Re: What O/S or hardware feature would be useful for databases?

On 6/17/07, Greg Smith <gsmith(at)gregsmith(dot)com> wrote:
> On Sat, 16 Jun 2007, Ron Johnson wrote:
>
> > Anyway... databases are always(?) IO bound. I'd try to figure out how to
> > make a bigger hose (or more hoses) between the spindles and the mobo.
>
> What I keep waiting for is the drives with flash memory built-in to
> mature. I would love to get reliable writes that use the drive's cache
> for instant fsyncs, instead of right now where you have to push all that
> to the controller level.

I don't think flash is the answer here...you should be looking at
'PRAM', i think. Solid state disks are coming very soon but flash is
barely faster than traditional disks for random writes. (much faster
for random reads however). Maybe this will change...flash is
improving all the time. Already, the write cycle problem has been
all but eliminated for the higher grade flash devices.

That being said, it's pretty clear to me we are in the last days of
the disk drive. When solid state drives become prevalent in server
environments, database development will enter a new era...physical
considerations will play less and less a role in how systems are
engineered. So, to answer the OP, my answer would be to 'get rid of
the spinning disk!' :-)

merlin