Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!vette!brooks From: brooks@vette.llnl.gov (Eugene Brooks) Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: *big iron* Message-ID: <34298@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV> Date: 28 Sep 89 03:39:29 GMT References: <22488@cup.portal.com> <280001@hpdml93.HP.COM> <9911@venera.isi.edu> Sender: usenet@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV Reply-To: brooks@maddog.llnl.gov (Eugene Brooks) Organization: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Lines: 19 In article <9911@venera.isi.edu> rod@venera.isi.edu.UUCP (Rodney Doyle Van Meter III) writes: > >What about Thinking Machines' Data Vault? I've been given to >understand it's actually better than the machines themselves in some >respects. Thinking Machines' Data Vault is a fine example of the right way to build an IO system these days. Instead of using limited production high performance drives, you build a highly parallel system using the same mass production drives you can buy for workstations and throw in a SECDED controller while you are at it. The system has 72 drives implementing a 64 bit wide data path with one bit per drive. Using current 1.2 Gbyte drives each having a bandwidth of more than a megabyte per second you could build a selfhealing disk system of more than 64 gigabytes and having more than 64 megabytes a second throughput. For one of the future supercomputers built of 1000 microprocessors each having 8 to 32 mbytes of memory you would need more than one of these disk systems to keep the thing fed. brooks@maddog.llnl.gov, brooks@maddog.uucp