New server build

[jgreco]

Sometimes people go on tangents.

Sometimes?

 

[jgreco]

2133MT/s, times 72 bits... That's a 153.576Gb/s serial line. I'm sure that's doable in the same fantasy world the Pentium 4's designers were living in.

http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Optical_data_network

 

[rogerh]

So we also need optical interconnects... :D

More seriously, if we use something like 12 or 16 serial lines then it's doable :)

If you got the necessary memory bandwidth by using a 12 or 16 serial lines, then you would need to clock them together so that the processor could reassemble the memory locations. Then you have just invented the parallel bus!

 

[Ericloewe]

If you got the necessary memory bandwidth by using a 12 or 16 serial lines, then you would need to clock them together so that the processor could reassemble the memory locations. Then you have just invented the parallel bus!

Maybe we could extend that so that an entire 64-bit word gets transferred at once between the memory controller and the RAM... Oh, wait...

 

[joeschmuck]

You might as well be talking about quantum computing but I just don't think a FreeNAS system needs to be THAT fast.

 

[Bidule0hm]

If you got the necessary memory bandwidth by using a 12 or 16 serial lines, then you would need to clock them together so that the processor could reassemble the memory locations. Then you have just invented the parallel bus!

It's still serial, just multiple serial in parallel :)

Maybe we could extend that so that an entire 64-bit word gets transferred at once between the memory controller and the RAM... Oh, wait...

I see what you did there... :D

 

[jgreco]

You might as well be talking about quantum computing but I just don't think a FreeNAS system needs to be THAT fast.

I hate being limited to 40 gigabit ethernet speeds on my crummy NAS. ;-P

 

[joeschmuck]

I heard FreeBSD 11 (hopefully rolled into FreeNAS 11) was going to offer support for the new 10 petabit fiber adapter but it would need to connect to the new router which supports two 10pb ports and also supports 10gb, 1gb, and lower speeds of course. It uses a 12nm wavelength in order to be able to send the data that quickly, and of course there is on the fly compression. The 12nm wavelength actually allows the future expansion to theoretical limits well over 100 petabits however hardware capable to support that kind of data rate is still many years off, it's just the light transmission is capable of being able to fit that much data into the light stream. The photo of the adapter was larger than I expected, it has a sizable heatsink on it (thankfully no fan), likely to keep the custom ASIC cool. The system sounds awesome and at only $399 for the adapter and $699 for the router (prices are MSRP but not on sale yet), it's a fairly reasonable price if you really need this type of high speed connectivity, but just a bit high for a home user but over time the prices will drop. I doubt the FreeNAS system could keep up with such a high bandwidth network unless it was very well designed and I'd expect other NAS systems to take advantage of this for the large office environment with High Availability requirements. I would imagine movie studios (video processing) locations to get the largest return on investment. Could you imagine how quick it would be to make a backup of 50TB's of data? OMG! FAST! But of course the future is not today and this tall tale is just that, a tall tale but someday this will be the future.

Hope you enjoyed this off topic read.