R3Ware, Inc. / Robert R. Randall

For those of you out there looking for a RAID stack for embedded applications there appears to be clear momentum behind using the Linux MD RAID stack with hardware acceleration. Both AMCC and Intel have I/O processors that support enhance the MD RAID stack with hardware assisted speed improvements using XOR engines and extra DMA engines. Very lovely stuff if you’re looking for an I/O chip for a RAID application. Linux has support for all of the major interconnects (Ethernet, FCP, Infiniband) with driver support for the popular chips (see SCST project). Building a RAID controller with one of these options appears more like an integration task than a build it yourself task. At least from the vantage point of this software and firmware author.This is a wake up call to all of the old style RAID vendors that still believe their RAID stacks are the crown jewels of the product line. RAID as a feature is a commodity item but isn’t really priced like one at the moment. If we start to see real product in the space that is taking advantage of these building blocks expect some price pressure on the legacy RAID vendors. Storage goodness just keeps getting cheaper and cheaper and that needs to continue for some time to come.

My 2007 vintage MacBook Pro was starting to feel a bit sluggish.  Running several virtual machines under Fusion and doing work at the same time caused just too much stress on the disk i/o and 4GB of RAM.  So I went and did some research and did some upgrades.  I now have a 128GB SSD with the 2nd generation Samsung controller in it and it is amazingly fast.  I also discovered that I could upgrade the machine to 6GB of RAM.  It took some searching to find the right part but it was well worth the effort.  The machine is almost never disk i/o bound, even when swapping, and the extra memory makes a BIG difference when running VMs.  Much happiness for this old geek.  I also plunged into Snow Leopard which also helps since it does conserve some memory and disk space.  Long live my MacBook – it has to, it was not cheap

I’m an agnostic when it comes to operating systems.  I don’t possess the religious ferment present in a lot of us geeks as to the ‘best’ OS nor do I believe in the ‘free is always best’ mantra of the open source zealots.  But this is starting to feel political so I better move on…

I’ve been running Windows 7 RC on my desktop for a while now and I must confess that is has been a refreshing experience, especially when compared to Windows Vista.  Windows 7 has been reliable, fast, and even pleasant.  No strange networking behavior.  No driver uglies.  It just works and doesn’t get in the way.  I’m running 64bit Windows 7 RC on an Intel Core 2 Quad 2.4GHz with 6GB RAM and I’ve yet to push the box at all.  It always has plenty of spare resources.  Dare I write that Windows 7 is more efficient?  Oh gosh, I guess I did .

 Best of luck with your Windows 7 endeavors.  So far mine have been pleasant and pain free.  And for a Windows OS RC experience that is a new result, at least for me.

Well I’m drooling a bit over the new MacBook Pro models.  I happen to love the design, support and build quality of the notebooks as well as the stability of the platform.  The new models that can hold 8GB of DDR3 along with an SSD for storage should be really fast and very very lovely for running lots of virtual machines and avoiding the pain of waiting on disk i/o.  Come on, a 5400 RPM drive is way to slow for power users.  But an SSD, now we’re getting somewhere.

cnet’s Apple Byte has some info after you get past the iPhone hype.