Path: utzoo!yunexus!geac!geaclib!daveb
From: daveb@geaclib.UUCP (David Collier-Brown)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Solid State Secondary Storage
Message-ID: <3587@geaclib.UUCP>
Date: 20 Jan 89 01:38:14 GMT
Article-I.D.: geaclib.3587
References: <697@brwa.inmos.co.uk>
Distribution: comp
Organization: GEAC Computers, Toronto, CANADA
Lines: 29

In article <248@vlsi.ll.mit.edu> young@vlsi.ll.mit.edu (George Young) writes:
>Our wafer scale integration group is considering developing a new kind
>of computer memory unit -- something we hope might fill in the present
>gap in memory speed and price between magnetic disk and ram.

 Oops.  I missed the obvious: a device between magnetic disk and
ram. (Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa).

  Seriously, though, how about a kit for disk-manufacturers to add
to their disk-resident electronics to cache significant amounts of
data (tracks, say) to be read from or to be written to the disk. If
it looked rather like a disk insofar as its addressing was
concerned, one could make the task of arranging the memory<->disk
transfers easy at the hardware level.
  And the performance improvement might allow us to make
write-through instead of sync-eventually the Unix default... Which
would make people with performance-oriented applications very happy.
(Geac is/was a performance-oriented company, even when I was there
working on Eunuchs). 
  Of course, you also need some short-term power backup, but that's
not tooooo hard.

--dave

-- 
 David Collier-Brown.  | yunexus!lethe!dave
 Interleaf Canada Inc. |
 1550 Enterprise Rd.   | He's so smart he's dumb.
 Mississauga, Ontario  |       --Joyce C-B