishsl

    Dolphin stolen from SQL, non existent product only computer renderings

    Website that shoots content faster than you can read….

    "Pianokey-Technology" ( everyone else calls then card slots) "is a unique capacity expansion technology owned by Memblaze, which is applied for PBlaze3 Flash Accelerator. Its design idea is derived from the chord of piano"

    What could possibly go wrong…….

    1. Bruce Hockin

      Suggest you try one and find out

      Some comfort for the skeptic. A partner of mine has tested it recently (in the UK) and he concluded, I paraphrase "it took a while to warm up, but when it did it was as fast as anything else we've ever tested... and given the price it's a bit of a no-brainer"

  10. John Savard

    Latency

    A 14 microsecond latency isn't really "as fast as RAM", but a bandwidth comparable to that of RAM is, I presume, significantly faster than that of ordinary flash memory. Which means that while the design is suited to hard drive substitutes, we'll need a new kind of port on our computers before thumb drives start doing this.

    Is this level of improvement in conventional flash memory likely to make HP's memristor project irrelevant? I hope not, because it promises more than what a faster flash drive can deliver, but this level of progress in flash drives may reduce HP's chances of getting the initial market it needs.

    1. Suricou Raven

      Re: Latency

      Bandwidth is easy - just add more chips. It scales linearly, basically the same as putting hard drives in RAID0. Double the chips, double and capacity and double the bandwidth. Why do you think the card is so big?

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Reminds me of the story of Hedy Lamar, piano bar and all.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Re. Flash

    I heard rumblings a while back about HAFR (Heat Assisted Flash Recording) to overcome the write limit in TLC flash.

    The idea is that when the chip uses up too many spare blocks it activates a heater and applies about 75C to the chip stack from both sides (top and bottom) while writing 111's to all cells which then undoes the damage to the silicon.

    This is actually feasible, tried it myself on "dead" chips and it did indeed bring them back to life.

    Also feasible is 7KeV X-ray irradiation of the chips to anneal them, this is done in .mil systems or so I hear.

    1. Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

      Re: Re. Flash

      "The idea is that when the chip uses up too many spare blocks it activates a heater and applies about 75C to the chip stack from both sides"...

      So, when I get some SSD storage can I just wedge it up between the video card and CPU, and either turn down the fan speed or plug up the heat sinks with a bit of dust? Done. 8-)

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Give it up!

    Dammit! Will you lot stop talking about X kidneys and mention some prices - Pleese?

    I'm drooling all over my keyboard here and everyone is being cagey about the $$$'s

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