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Watch our Hangout with ARM GPU Fellow Jem Davies
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Watch our Hangout with ARM GPU Fellow Jem Davies

For those of you who weren’t able to catch the live stream be sure to watch our interview with ARM Fellow and all around GPU expert Jem Davies. In our Hangout Jem talked about how he got involved with GPUs at ARM (spoiler alert: his boss told him to go out and buy a GPU company). He also shared his thoughts on Mali’s unique architecture and how it may evolve over time. We discussed the future of mobile gaming, solving memory bandwidth challenges, and the potential for ARM scaling its GPU architectures from wearables all the way up to supercomputers.

I reference it a few times, but you should also check out Ryan Smith’s deep dive into ARM’s Midgard GPU Architecture. ARM is the second mobile-focused GPU vendor to allow us unfettered access to the details of their GPUs and we’re very thankful for it.

I’d like to thank Jem once again for taking the time to chat with me, and if you haven’t already seen them I’d suggest watching some of our other Hangouts with ARM:

Watch our Hangout with ARM GPU Fellow Jem Davies
  • Comments are Closed

Watch our Hangout with ARM GPU Fellow Jem Davies

For those of you who weren’t able to catch the live stream be sure to watch our interview with ARM Fellow and all around GPU expert Jem Davies. In our Hangout Jem talked about how he got involved with GPUs at ARM (spoiler alert: his boss told him to go out and buy a GPU company). He also shared his thoughts on Mali’s unique architecture and how it may evolve over time. We discussed the future of mobile gaming, solving memory bandwidth challenges, and the potential for ARM scaling its GPU architectures from wearables all the way up to supercomputers.

I reference it a few times, but you should also check out Ryan Smith’s deep dive into ARM’s Midgard GPU Architecture. ARM is the second mobile-focused GPU vendor to allow us unfettered access to the details of their GPUs and we’re very thankful for it.

I’d like to thank Jem once again for taking the time to chat with me, and if you haven’t already seen them I’d suggest watching some of our other Hangouts with ARM:

HGST Expands Ultrastar C10K Family with 1.8 TB 12 Gbps SAS HDD
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HGST Expands Ultrastar C10K Family with 1.8 TB 12 Gbps SAS HDD

HGST (a Western Digital company) today launched the Ultrastar C10K1800, a 10000 RPM hard drive in the 2.5″ form factor targeting enterprise / data center applications. Earlier versions of the Ultrastar C10K family topped out at 1.2 TB and came with a 6 Gbps SAS connector. The new member has a 1.8 TB capacity and comes with a cutting-edge 12 Gbps SAS connection. With this introduction, HGST is moving all capacities in the Ultrastar C10K family to 12 Gbps SAS.

Even though flash storage is grabbing all the headlines right now, there are many applications where the premium for IOPS doesn’t need to be paid, and cost per GB wins out. It is this market segment that HGST hopes to target with the Ultrastar C10K1800.

In order to improve performance over previous generation Ultrastar C10K HDDs, HGST has put in a ‘media cache’ – a disk-based caching technology providing a large non-volatile area for data storage. HGST claims that there is a significant improvement in write performance even at high workloads (compared to NAND-based caches). Improvements are in the order of 2.5x for random writes and 23% for sequential accesses when compared to older Ultrastar C10K drives.

HGST’s Disk-based Media Cache

The high level operation of the disk-based media cache is explained in the above picture. While HGST wasn’t ready to comment on how much of the drive capacity was being used as a disk cache, they did mention that the cache has no effect on the capacity visible to users. This technology is also being rolled out across all Ultrastar C10K models.

The hard drive family comes with both 4K native / 512 emulation and a 512 native sectors version for legacy compatibility. HGST also claims improved power efficiency. The drives are already being qualified by OEMs and are available now. The FIPS-certified encryption-enabled drives will ship early next year.

HGST Expands Ultrastar C10K Family with 1.8 TB 12 Gbps SAS HDD
  • Comments are Closed

HGST Expands Ultrastar C10K Family with 1.8 TB 12 Gbps SAS HDD

HGST (a Western Digital company) today launched the Ultrastar C10K1800, a 10000 RPM hard drive in the 2.5″ form factor targeting enterprise / data center applications. Earlier versions of the Ultrastar C10K family topped out at 1.2 TB and came with a 6 Gbps SAS connector. The new member has a 1.8 TB capacity and comes with a cutting-edge 12 Gbps SAS connection. With this introduction, HGST is moving all capacities in the Ultrastar C10K family to 12 Gbps SAS.

Even though flash storage is grabbing all the headlines right now, there are many applications where the premium for IOPS doesn’t need to be paid, and cost per GB wins out. It is this market segment that HGST hopes to target with the Ultrastar C10K1800.

In order to improve performance over previous generation Ultrastar C10K HDDs, HGST has put in a ‘media cache’ – a disk-based caching technology providing a large non-volatile area for data storage. HGST claims that there is a significant improvement in write performance even at high workloads (compared to NAND-based caches). Improvements are in the order of 2.5x for random writes and 23% for sequential accesses when compared to older Ultrastar C10K drives.

HGST’s Disk-based Media Cache

The high level operation of the disk-based media cache is explained in the above picture. While HGST wasn’t ready to comment on how much of the drive capacity was being used as a disk cache, they did mention that the cache has no effect on the capacity visible to users. This technology is also being rolled out across all Ultrastar C10K models.

The hard drive family comes with both 4K native / 512 emulation and a 512 native sectors version for legacy compatibility. HGST also claims improved power efficiency. The drives are already being qualified by OEMs and are available now. The FIPS-certified encryption-enabled drives will ship early next year.

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LaCie’s 2big Thunderbolt 2 and Rugged Thunderbolt DAS Review

Consumers dealing with multimedia workflows need to transfer large amounts of data around. Be it collecting data in the field or editing media at a workstation, the necessity for fast and accessible direct attached storage (DAS) units can’t be stressed enough. LaCie and G-Technology are two vendors targeting this space. Back in April, we had covered the launch of some solutions in this space. Today, we are reviewing one of LaCie’s introductions, the 2big Thunderbolt 2. LaCie’s Rugged Thunderbolt bus-powered DAS forms a complementary offering for in-field use. Both units offer Thunderbolt as well as USB 3.0 connectivity. Read on to see how they perform in our evaluation.