Supercomputer Made With 24 Samsung SSDs

[modeps]

Now for a bit of geekery. These dudes apparently threw 24 Samsung solid state drives together to create a 6TB RAID array which is capable of transfer speeds of up to 2GB/sec. It is most likely some sort of viral marketing paid for by Samsung, but holy crap is this awesome. Engadget (http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/09/24-samsung-ssds-get-strung-together-for-supercomputer-fun/#continued):

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.

We've embedded the youtube video in the first comment.

[modeps]

Speedy McSpeederson.
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[drakkarim]

meh, when they can do that with 4 drives, i might care.

[shpankey]

whoa... amazing.

[privatedonut21]

That's all well and good, but half of that computer was custom made to allow for those kinds of speeds. This is not the kind of thing that any normal could or would be able to reproduce.

They mention specifically that the computer has a dual-processor setup using a server motherboard, custom FBDIMM RAM, a heavily modified pair of power supplies, not to mention 26 of the most expensive SSDs money can buy and beta firmware just to be able run the thing.

But is it cool? Uh, yeah.

[Agnostic]

Finally, a computer that can play Crysis.;)

[Zander]

Very very cool.

Sure it's super and it's a computer, not a really a supercomputer though.

[alienchild]

Finally, a computer that can play Crysis.;)

you made me lol :D

[Syl]

Despite being outrageously expensive, nothing in that particular setup was incredibly unique. I have no idea what the "special" ram was; but I'm amazed that it was able to load programs that well with only 4 gigabytes of DDR800. I don't care if there was 8 processor cores.

I want to get an SSD for my OS drive at some point, but the cost makes it unlikely anytime soon. I can get a 1 terabyte performance drive for about $100 and yet a 64 gig SSD is closer to $300.

[kurosaki]

Finally, a computer that can play Crysis.;)

haha i was thinking the same thing!

[pwnophobia]

I want to see it render video.

[Sloth]

i don't really understand what i'm looking at. I get that SSD is better than a regular HD, but he made a powergamers computer. I'd take all of that with a traditional HD and it would still kick ass.

[Virtuoso]

How old is that guy? 12ish?

[Suicidal ShiZuru]

Wow that was more annoying that anything. Give nearly anyone those parts and they can do the same thing... Its also probably more thanks to the specialized RAM and RAID controllers than the SSDs.

[Marticus]

Finally, a computer that can play Crysis.;)

haha!


I have to say that this is incredible and shows what an everyday computer will be able to do in about 6 years. However with the applications growing larger to make use of the speedy data access times you still won't be able to load everything off the start menu in 2015, because most of the applications will be much larger.

However, SSD does hold the future for faster OS loading times and handles large video files much better. HDs are becoming closer and closer to the speed of ram.

[bookworm13]

Strictly speaking this is not a supercomputer, which are created for running lots of jobs in parallel on thousands of processors.

At best I would call this a superfast RAID.

[92miata]

i sure hope maximum pc sees this, because they need to beat it with their dream machine. but....

that was the most impressive machine i have seen yet. wow, just wow.