From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
Message-ID: <21b55d1c3bb01fa55e90f9400a0cdfb1@quanstro.net>
From: erik quanstrom <quanstro@quanstro.net>
Date: Wed,  4 Mar 2009 00:50:55 -0500
To: 9fans@9fans.net
In-Reply-To: <3aaafc130903032105i742648d2o86ccd2630c4aa61c@mail.gmail.com>
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Subject: Re: [9fans] threads vs forks
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> >
> > Both AMD and Intel are looking at I/O because it is and will be a limiting
> > factor when scaling to higher core counts.

i/o starts sucking wind with one core.
that's why we differentiate i/o from everything
else we do.

> And soon hard disk latencies are really going to start hurting (they
> already are hurting some, I'm sure), and I'm not convinced of the
> viability of SSDs.

i'll assume you mean throughput.  hard drive latency has been a big deal
for a long time.  tanenbaum integrated knowledge of track layout into
his minix elevator algorithm.

i think the gap between cpu performance and hd performance is narrowing,
not getting wider.

i don't have accurate measurements on how much real-world performance
difference there is between a core i7 and an intel 5000.  it's generally not
spectacular, clock-for-clock. on the other hand, when the intel 5000-series
was released, the rule of thumb for a sata hd was 50mb/s.  it's not too hard
to find regular sata hard drives that do 110mb/s today.  the ssd drives we've
(coraid) tested have been spectacular --- reading at > 200mb/s.  if you want
to talk latency, ssds can deliver 1/100th the latency of spinning media.
there's no way that the core i7 is 100x faster than the intel 5000.

- erik