Conclusion and Final Thoughts
The DDRdrive was purpose built for pure unadulterated random IO, and from what I have seen, it absolutely delivers. The only thing holding it back from decimating the competition is the single channel PCI-E bandwidth. Enterprise environments requiring hugely random yet persistent storage (i.e. database transaction logs), may benefit from the X1, provided the storage space is sufficient and their IOPS requirements fall within the X1’s respective sweet spots.
Pros:
- Single sector IOPS unmatched by any other device available
- Integrated backup to / restore from SLC flash memory
- Cost vs. IOPS (nearly 1/5th the cost of an ioDrive)
- IOPS / Watt
- Extremely well engineered part
- Limited capacity of 4GB
- Cost / GB
- Limited bandwidth
- Not bootable (yet)
The DDRdrive X1 is shipping as of today for a cost of $1495.
specs aren’t much better than
specs aren’t much better than a gigabyte i-ram except this device currently costs almost $2000, the i-ram cost $150 at release and currently ranges from $100-$150.
i-ram doesn’t get near the same iops but it has the same storage capacity. and gets 130mbs read/write so price wise i-ram is alittle more realisitc.
hardware ramdrives could be huge if companies actually put some effort into making an affordable current device. They always make it too soon or too late, and not very well.
better off buying a nand flash ssd for $99 and just replacing it every few years. Will be cheaper and faster in read/write/iops.
This isn’t a competitor for
This isn’t a competitor for SSD or the iRam. It’s a non-volatile ramdisk and has a very specialised use.
This device runs squarely up against STEC’s 8Gb ZeusRAM devices – and eats them for lunch because it’s not tied to a SATA/SAS bus AND because it’s about 1/3 the price.
As for usage: This is an ideal device for ZFS ZIL – only a few GB is needed and the faster you can commit it to the ZIL, the faster a server can signal “ready” back to the client on write requests.
As TFA said, this device is intended for Enterprise usage. I’d extend that and say anywhere a high end NAS is required, this is a good fit within that NAS.
I’d prefer to see PCIe x4 though, however it’s probably fast enough for the purposes at hand. 🙂
Is there a similar product
Is there a similar product for Notebooks?
Many yrs ago I saw an adapter for 2 SO-Dimm memory sticks that one could int one of the slots in a Notebook, where can I find these? (One could expand the memory, one would get 4 slots instead of the original 2.)
Sinc. Anders Nyberg