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Subject: Re: fastest processor for computerchess

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 06:20:36 01/23/04

Go up one level in this thread


On January 23, 2004 at 01:34:40, Gordon Rattray wrote:

>On January 23, 2004 at 00:12:08, Dann Corbit wrote:
>
>>On January 22, 2004 at 23:30:31, Gordon Rattray wrote:
>>
>>>On January 22, 2004 at 22:40:25, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>>>
>>>>On January 22, 2004 at 22:36:23, margolies,marc wrote:
>>>
>>>[snip]
>>>
>>>>>And dont put your data to be accessed on a slow hard drive either. A ten
>>>>>thousand speed rotating SATA (150gb throughput) drive with 78 gigabytes of
>>>>>storage costs only between 250 and 300 USD.
>>>>
>>>>You were doing good until you got to the SATA drive.  Throw it away and
>>>>get a 15K U320 SCSI drive...
>>>
>>>I agree that SCSI is fastest.  But aren't some of the SATA drives gaining on
>>>them?  A Western Digital Raptor 740 (SATA) can gain an average seek time of 4.5
>>>ms.  Whereas, a Maxtor Atlas 15k (SCSI) may acheive 3.2 ms.  A huge difference?!
>>>
>>>And then, the cheaper SATA drives may be put in a RAID config more feasibly in
>>>terms of cost.  So, overall I'm not so sure that SCSI is still so attractive.
>>>I'm personally thinking of two SATA 10k drives in RAID 1 config.  Given that
>>>I've got an onboard RAID controller, how much would a better SCSI solution cost
>>>me (2 drives + SCSI controller)?  I'm guessing a significant bit more, and not a
>>>huge performance increase to justify it.
>>
>>The best SCSI interface in town:
>>http://www6.tomshardware.com/storage/20030606/
>>
>>Hotsy-totsy SATA server performance:
>>http://storagereview.com/articles/200311/20031111WD740GD_4.html
>>
>>Hotsy-totsy SCSI ultra320 server performance:
>>http://storagereview.com/articles/200304/20030429MAS3735_4.html
>>
>>Bottom line:
>>SATA 207 I/Os per second --> highest available performance
>>SCSI 366 I/Os per second --> highest available performance
>>
>>77% improvement.
>>
>>SCSI rules in pure performance.  SATA rules in price performance.
>>So if you have to have the ultimate in speed, you need Ultra320 SCSI 15K RPM
>>drives.
>>But if you have to have the cheapest I/Os per second, then it is SATA.
>
>
>I agree that SCSI is fastest.  But on some budgets, couldn't it be possible that
>SATA in a RAID config is the best option (assuming that the equivalent SCSI RAID
>setup is too expensive)?
>
>Gordon

Lawyers call that "asked and answered".  :)  If the choice is SATA or nothing,
then obviously SATA will win.  :)

However, _my_ perspective was about performance.  And there SCSI is king by a
wide margin.

I see numbers that are >2x better on good SCSI, for example.

>
>
>>
>>SATA has a problem for database.  What happens to a write if you kick the plug
>>out of the wall in mid-stream?  The interface standard does not describe how a
>>fsync() could be performed reliably.  I would be very nervous to store billions
>>of dollars of data on a large SATA array, unless it had duplicated UPS.



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