Fusion IO review

[biostud]

http://www.tomshardware.com/re...odrive-flash,2140.html

Fusion-io did an amazing job with this product, which is the first flash SSD storage device to deliver truly revolutionary performance. Forget everything you know: this device is faster. Although we did not match the benchmark numbers we found in Fusionio?s data sheet, the 500 MB/s throughput and up to over 40,000 I/O operations per second are many times what hard drives, RAID arrays, and even existing flash SSD solutions are capable of delivering.

 

[Idontcare]

No mention of price that I could find.

I'm curious how a traditional beefy raid like an Areca 1280ML w/2GB cache and 4 (or 8) X25-M's in raid-0 would fair in the performance/dollar comparison to fusion-io.

Fusion seems fast, but its not clear to me that we can't get there already with existing off the shelf hardware.

 

[IntelUser2000]

http://forum.ssdworld.ch/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=58
http://forum.ssdworld.ch/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=81

The single X25-E drive are only 15-20% slower in IOPs than the FusionIO drive.

The truth is they both will suffer performance drops when used heavily.

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: IntelUser2000
http://forum.ssdworld.ch/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=58
http://forum.ssdworld.ch/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=81

The single X25-E drive are only 15-20% slower in IOPs than the FusionIO drive.

The truth is they both will suffer performance drops when used heavily.

(Have I ever mentioned how great it is having you in these forums? Its crazy how much I learn from you and the links you bring.)

Naturally the SSDworld review includes crystaldiskmark, what I find interesting is that fusion-io doesn't actually do a stellar job with the 4k random writes:

Fusion IO crystaldiskmark versus Intel X-25 E crystaldiskmark

So that sort of answers my question...if you ganged together four X-25 E's on a robust Areca card you'd easily surpass the bandwidth and IOPs of a Fusion-IO drive. Only question is whether the performance/dollar favors the traditional SSD raid array approach or the new Fusion IO speedracer technology approach. Need some prices on Fusion IO.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

I don't think those are targed at end-users like me or you. Mainly for server.... i think

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: BTRY B 529th FA BN
I don't think those are targed at end-users like me or you. Mainly for server.... i think

Yeah I gathered that, but having lived thru the limitations of iram-based SSD solutions (limited by number of PCI slots in the system) the scalability of the fusion-io approach is pretty limited.

If you have a PCI x8 based raid card that uses ML sata tech then you can scale your capacity to your heart's content.

The 1280ML card I have allows me to hookup 24 sata drives, and I can scale that to external sata boxes over ML bandwidth (4x sata II). Bandwidth and capacity if I want to pay for it. (when I say "I" naturally I mean an enterprise level purchaser)

Fusion IO doesn't beat the bandwidth (or IO's if you go SSD) but is definitely capacity limited as there are a limited number of PCI x4 slots on a mobo.

So I just don't see where this thing is going to have a future any more so than gigabyte iram had a future.

Counter-arguments?

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

I think what will make this card is the expandability of the capacity.

 

[TridenT]

This is going to probably be $500+... :'( Why does awesome have to be expensive?

 

[IntelUser2000]

Originally posted by: TridenTBoy3555
This is going to probably be $500+... :'( Why does awesome have to be expensive?

Ehem, these drives cost upwards of $5000.

 

[imported_wired247]

Originally posted by: TridenTBoy3555
This is going to probably be $500+... :'( Why does awesome have to be expensive?

Before you know it we will laugh at the prices... could you imagine having 6GB of DDR3-1333 ram back in 2000, when 1GB of DDR-400 was already quite expensive...

 

[IntelUser2000]

There are negatives of having a PCI-E SSD with such a high transfer rate. You can't have it as a boot drive and the SSD uses system's RAM and CPU to do its "duties", if you know what I mean.

 

[taltamir]

Originally posted by: Idontcare

Originally posted by: IntelUser2000
http://forum.ssdworld.ch/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=58
http://forum.ssdworld.ch/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=81

The single X25-E drive are only 15-20% slower in IOPs than the FusionIO drive.

The truth is they both will suffer performance drops when used heavily.

(Have I ever mentioned how great it is having you in these forums? Its crazy how much I learn from you and the links you bring.)

Naturally the SSDworld review includes crystaldiskmark, what I find interesting is that fusion-io doesn't actually do a stellar job with the 4k random writes:

Fusion IO crystaldiskmark versus Intel X-25 E crystaldiskmark

So that sort of answers my question...if you ganged together four X-25 E's on a robust Areca card you'd easily surpass the bandwidth and IOPs of a Fusion-IO drive. Only question is whether the performance/dollar favors the traditional SSD raid array approach or the new Fusion IO speedracer technology approach. Need some prices on Fusion IO.

could it be that they have redesigned the erasing circuits to erase less blocks at once? greatly alleviating the read modify erase write cycle?

Or is it all the controller? probably the latter, it has an array of 24 chips... compared to intels 10 way striping that is a lot.
Couple it with the fact that this isn't a drive... so it doesn't have to interface with the system as a drive, it simply sends PCIe 4x data to the ram which is then handled by the CPU using a driver... so several potential bottlenecks are out...

This is very impressive, but I can't imagine it not costing a ton of money.

 

[taltamir]

Originally posted by: wired247

Originally posted by: TridenTBoy3555
This is going to probably be $500+... :'( Why does awesome have to be expensive?

Before you know it we will laugh at the prices... could you imagine having 6GB of DDR3-1333 ram back in 2000, when 1GB of DDR-400 was already quite expensive...

heh, i saw some in the egg for 90$... sold out quick though

 

[IntelUser2000]

The FusionIO uses 160 channels.

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: IntelUser2000
The FusionIO uses 160 channels.

In a pre-flash based SSD world, the early press releases on fusion-io excited me.

Now that we are seeing some performance results alongside those of the latest gen flash-based SSD's the performance gap has narrowed considerably and I'm no longer impressed in the slightest.

 

[simpletron]

Fusion-io Announces Breakthrough in Storage with Availability of the Company?s ioDrive

The ioDrive is currently available at a cost of approximately $2400 for 80 GB, $4800 for 160 GB and $8900 for 320 GB.

this was the original pricing back in april 2008.

Fusion-io Puts Ultra-High-Performance Data Storage into Hands of High-End PC Users with the ioXtreme

The ioXtreme brings high-end PC users 80 GB of PCI-Expressbased, high-performance, solid state storage.....

The ioXtreme will be priced at under $1000 and be available for home and consumer use in Q1, 2009.

it may be priced competively against a SSD raid solution now. I think the biggest thing hurting it is the expandability aspect. with a raid setup, you can keeping add more drives whereas you're very limited with how many iodrives, you can add.

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: simpletron
I think the biggest thing hurting it is the expandability aspect. with a raid setup, you can keeping add more drives whereas you're very limited with how many iodrives, you can add.

That's my point too. With the right raid hardware not only does your capacity scale as you add more drives but so too does the bandwidth and iops.

I can put two PCIe x8 areca raid cards in one box, span raid-0 arrays across both physical cards, and attach up to 24 drives to each card.

Fusion-io can't touch that scalability, and long before the raid solution reaches capacity saturation (48 drives in this example) it will have significantly outstripped the bandwidth and iops of fusion-io for less $/GB to boot.

But the fusion-io guys have got to know this, I'm not stating anything new here, so I am really curious as to what I am missing about fusion-io that makes this technology critically enabling, so much so that fusion-io aims to make a business with it. What am I missing?

 

[simpletron]

probably, their goal is to put that entire setup raid on one pc board and sell it as a cheaper one stop solution. thus it would thrive where the norm is one or two drives, so small business and the average comsumer. the small business would like it because of the reduce complexity, reduce physical space, and reduce power/cooling versus a raid solution. most comsumer only have one drive and they would get enterpise preformance.

as a single drive the iodrive has many inherit advantages over SSD like a better interface and more space. pcie x4 offers a lot more of everything even compare to the next SATA version. and the additional space allows for more flash memory chips(more capacity), more ram chips, a larger/complex controller and better cooling. maybe they will add raid to it and advertise it as "get something good now and expand it into something great later". bascially, they just need to figure out what is the best use of those advantages.