Mar 142013
 

What we do know is that Apple is spending mountains of money on a new breed of hardware device from a company called Fusion-io. As a public company, Fusion-io is required to disclose information about customers that account for an usually large portion of its revenue, and with its latest annual report, the Salt Lake City outfit reveals that in 2012, at least 25 percent of its revenue — $89.8 million — came from Apple. That’s just one figure, from just one company. But it serves as a sign post, showing you where the modern data center is headed.

Inside a data center like the one Apple operates in Maiden, North Carolina, you’ll find thousands of computer servers. Fusion-io makes a slim card that slots inside these machines, and it’s packed with hundreds of gigabytes of flash memory, the stuff that holds all the software and the data on your smartphone. You can think of this card as a much-needed replacement for the good old-fashioned hard disk that typically sits inside a server. Much like a hard disk, it stores information. But it doesn’t have any moving parts, which means it’s generally more reliable. It consumes less power. And it lets you read and write data far more quickly.

But that’s only one way to think about it. The same card can also act like a beefed-up version of a server’s main memory subsystem — the place where the central processor temporarily caches data it needs quick access to. You see, today’s super-fast processors have outstripped not only the hard disk, but main memory — the hard disk is too slow, the memory too small — and with its flash cards, Fusion-io aims to remove both bottlenecks.

READ MORE:  Apple and Facebook Flash Forward to Computer Memory of the Future 

 

 

 

Apr 042012
 

Sure, the prices of mechanical hard disk drives are going to stay above preflood levels. That sucks, but not all the news on the storage front is as bleak, or as expensive: a number of e-tailers have accidentally leaked details about a new, low cost line of Intel SSDs that are due to hit the streets very, very soon.

The incriminating bits have since been washed from the Web, but Engadget and The Register managed to snag details about the Intel 330 SSD line before they disappeared. Apparently, they’ll rock 6Gbps SATA 3.0 transfer speeds and sequential read/write at 500MBps/450MBps, respectively, while being built around the 25nm NAND found in Intel 320 SSDs.

READ MORE:

via Maximum PC | Budget-Priced Intel 330 SSD Details Leaked Online, Expected This Month.

 


Jul 142011
 

The potential to find almost any piece of information in seconds is beneficial, but is this ability actually negatively impacting our memory? The authors of a paper that is being released by Science Express describe four experiments testing this. Based on their results, people are recalling information less, and instead can remember where to find the information they have forgotten.

via Study: why bother to remember when you can just use Google?.