GreySquare Blog

World’s Fastest Drive – Seagate 2.5" SCSI

// January 18th, 2007 // 1 Comment » // General

Seagate today announced its 2.5″ SCSI Savvio 15k drive which  spins at a mind blowing 15,000 RPM. Seagate claims that its 15k drive on 2.5″ platters spins 10% faster than its 3.5″ cheetah counter-part making it the fastest drive on the block.

That’s a bold claim to make, but the drive’s 2.5″ form factor could actually help it on this front. Even with perpendicular recording, Seagate can only squeeze 36GB onto the Savvio 15K’s platters. That results in fewer gigabytes per drive actuator, but it’s the actuator speed that often limits performance in enterprise server environments. The fact that the Savvio 15K has less data per actuator than a 3.5″ drive can actually make it faster, at least in applications that emphasize random access times rather than sequential transfer rates.

Savvio 15K drives are already shipping in volume to HP and will be released into the channel in the first quarter of this year with capacities of 36GB and 73GB. The drives will come with a 16MB cache and a SAS interface, and they appear to compare well with Seagate’s existing Cheetah 15K.5. The 73GB Cheetah, for example, has a 3.5ms seek time, consumes 8.4W, and has a MTBF of 1.4 million hours. The 73GB Savvio 15K has a seek time of 2.9ms, consumes only 5.8W, and enjoys a MTBF of 1.6 million hours. There’s no word on how much the new Savvio 15K drives will cost when they hit the channel, but we’re working on getting our hands on a drive for a full review.

I feel happy that atleast some progress is being made at the Von Neumann Bottleneck. And that it was by Seagate makes me feel even more good, I being an ardent fan.

PCI Express 2.0 Released

// January 16th, 2007 // 1 Comment » // Tech

PCI-SIG®, the Special Interest Group responsible for PCI Express® industry-standard I/O technology, today announced the availability of the PCI Express Base 2.0 specification. After a 60-day review of revision 0.9 of the specification in Fall 2006, members of the PCI-SIG finalized and released PCI Express (PCIe) 2.0, which doubles the interconnect bit rate from 2.5GT/s to 5GT/s to support high-bandwidth applications. 

The specification seamlessly extends the data rate to 5GT/s in a manner compatible with all existing PCIe 1.1 products currently supporting 2.5GT/s signaling. The key benefit of PCIe 2.0 is its faster signaling, effectively increasing the aggregate bandwidth of a 16-lane link to approximately 16 GB/s. The higher bandwidth will allow product designers to implement narrower interconnect links to achieve high performance while reducing cost.

“In today’s world, applications are becoming more advanced and are requiring more bandwidth,” said Al Yanes, PCI-SIG chairman and president. “This is the perfect time to release PCIe 2.0, which not only supports high-bandwidth applications such as high-end graphics, but also adds many new architectural enhancements.”

In addition to the faster signaling rate, PCI-SIG working groups also added several new protocol layer improvements to the PCIe Base 2.0 specification which will allow developers to design more intelligent devices to optimize platform performance and power consumption while maintaining interoperability, low cost and fast market introduction. These architecture improvements include:

• Dynamic link speed management allows developers to control the speed at which the link is operating

• Link bandwidth notification alerts platform software (operating system, device drivers, etc) of changes in link speed and width

• Capability structure expansion increases control registers to better manage devices, slots and the interconnect

• Access control services allows for optional controls to manage peer-to-peer transactions

• Completion timeout control allows developers to define a required disable mechanism for transaction timeouts

• Function-level reset provides an optional mechanism to reset functions within a multi-function device

• Power limit redefinition enables slot power limit values to accommodate devices that consume higher power

The PCIe Base 2.0 specification is available for download at http://www.pcisig.com/specifications/pciexpress/base2/

Sun Is Giving Away "Solaris 10" DVDs

// January 15th, 2007 // 2 Comments » // Tech

For a limited time only, just like Ubuntu’s ShipIt service, Sun Microsystems lets you order Solaris 10 absolutely free of charge. The operating system comes on a single DVD supporting both the x86 and SPARC versions. Also included is Sun Studio 11.

Aishwarya Rai Gets Engaged…

// January 15th, 2007 // No Comments » // Movies & TV

After days of media speculation, Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai finally got engaged in Mumbai on Sunday.
The engagement ceremony took place at the Bachchans’ residence soon after the couple landed from the premiere of their latest film Guru in Toronto and New York.
The event was attended by family members of the Bachchan and the Rais. Bachchans’ close family friend Amar Singh also attended the ceremony.
It is believed that Abhishek proposed Aishwarya after the premiere of Guru in New York. The actress accepted the proposal on the spot.
The marriage date has not been confirmed but it is believed that only very close relatives will be called for the most-awaited Bollywood marriage of 2007.
Earlier, it had been reported that the marriage will take place on February 19, 2007. But that has not been confirmed as yet.

This sets the stage for the marriage of the film industry’s most talked-about couple.
The engagement between Abhishek, who turns 31 on February 5, and 33-year-old Aishwarya, was held at the Bachchan residence in suburban Juhu.
The event was attended by family members and close friends of the Bachchan and Rai families.

Google Adsense – Server Down!

// January 14th, 2007 // No Comments » // General

Google Adsense server is down again today. This has become habitual of google, not giving any prior notice about the server maintainance schedules like when they’d be out of service. They almost never indicate when the server’s will be up and running again. Just a message saying “so & so …. server/website is down. Please check back later. We apologize for the inconvenience.” You can see the screen capture taken on January 14th 2007 at 01:42 AM IST

Its in many languages that too!